El Profe: The Legend and Influence of Horacio Martínez

The Rabbit.

That’s the nickname he acquired for his ability to scamper across the diamond to field ground balls as well as for the hops he made to snare line drives. His smooth fielding and his speed running the basepaths made the Dominican shortstop a favorite of those who followed the Negro Leagues during the time Lou Boudreau, Phil Rizzuto, and Pee Wee Reese starred as shortstops in the major leagues. When all was said and done, he was voted into the all-star game five times in 11 seasons.

Under different circumstances, this Rabbit, not Maranville, but Martínez, would have been a household name, a name emblazoned on a well-loved baseball card, a name spoken with reverence. But most baseball fans in the United States are unfamiliar with the name Horacio “Rabbit” Martínez. He was among the numerous black and Latino ballplayers who never got a chance to play in the majors because of its color line. They came before Jackie Robinson and the integration of Major League Baseball, but they made their mark nonetheless and are worthy of remembrance.

The arc of Horacio Martínez’s life in U.S. professional baseball is a powerful reminder of how deeply Latinos were affected by the exclusionary color line that divided the game in the States. Martínez made his name playing for the New York Cubans in the Negro Leagues. Yet his impact extended well beyond his playing days. In fact, Martínez is a key figure in the transformation of the Americas’ game, as he helped to construct the Dominican talent pipeline that forever changed baseball.

A Winter’s Find

For Negro League teams, winter tours of the Caribbean were partly about keeping players in shape and partly about seeking additional revenue. There was still another reason teams traveled south: to get a look at local talent and potentially recruit new players.

When Álex Pompez took his Negro League team on a tour of the Dominican Republic during the winter of 1934, he wasn’t looking for a new shortstop. But when he saw Martínez performing at short for a Dominican team, he knew he had found one.

With player-manager Martin Dihigo at the helm, the 1935 Cubans team Martínez joined as a rookie was stacked. Latino stars dotted the Cubans’ lineup: Lázaro Salazar at first; Alejandro “El Caballero” Oms in center; and the power-hitting Dihigo typically penciling himself in at cleanup. Mound duties were split by Luis “Lefty” Tiant and Manuel “Cocaina” García, as well as the versatile Dihigo. “Schoolboy” Johnny Taylor, a light-skinned African-American who was scouted by the Yankees until they found out he was black, also provided an arm. The 22-year old Martínez saw part-time duty that season on a squad that ultimately battled the Pittsburgh Crawfords for the Negro National League pennant in an exciting, seven-game series won by the Craws.

A Dominican Star

Martínez established himself as an all-star in the Negro Leagues in the early 1940s. Fans voted him to the East-West Classic—the Negro League all-star game—in 1940, ’41, and ’43. Sports writers for mainstream dailies and MLB teams took notice. The Daily Worker’s Nat Low even suggested the slick-fielding shortstop as a possible solution to the shortstop woes of the Brooklyn Dodgers, who had been grooming Reese before he left to join the Navy. The Washington Senators expressed serious interest in the Dominican. But there was something that caused the majors’ most active team at signing Latino players a moment of pause. And that something made clear that talent alone was insufficient to garner an opportunity to play in the majors if you were Latino.

The year was 1943. With the country at war, major league teams increasingly turned to Latin America for players to replace those who went off to serve or who left to work in defense plants in support of the war effort.

But baseball’s color line was formidable. It was a hurdle powered by the perceptions of the men who ran the teams, officials who had the ultimate say in which Latinos could play while the color line that was created to keep out blacks remained in place

And a Dominican had yet to perform in the majors. To that point, only a handful of Dominicans had played in the Negro Leagues — starting with Pedro San, who pitched for Pompez’s Cuban Stars in 1926. The odds were stacked against the Dominican shortstop.

For Martínez, it was not a lack of talent that stood in his way, it was the possession of the wrong texture of hair that ruined his chances of being signed by the Senators. This was the story Pompez told sports writer Lem Graves Jr. of the black weekly Norfolk Journal and Guide, telling Graves that he would have had opportunities to sell Martínez to Washington and other major league teams “if ‘Rabbit’ had possessed the slick hair.”

Rabbit Redux

Horacio Martínez left the Negro Leagues a champion. The 1947 N.Y. Cubans defeated the Cleveland Buckeyes to claim the Negro League World Series. Martínez retired soon after.

He was far from done.

A few years after he stopped playing, Martínez went to work for Pompez again, this time as his bird dog scout in the Dominican Republic. In 1950, Pompez had taken on a new role as a scout for the New York Giants after he had disbanded the Cubans. Who better to be Pompez’s first set of eyes on Dominican talent than Martínez, himself a product of Pompez’s scouting and a firsthand witness to the type of talent Pompez valued? Martínez understood what it took to make the grade as a ballplayer. Just as important, he recognized the mental fortitude required to handle the realities of race in the U.S., having dealt with Jim Crow and racial hostilities as a Negro League ballplayer.

Together, Horacio Martínez and Álex Pompez constructed a funnel of talent that traveled from the Dominican Republic to the Giants. The first wave of Dominican stars in the majors arose from their efforts: Juan Marichal. Felipe Alou and his brothers Jesús and Máteo. Manny Mota.

MLB’s color line may have prevented Horacio Martínez from being the first Dominican to perform in the majors, but he made sure others got there. And in so doing, the Rabbit built an even bigger legacy.

Influence Still Reverberates

What does Horacio Martínez mean to Dominicans?

For Juan Marichal, Martínez was more than a scout, he was a sage, a mentor and a role model, a pioneering player who created an example for him and other Dominicans to follow. Marichal attempted to put into words what Martínez meant to Dominicans in talking with journalists Marcos Bretón and Jose Luis Villegas for their book, “Away Game: The Life and Times of a Latin Ball Player.”

“He wasn’t just some scout. He was a great athlete and he spoke a great deal to me before I left to play in the United States. This was back in the 1950s when there was so much racism in the United States, but I came here aware of all those things because I had a great teacher.

“I was his first player signed to make it to the big leagues and, for me, it was like I was on a mission.”

Juan Marichal. Felipe Alou. Pedro Martínez. Manny Ramirez. David Ortíz. Vladimir Guerrero. Albert Pujols. Robinson Canó. Imagine baseball without them, and you start to realize the influence of Horacio Martínez. He made sure that other Dominicans would get a chance to perform at the highest level, where baseball’s color line had not granted him a chance. For that, his name remains highly revered among Dominicans who truly know their baseball past.

Featured Image: Negro Leagues Hall of Fame