Baseball's leading trivia guru Peter Morris has come to the rescue and suggested firm evidence that the early 20th-century "cup-of-coffee" ballplayer known as Chick (Charles) Pedroes most likely WAS indeed born on the island of Cuba. Morris points to research done recently by Rich Malatzky of SABR which reveals that Pedroes (whose actual last name may have been PEDRO) was born on October 27, 1869, in Havana. The Chicago 1880 and 1890 census data lists Chick Pedroes as having moved to Chicago in 1871 (when less than two years old) and the 1900 census has his occupation as "ballplayer". Thus all previous lists of Cuban ballplayers (including my own own in A History of Cuban Baseball, 1864-2006 and in Diamonds around the Globe: The Encyclopedia of International Baseball) have been in ever-so-slight error by not including Pedroes (debut in 1902) on the list between Esteban Bellan (debut 1871) and both Rafael Almeida and Armando Marsans (debuts in 1911). The addition of Pedroes to the Cuban ballplayer list is an important (if not earthshaking) one and seemingly underscores my point in the earlier blog entry that this was probably more interesting informartion than Leonte Landino's intended revelations about Jud Castro. Most Latino baseball scholars have long since included Castro on the list of Latin-born early 20th century big leaguers; more important, most of these scholars have long ago reached wide agreement that Esteban Bellan of Cuba (debut in the NA in 1871) was by any measure the first Latin American big leaguer. Bellan was a young adult and not an infant when he came to the US to attend Fordham (though he likely learned his baseball skills on the Fordham campus and not in the streets of Havana); and the National Association was the top American professional baseball circuit when he first joined it. The case for Steve Bellan as the first Latino big leaguer seems altogether untarnished.

But then what are we to do with the cases of earlier Latin-born (but US raised and trained) ballplayers Jud Castro (likely born in Colombia but arriving in the US when only eight) and Chick Pedroes (born in Havana of a Cuban father and American mother, but brougtht to Chicago when little more than a year old)? My contention is that both are best assigned to that beloved record-book category of the always-convenient asterisk. They are Latino pioneers only by special case: they are North American ballplayers who happen, by a quirk of fate, to have been born outside of American soil. None of their baseball talents, styles of play, or athletic heritage had anything whatsoever to do with their seemingly non-existent "Latino" heritage.

When we boast today of the impact of Dominican shortstops, Cuban hurlers or Venezuelan sluggers on the misnamed "American" national pastime we are talking about ballplayers (like Tony Fernandez, Orlando Hernandez, or Bobby Abreu) who were first inspired by the game on their own Caribbean native soil and later recruited by organized baseball to be part of the "internationalization" of major league baseball. It is quite a stretch to think of either Jose Canseco or Rafael Palmeiro (yes, born in Cuba, but wrenched from the island when less then two years old and thus products of a Miami baseball education, not a Cuban one) as truly "Cuban" ballplayers. Miami-Cuban or Cuban-American ballplayers, perhaps, but not Latin Americans in the same sense as the hundreds who now come annually to the US minors and majors hardly speaking a word of English and facing the hurdle of American fast food as well as big-league fastballs.

If we want to talk accurately about Latin Americans invading the majors then the history in the 20th century assuredly begins with Marsans and Almeida, recruited into the US first by barnstorming Negro league clubs and then signed up in 1911 by Clark Griffith to play for his NL Cincinnati Reds. To include every athlete born on Latin soil (but not raised there), or worse yet, all those whose parents or grandparents might boast a Cuban or Dominican heritage (as does Cesar Lopez in his Cuban player lists on www.cubanball.com) is merely to inflate the numbers only to satisfy an urge for boasting about one's ethnic heritage. Orlando Hernandez, Jose Contreras and Luis Tiant all brought a Cuban baseball experience and a Cuban style of ballplaying to the majors, and therefore significantly impacked the sport's international flavor. Ryan Freel or Brosnson Arroyo have not, and that likely should be our primary measuring stick.

Baseball fans dearly love the "trivial" side of the international pastime, especially when that trivia involves "firsts" (or what Stephen Jay Gould once astutely discussed as the diamond sport's preoccupation with myth-shrouded "immaculate conceptions"). This is an especially hot topic, seemingly, when the issue of "firsts" involves ethnic pioneers. For years we have been debating the issue of who might have been the first legitimate "Latino big-leaguer" and despite rather wide agreement among scholars that Cuba's Esteban Bellan (pictured to the right) holds the place of primacy (having appeared in 1871 in the-then-big-league National Association) the issue hardly seems dead. In a just-released issue of the SABR Latino Baseball Committee newsletter (La Prensa del Beisbol Latino, Vol. 4:1, Summer 2007) a new claim is staked for Colombia's Luis "Jud" Castro as the true pioneering Latin American native to first reach the pinnacle of the sport in the U.S. major leagues.

