El Profe: A future in the flip of a card

Three Kings’ Day is a time of giving and receiving presents in Puerto Rico and much of the Spanish-speaking Caribbean. And on the eve of the day that some also call “Little Christmas,” I pause to reflect on what was perhaps the gift that started it all for me as a baseball historian — a pile of 1977 Topps baseball cards that I got from my dad.

A bunch of “commons.” That’s the label collectors would have given to the cards that came in that pile.

But something I noticed on those cards sparked my curiosity and made them worth much more than their list price.

Puerto Rico, Panama and Dominican Republic. Those were the countries of birth listed on the back of the cards for Eduardo “Ed” Figueroa, Rennie Stennett and Elías Sosa, respectively. These baseball cards provided an early lesson in the geography of béisbol.

Little did my dad know that those baseball cards would not only ignite a hobby, but would help inspire my lifelong passion for studying baseball’s Latino past as a means to understanding its present and to teach United States Latino history.

Collecting Baseball Cards

I loved collecting baseball cards as a kid. Money earned from allowances and from working summers with my neighbor’s landscaping company as I got older were used to buy baseball cards. Every payday, I could scarcely wait to hop on my bicycle and ride to the local 7-Eleven convenience store to buy new packs.

Trips to the baseball card shop were special occasions. There I perused rare collectibles that were too expensive for my budget. But the trips were always well worth the opportunity to look at the designs of older Topps cards and the cool photos or artwork that adorned the cards of greats like Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays or Roberto Clemente.

It wasn’t just the chase for star cards or special insert cards that later became the rage that inspired me. While I hoped that my favorite players would be in the packs that I bought, if I really wanted a Dave Winfield, I knew I could purchase it at the baseball card store or the card shows that I occasionally attended.

Finding Yourself in the Cards

In the ’70s and ’80s, there weren’t many books that covered Latinos in baseball. Most baseball history books glossed over the long history of Latino participation in the U.S. professional leagues. One might find some discussion of Roberto Clemente, but hardly ever a mention of Adolfo Luque — the first Latin American to pitch in the majors — or any other Latino pioneer who played before Jackie Robinson and integration. Rarer still was a discussion of Latino participation in black baseball and the formal Negro Leagues.

Baseball cards taught me part of that history.

The joy of baseball cards for me was partly about flipping each one over and reading the players’ countries of birth. At the same time, I was also taking in their surnames, which provided another contextual clue. Players such as Aurelio Rodríguez, Dennis Martínez and José Cruz indicated a Latino presence in the game. They bore the same last names of relatives, friends and neighbors that I knew from growing up in New York, New Jersey and south Florida.

At this level, these cards confirmed what I already knew, that Latinos — especially the Puerto Ricans and Cubans that were part of my childhood — played baseball. But there was a wider lesson. Seeing the names and faces of some of these players rendered them familiar, de mi gente, and revealed a deeper connection ready to be mined to further illuminate the wider history of Latinos in baseball.

Ed Figueroa

Figueroa drew my attention in that pack of cards. First, he pitched for my favorite team, the New York Yankees. Second, he had the same last name as a family friend.

So, I remember my excitement when I flipped his card and confirmed that he, too, was Puerto Rican, a native of the mountain town of Ciales. A big part of the 1976 Yankees team that dropped the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds, the right-hander earned the distinction two years later that all boricuas acknowledge with pride — the first 20-game winner born in Puerto Rico.

Rennie Stennett

The sight of Stennett wearing the Pittsburgh Pirates’ distinctive 1970s uniform immediately made me want to check whether he had been a teammate of The Great One, Roberto Clemente. Yes. The two were teammates on the 1971 and 1972 Pirates, Clemente’s last two seasons before his untimely death.

Then there was Stennett’s birthplace: Colón, Panama — a coastal city on the Caribbean Sea. He was one of us, Latino.

Elías Sosa

Dominicans were in no way as numerous in the 1970s as they are today. Sure, most baseball fans were quite aware of the Dominican Dandy, Juan Marichal, whose high-leg kick and amazing control landed him in the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. And of the Aloú brothers, Felipe, Mateo and Jesús, the only trio of siblings ever to play in the outfield in the same game.

Sosa, who hailed from La Vega, the fourth-largest city in the Dominican Republic, was not as familiar. The right-hander spent the majority of his 12 seasons as a reliever, starting only three of the 601 games he pitched. A look at the back of his 1977 card revealed that he signed as a free agent with the Giants in 1968, at age 17.

As a kid in the 1970s, I didn’t quite comprehend what that meant — a teenage Dominican signing with a major league organization. Yet this type of transaction would provide a basis for much of my scholarly research.

History Lessons

The question of what happens to an adolescent Dominican — or any young Latino —when he arrives to play professional ball in the United States remains central to how I study the game. The process of acculturation to life in the States has long intrigued me, for it links the generations of Latinos in baseball, from those playing today to those back in time like Clemente, Minnie Miñoso and Luque, and even going all the way back to the earliest Latinos, like Cuban-born Esteban Enrique Bellán and the Mexican-American Vincent “Sandy” Nava.

Looking back, the history lessons were right there in front of me, ready for me to absorb. As I later discovered, the Giants scout who engineered the signing of Sosa in 1968 was none other than Álex Pómpez, the inspiration for my second book, Cuban Star.

Who would have thought? Inspiration in a pile of commons.

Featured Image: George Gojkovich / Getty Images Sport

Inset Images: Topps