Kubanita
09-23-2005, 08:42 AM
Talent scouts Cambria, Pompez helped open way for Latin players
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By BILL MADDEN
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New York Daily News
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NEW YORK - If only he could survey the major league landscape today, where nearly 25 percent of the players are now Latin-born, Joseph (Papa Joe) Cambria undoubtedly would be enjoying a hearty laugh of vindication as well as a sigh of despair and regret at what might have been were it not for Fidel Castro.
In the beginning, a decade before Roberto Clemente came to symbolize the emergence of the Latin influence in the major leagues, there were Cambria, Alex Pompez and the Cuban connection. They are names forgotten in time, even though they were the first to mine what was then - and still is - baseball's primary source of cheap labor. Perhaps because both were viewed with jaundiced eyes by Major League Baseball officials and Cuban baseball authorities, Cambria and Pompez did not enjoy the same powerbroker status as procurers of talent as they would today.
By his own estimate, Cambria scouted and signed nearly 400 Cubans to organized ball, most notably pitchers Conrado Marrero, Camilo Pascual, Pedro Ramos, Mike Fornieles, Sandy Consuegra and Luis Aloma; infielders Zoilo Versalles, Bobby Estalella and Willie Miranda; and first baseman Julio Becquer - all of whom had careers of varying degrees of impact in the majors. What is significant about Cambria is that, with the end of World War II and baseball abolishing the color barrier two years later, he was the only scout signing Hispanic talent and Cuba was the only Latin American country being aggressively cultivated.
Born in Messina, Italy, in 1911, Cambria was brought to the United States by his parents when he was 3 months old, and after growing up in Boston, played minor league baseball until he suffered a broken leg in 1918. Following a stint in the army in World War I, Cambria opened up a laundromat in Baltimore and owned and operated a bunch of minor league teams. It was after he'd bought the Hagerstown, Md., team in 1934 and ran into financial difficulty that he introduced himself to Washington Senators owner Clark Griffith.
"I didn't have enough money to meet my payroll," Cambria said in an interview years later, "and after pleading my case with Mr. Griffith, he wrote me a check for $1,500 and I went to work for him as a scout."
It was probably the best $1,500 the tightfisted Griffith ever spent, as Cambria subsequently began making regular scouting expeditions to Puerto Rico, Panama, Mexico and especially Cuba - where he signed dozens and dozens of players on the cheap that helped keep both the perpetually second division Senators afloat and their farm system stocked. It should be noted that he also signed some of the Senators' best American players, including two-time batting champion Mickey Vernon, third baseman Eddie Yost and outfielder Jake Powell.
Cambria's exploitation of the Cuban players - he'd sign them to blank contracts and assign them to southern spring training venues or the Senators' minor league teams in segregated cities such as Chattanooga, where they'd be exposed to ridicule and racial prejudice - earned him a goodly share of criticism. He was disparagingly referred to as "The Ivory Hunter" by the U.S. sportswriters of the time, and "El Lavandero" (the laundry man) in Cuba, although his players affectionately called him "Papa Joe."
Cambria is also credited with signing the first Venezuelan-born major leaguer in pitcher Alex Carrasquel, who went 50-39 in eight big league seasons, mostly with the Senators, from 1939-49. But it was in Cuba where he tapped a mother lode of talent for Griffith, much to the dismay of others in the Senators' organization.
In 1950, Cambria signed Marrero, a diminutive (5-6, 158 pounds), ageless righthander dubbed "the Satchel Paige of Cuba." When Marrero reported to spring training and displayed his unorthodox delivery, which veteran Washington Post columnist Shirley Povich described as "a cross section between a machete swinger and a fencing masters prod," Senators manager Bucky Harris reportedly scoffed: "Another one of Cambria's bums."
But Marrero soon won Harris over with his wide assortment of pitches, including a knuckleball, and his uncommon command of all of them, and won 11 games in 1951 and the same number a year later as a spot starter. No less an authority than Ted Williams once said of him: "He throws you nothing but the ball. You've got to swing at his first pitch because if you let him get ahead, you're dead."
Marrero was believed to be in his 40s when Cambria brought him to the big leagues, and after he retired in 1954 with a 39-40 record over five seasons, he went back to Cuba - where he lives today, serving Castro as a pitching instructor, adviser and recreation director with the Cuban national team.
A few years later, Cambria signed the much younger Pascual and Ramos, both of whom went on to All-Star careers with the Senators and the Minnesota Twins (where the team was moved by Griffith's nephew, Calvin, in 1961). And in the shortstop Versalles, he brought the 1965 Most Valuable Player to the Twins.
Before Cambria came on the scene, there had only been two Cubans to play in the major leagues - pitcher Adolfo Luque, who won 194 games in a 20-year career from 1914-35, mostly with the Cincinnati Reds, and Mike Gonzalez, a backup catcher for five National League teams from 1912-32. Because they were light-skinned, there was little speculation raised about them in regard to baseball's unwritten color barrier, but it is interesting that, in the height of his forays to Havana and its hinterlands on behalf of Griffith after the war, Cambria restricted himself to signing only light-skinned Cubans.
It's not clear if he was ordered by Griffith to do that, but the Senators were one of the last teams to sign a black player - outfielder Carlos Paula, a Cambria Cuban product in September of 1954, some seven years after Jackie Robinson broke the color line. Whether they were Griffith-ordered or self-imposed, Cambria's restrictions served to open the door for Pompez - a flamboyant entrepreneur and operative in New York's Tammany Hall political circles who owned the New York Cubans in the Negro National League - to capitalize on the black Latin player market.