This recent SABR article by Leonte Landino (www.eljuegoperfecto.com), while entertaining (and admittedly informative on at least a few issues surrounding "Jud" Castro), unfortunately raises more questions that it ever presumes to answer. It also seems to muddy the waters with a number of unsubstantiated or even inaccurate claims, as well as avoiding an needed attempt to clearly define the working assumptions behind our efforts to label "Latino" ballplayers (as opposed to American ballplayers of Hispanic heritage, such as Alex Rodriguez). There is indeed a significant difference (or at least I think there should be, when boasting about an athlete's ethnic heritage, or a Latin nation's claims to producing talent for U.S. professional baseball) between a ballplayer like Ozzie Virgil (who was born in the Dominican Republic but left at an early age and learned all his baseball skills on the North American mainland) and Felipe Alou (who came to organized baseball directly from his native island nation, having learned his baseball in the dusty sugar cane fields). Virgil is widely credited as being the first Dominican big leaguer (1956 with the NY Giants) but he was signed off the streets of New York City; it was Alou (SF Giants, 1958) who was in truth the first ballplayer sent straight to the big time directly from Dominican shores.

There are, of course, a number of ways to define "national origins" or "ethnic heritage" and I have thus taken the absolute "high road" in several of my own recrent books and opted to define an athlete's national of origin strictly by the land of his birth. For me Ozzie Virgil IS indeed a Dominican ballplayer (though I always try to qualify the difference between his case and that of Alou) whereas A-Rod is NOT a Dominican ballplayer. A-Rod is a New Yorker, by both birthrite (my criterion of choice) and cultural background. If one is to claim A-Rod on the list of Dominican ballplayers, then why don't we list Joe DiMaggio as a ballplayer from Italy (where his parents were born) or Lou Gehrig as Germany's earliest big league superstar? DiMag and A-Rod are both Americans, no matter what their ancestoral history might have been. Bobby Thomsen was Scotch (he was indeed born there) but Lou Gehrig is not German.

But there are those out there writing about Latino baseball heritage who choose--in their enthusiasm to claim Latino roots for as many big leaguers as possible--to take the obvious "low road" and classify ballplayers by the birthplaces of their parents or even their grandparents. Thus Cesar Lopez on his oherwise excellent Cuban Baseball webpage (www.cubanball.com) currently tracks the daily big league performances of such "Cuban" ballplayers as Bronson Arroyo, Ryan Freel, Raul Ibanez, Jorge Posada, and Mike Lowell, among numerous others, even though most of these athletes have never even set foot on the island of Cuba (a few don't speak much Spanish); Posada and Lowell are especially interesting cases since both were born to Cuban-exile parents in Puerto Rico. So why does Cuba (or Cuban enthusiasts) get to claim either instead of Puerto Rico. The same "error" (from my point of view) is also made by authors Martino, Fernandez, and Valero in their recent tome entitled Jonron: Crecimiento y Logros del Pelotero Latinoamericano y Caribeno en el Beisbol de Las Grandes Ligas. These authors (ironically Puerto Ricans themselves) also assign Posada and Lowell to the Cuban camp rather than to the Borinquen nation of their birth; furthermore they also claim Al Cabrera (2 games with the St. Louis Cardinals in 1913) as one of the earliest "Cuban" pioneers, although Cabrera was unquestionnably born in the Spanish Canary Islands.

But back to Leonte Landino's recent article and the case of Jud Castro. The case for Castro as the first Latino big leaguer, as Landino emphasizes, has long hung on two not easily resolved issues. First is the question of whether or not Esteban Bellan (having played in the 19th century and in the National Assoication) should be considered as a true big leaguer. Landino states incorrectly that Bellan was "hired and brought from Cuba by the Troy Haymakers of the American Association in 1871" (it was of course the NA here and not the AA); Bellan actually had come to the US earlier to attend college and play baseball at Fordham University, and he was thus recruited from the Fordham campus and not from the streets of Havana. But that is not the crucial issue here. Landino asserts that Bellan doesn't count simply because "MLB history does not recognize the NA stats or players as part of their system." But what kind of revisionist history is this? The standard encyclopedias such as the Big Mac and Total Baseball have always listed the NA players and thus also Bellan. And the NA was certainly considered the "big leagues" of North America at the time when Bellan strapped on his spikes and glove. So simply discounting the nineteenth century does not seem to make much sense. But let's leave that debate aside for the moment.

The second issue surrounding Jud Castro has always been the question of his own birth site. If he was born either in Colombia or Panama (as many have speculated) then his 42 games with Connie Mack's 1902 Philadelphia A's would stake his claim as the first Latino major leaguer of the 20th century (assuming we scuttle 19th century big league history for whatever reasons). If, on the other hand, Castro was born in New York City (as some have speculated) than the claim is suspect (unless we are a "low roader" like Cesar Lopez or Edwin Fernandez and assign a ballplayer's national origin according to his father's birthplace and not his own). Landino now appears to have resolved this issue once and for all, having reportedly turned up evidence (thanks to researcher Nick Martinez of Las Vegas) that young Castro is in fact listed on the passangership register of a vessel arriving in NYC on October 16, 1885 from Colon, Panama, then a part of the Republic of Colombia. The youngster was reported on that list as the son of one Nestor Castro and also as being 8 years old at the time. Case closed; Jud Castro was born in Colombia and came to NYC when he was but eight years old. But now we still have several problems that may yet loom larger than Landino admits here. First off, we still have no hard evidence of birthplace, such as a birth certificate (how do we know, for example, that Castro wasn't born in NYC, sailed with his father to Colombia, and then sailed back?). And indeed if Castro arrived in the US when he was but 8, then he clearly must have developed as a ballplayer on the streets of NYC. That is, his case is more akin to that of Ozzie Virgil than that of Felipe Alou. Jud Castro was not a Colombia ballplayer, he was an American ballplayer born in Colombia. Fine distinction, perhaps, but enough to still leave the claims for Cubans Rafael Almeida and Armando Marsans (pictured here) sitting on fairly strong grounds. It was indeed the pair of Cubans, Marsans and Almeida, when they debuted for Cincinnati in 1911, who were the first true Latino imports brought to the US specifically to play ball. First "Latin American" imports to the major leagues during the 20th Century? I would still have to vote for Marsans and Almeida myself; they were in every sense "Cuban ballplayers" imported by the majors and thus unarguably the first of their kind.

But there is still one more intriguing issue buried in Landino's article. It is the following truly revolutionary claim: "if he (Castro) was born in New York, then we will have to place our directions (sic) to Chick Pedroes, who played two games for the Chicago Orphans in August 1902, and was born, according to the official baseball records in Havana, Cuba." Now if this claim about Charles Pedroes is true than it is indeed a bigger breakthrough than any recent discoveries about Jud Castro's murky origins. Never before have I seen Pedroes claimed as a Cuban; all encyclopedia entries that I have ever seen list Pedroes as having been born (and died) in Chicago). The very name Charles "Chick" Pedroes does not raise much hope for a Cuban birthright. No Cuban historians have ever claimed him as their own, nor has he ever appeared in any "Latinos" big league list that I have ever seen (including the log provided by Martino and Fernandez in Jonron). Now I may have missed something here, and I certainly stand more than willing to be convinced. But where is the evidence for the surprise announcement that Chick Pedroes was a native Cuban? The biggest mystery raised by the Landino article now seems to have nothing at all to do with his announced subject, Jud Castro, but rather with another newly resurrected "mystery man" named Chick "El Cubano" Pedroes.

Author Pete Bjarkman being interviewed on Dutch National Television about the magic and traditions of Cuban baseball (August 10, 2007)

Cuban manager Victor Mesa celebrates in the dugout after the first of two Cuban victories over Pan American Games silver medalist Team USA

Teams from Cuba and Chinese Taipei line the base paths during the Opening Day ceremonies for the Eleventh Annual World Port Tournament at Rotterdam's Neptunus Family Stadium (August 2, 2007)

The author poses with his Cuban baseball history volume in the Neptunus Family Stadium press box (August 3, 2007)

Author Pete Bjarkman poses with Cuban manager Victor Mesa on the field before the Cuba-USA WPT first round game (August 6, 2007)

Manager Victor Mesa seems to be pointing where he wants the ball hit as he huddles with Alfredo Despaigne, Hector Olivera, and a trio of Cuban coaches

Author Pete Bjarkman poses in the Rotterdam press box with a young Dutch fan before the tournament championship finale

Catcher Yosvani Peraza positioned himself for a spot on the top national team roster with an 18-RBI MVP performance in Rotterdam's Neptunus Family Stadium

Veteran southpaw Yulieski Gonzalez was one of the Rotterdam tournament heroes with flawless relief in a crucial final game that eliminated Team USA from medal contention, and then again versus Chinese Taipei in the championship showdown

Yulieski Gonzalez (right) and outfielder Alexei Bell celebrate following the first of two victories of rival Team USA

Granma's 20-year-old outfield prospect Alfredo Despaigne (circling the bases after one of his four homers) used the stage of Rotterdam's World Port Tournament (August 2007) to establish himself as one of Cuba's most promising new sluggers

World Baseball Classic veteran righty (he started the semifinal game versus the Dominican republic) Yadel Marti relaxes outside of Neptunus Family Stadium in the aftermath of a winning performance against The Netherlands

Fans of international baseball--especially the brand played in the Caribbean during winter off-season months--had to be saddened and even deeply disturbed by this week's unsettling news that the 69-year-old Puerto Rico winter circuit has finally folded operations after years of worsening financial struggle. The league's demise ironically comes on the heels of a largely successful Caribbean Series staged this past February in the island's showcase Roberto Clemente Walker Stadium (pictured here); it also is the latest blow to international baseball which is still reeling from the 2006 decision of the IOC (International Olympic Committee) to remove baseball and softball as official sports for the 2012 Olympic competitions scheduled for London.

Numerous explanations might be offered for the demise of the most troubled and most venerable winter circuit. The decline of baseball interest in Puerto Rico has been attributed to such factors as the lack of participation in the October-January league by recognizable Puerto Rican big leaguers; the fact that the island is now subject to the First-Year Player Draft (which drains away most of the top young local talent); and the rise in popularity of rival sports like soccer and basketball. But the establishment of MLB's Arizona Fall League as a major focus of off-season player development certainly has not helped. That Puerto Rican fans will still turn out in droves to see top-level native pro stars was proven by the 2006 World Baseball Classic's opening two rounds in San Juan, which witnessed packed grandstands at 20,000-seat Hi Bithorn Stadium (especially for battles between the host team and Caribbean rivals Cuba, Venezuela and the Dominican Republic). Winter league baseball throughout the Caribbean has been dealt a near-fatal blow over the past three decades by a professional baseball structure which prevents high-salaried MLB superstars native to the region from desiring (or even being allowed by their agents) to participate in off-season competitions in their homelands. But in the broader view, the death knell for winter Caribbean baseball seems only the latest chapter of an ongoing saga which has seen Jorge Pasquel's rebel Mexican League (1940s), the Negro leagues (1950s), and the North American minor leagues (1950s and 1960s) all crumble as viable alternatives to MLB's televised baseball entertainment enterprise. Recent MLB raids of top players from the Japanese pro circuits might well suggest that the top rival Asian baseball empire will be the next to fall; the Cuban League appears today to be the only healthy surviving alternative baseball universe, and its days are also likely numbered (given the tenuous hold on the island nation of an aging and sagging socialist government system that has long kept the encroachments of MLB recruiting at bay). Political strife in Venezuela also suggests that the Venezuelan Winter League circuit (which had its own 2003 season cancelled in midstream due to renewed civil unrest involving the increasingly unpopular government of ballplayer-turned-socialist politico Hugo Chavez) may also be on the verge of an inevitable meltdown.

I have written at some length about the plight of the winter league cicuits (as well as the MLB monoply which undermines international baseball movements) in my 2005 book Diamonds around the Globe: The Encyclopedia of International Baseball (Greenwood Press) and readers are welcome to pursue these arguments in that original source. For the moment one can only speculate on what the immediate impact will be--for winter baseball as a whole--of this suspension of play in Puerto Rico. For one thing, an immediate crisis now faces the traditional February Caribbean Series, the annual championship playoff between the four winter circuit champions, which is scheduled this year for Santo Domingo. The event will now seemingly be reduced to an impractical three-team affair, not at all a promising prospect. There is talk of a replacement league based in Puerto Rico, one involving an expansion of the island's popular amateur league (Liga Double A) into a six-team and 20-game circuit that would be called the Liga Invernal Boricua. It would run throughout November and December with playoffs in January; each 25-man roster would have 16 native amateur players and nine "imported professional players" with major league affiliations. But such a circuit would not likely produce sufficient talent to be competitive in the annual Caribbean round-robin. Some have speculated that the new winter league in Nicaragua would be the big beneficiary of these developments and an appropriate substitute for Puerto Rico. But this is also a "developmental" rookie league with a considerably limited talent pool. Maybe it is time for a radical departure on the part of the Alianza Latina de Beisbol and the Confederacion de Beisbol del Caribe (administrative bodies governing the winter circuits) and an overture to officials of the Cuban League. The presence of the Cuban champion (this year Santiago de Cuba, pictured) in this mix would certainly do much to stimulate fan interest and elevate the quality of play. But the Alianza has already gone on record on this matter when Confederation Commissioner Juan Francisco Puello remarked at last year's event (in San Juan) that Cuba would be welcome only if it "fulfilled all the requirements of professional baseball" (perhaps meaning that the Cuban government would have to release its players to MLB signings, not a very likely scenario). Puello commented further last February that the Caribbean Series was as healthy as ever, that it had gotten along just fine for decades without Cuba, and that it certainly didn't need Cuba now. Such exaggerations of the tournament's true health status seemed something of an idle boast a year ago, and they certainly seem like an even further stretching of the truth now.

As Cuba's B-level national team charges through the field this week at the World Port Tournament in Rotterdam toward a likely championship showdown Sunday with Team USA's Pan American Games silver medalists, several thousand enthusiastic Dutch baseball fans have been daily enjoying the non-commercialized thrills of top-level international baseball. No evening ESPN home run derby highlights here, no 12-story Diamond Vision backdrops blaring glitzy commercials at each pitching change and half-inning switch of sides. No Barry Bonds soap opera.

The biggest home run blast this week in Rotterdam has undoubtedly been the Tuesday grand slam by portly Cuban catcher Yosvani Pereza, which rescued the perennial world champions from what might have been their only defeat of the week at the hands of pesky Chinese Taipei. Peraza's towering blast has been the talk of the Rotterdam press box in recent days. Mention Barry Bonds to the international media gathered here and one receives only blank stares. Which raises of course the inevitable question. Are the Dutch baseball fans really that uninformed and embarrassingly provincial? Or is the true home of provincialism actually found in the self-indulgent nation stetching between Alex Rodriguez's New York and Barry Bonds' San Francisco--the United States of Advertising?

For the few US-based fans who might like to catch the action between Team USA and Cuba on Saturday afternoon (8am New York time), or the championship game of the World Port Tournament on Sunday (1:30 EST), both will be available via on-line internet connection at www.baseballdecuba.com (a US-located Cuban League website). But be forewarned: no Joe Morgan, no Jon Miller (actually no audio), no Barry Bonds. (Can this be baseball?)

The eleventh edition of the Rotterdam-based ENECO World Port Tournament--this summer's showcase international baseball event--is off to a thrilling start this weekend in Europe's largest northern shipping center. Featuring national teams from perennial international champion Cuba (Cuba's B Team still featuring several WBC holdovers), the USA (the same collegiate all-star squad that dropped the gold medal finale to Cuba in last month's Pan American Games event), host Netherlands (largely the same Dutch team that appeard in MLB's 2006 World Baseball Classic), Japan (a talented collegiate all-star squad that defeated Team USA in a best-of-five tune-up in early July at North Carolina), and Chinese Taipei (an all-star squad from the Taiwanese Professional Baseball League). The event runs for eleven days (August 2-12), is a double round-robin, and features a single championship game on Sunday, August 12 in Neptunus Family Stadium. As with most world-class international tournaments, Cuba is the current defending champion.

This year's event has gotten off to a rousing start with Team USA escaping a near-no-hit-blanking by Japan's southpaw submariner Yusuke Iwamoto in its opener, and Cuba bashing the same Japanese club with an impressive onslaught of longball slugging that has immediately established the Cuban Red Machine as the odds-on tournament favorite. The Americans barely won 1-0 Thursday night when University of Arkansas infielder Logan Forsythe singled with two out in the ninth to provide the only USA hit as well as the slim margin of victory. Cuba was paced Friday afternoon by a pair of long homers from Santiago first baseman Jose Julio Ruiz (pictured) and a relentless 13-hit attack that buried the same hard-luck Japanese club 11-3. Upcoming highlight games will be the two afternoon (8am New York time) USA-Cuba showdowns scheduled for Monday (August 6) and Saturday (August 11). With its mix of upcoming star sluggers (Julio Ruiz, Donald Duarte, Alexei Bell and Yosvani Pereza) and savvy veteran pitchers (Yosvani Aragon, Ciro Silvino Licea, Yadel Marti, and Yulieski Gonzalez) this Cuba B team may actually be the clear equal of the island's celebrated A squad. Team USA's road to the finals may thus be even more arduous one than the one recently traveled in Rio de Janeiro.

For those interest in the thrills of international baseball, the entire tournament action (including play-by-play summaries of all Cuba games and indepth articles on tournament developments) can be followed daily over the next two weeks on-line at www.baseballdecuba.com. Tune in and stay informed on a more pastoral throwback diamond world where THE BARRY BONDS HOME RUN DERBY SOAP OPERA and shopping mall stadiums are not on the daily menu and where the sport's non-commercial future still holds promise.