In and around operating the New York Cubans, the flashy-dressing, bilingual Pompez dabbled in numbers running in New York and, as a reputed associate of the notorious mobster Dutch Schultz, had numerous brushes with the law. Nevertheless, he was highly respected by the Latin players he recruited and signed for his team, especially after they realized the close ties he had with major league baseball.
As the Negro Leagues began to disintegrate after the color barrier was broken with Robinson's signing by the Dodgers in 1946, Pompez became more actively engaged in negotiating deals for his players with major league teams. His most notable Cuban player was Minnie Minoso, whom he sent to the Cleveland Indians after Minoso had led the New York Cubans to the 1947 Negro League World Series.
By that time, however, Pompez had branched out all over Latin America in pursuit of talent for his team and, with the help of a scout named Horacio Martinez, the athletic director at the University of Santo Domingo, he was able to gain a stronghold in the previously untapped rich baseball talent mine of the Dominican Republic. This proved especially to be a bonanza for the Giants, with whom Pompez had formed an alliance that led to the Cubans becoming an adjunct farm team for them.
Out of the Dominican, Pompez signed Felipe, Matty and Jesus Alou, Juan Marichal, Jose Cardenal and Manny Mota and delivered them all to the Giants, as well as Orlando Cepeda out of Puerto Rico. Adding to the core of the Giants' perennial contending teams in their early years in San Francisco, Pompez also was responsible for the signings of Hall of Fame first baseman Willie McCovey and outfielder Willie Kirkland. It is quite a legacy that has gone largely unrecognized by the Giants and baseball, probably because of Pompez's otherwise shady personal life.
Pompez died in 1974 and didn't get to see the ultimate fruits of his labor - the elections of Cepeda, Marichal and McCovey to the Hall of Fame. At least, in his induction speech, McCovey made a point of paying homage to Pompez.
As for Cambria, who died in 1983, he undoubtedly would be saddened by the fact that, of 204 Latin players on major league rosters at the start of the season, only six were Cubans. In a way, though, he might be the one most responsible for that because of his scouting acumen. As the story goes, Cambria was conducting a workout in Havana in the late '40s and was approached by a righthanded pitcher begging to be signed. "Sorry," Cambria reportedly told the kid, "you just don't have a major league arm."
It was a disappointment Fidel Castro never got over in reluctantly abandoning his major league dream to lead a revolution.
SOURCE (http://www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthsuperior/sports/12710146.htm)
http://www.duluthsuperior.com/images/common/spacer.gif
By BILL MADDEN
http://www.duluthsuperior.com/images/common/spacer.gif
New York Daily News
http://www.duluthsuperior.com/images/common/spacer.gif
NEW YORK - If only he could survey the major league landscape today, where nearly 25 percent of the players are now Latin-born, Joseph (Papa Joe) Cambria undoubtedly would be enjoying a hearty laugh of vindication as well as a sigh of despair and regret at what might have been were it not for Fidel Castro.
In the beginning, a decade before Roberto Clemente came to symbolize the emergence of the Latin influence in the major leagues, there were Cambria, Alex Pompez and the Cuban connection. They are names forgotten in time, even though they were the first to mine what was then - and still is - baseball's primary source of cheap labor. Perhaps because both were viewed with jaundiced eyes by Major League Baseball officials and Cuban baseball authorities, Cambria and Pompez did not enjoy the same powerbroker status as procurers of talent as they would today.
By his own estimate, Cambria scouted and signed nearly 400 Cubans to organized ball, most notably pitchers Conrado Marrero, Camilo Pascual, Pedro Ramos, Mike Fornieles, Sandy Consuegra and Luis Aloma; infielders Zoilo Versalles, Bobby Estalella and Willie Miranda; and first baseman Julio Becquer - all of whom had careers of varying degrees of impact in the majors. What is significant about Cambria is that, with the end of World War II and baseball abolishing the color barrier two years later, he was the only scout signing Hispanic talent and Cuba was the only Latin American country being aggressively cultivated.
Born in Messina, Italy, in 1911, Cambria was brought to the United States by his parents when he was 3 months old, and after growing up in Boston, played minor league baseball until he suffered a broken leg in 1918. Following a stint in the army in World War I, Cambria opened up a laundromat in Baltimore and owned and operated a bunch of minor league teams. It was after he'd bought the Hagerstown, Md., team in 1934 and ran into financial difficulty that he introduced himself to Washington Senators owner Clark Griffith.
"I didn't have enough money to meet my payroll," Cambria said in an interview years later, "and after pleading my case with Mr. Griffith, he wrote me a check for $1,500 and I went to work for him as a scout."
It was probably the best $1,500 the tightfisted Griffith ever spent, as Cambria subsequently began making regular scouting expeditions to Puerto Rico, Panama, Mexico and especially Cuba - where he signed dozens and dozens of players on the cheap that helped keep both the perpetually second division Senators afloat and their farm system stocked. It should be noted that he also signed some of the Senators' best American players, including two-time batting champion Mickey Vernon, third baseman Eddie Yost and outfielder Jake Powell.
Cambria's exploitation of the Cuban players - he'd sign them to blank contracts and assign them to southern spring training venues or the Senators' minor league teams in segregated cities such as Chattanooga, where they'd be exposed to ridicule and racial prejudice - earned him a goodly share of criticism. He was disparagingly referred to as "The Ivory Hunter" by the U.S. sportswriters of the time, and "El Lavandero" (the laundry man) in Cuba, although his players affectionately called him "Papa Joe."
Cambria is also credited with signing the first Venezuelan-born major leaguer in pitcher Alex Carrasquel, who went 50-39 in eight big league seasons, mostly with the Senators, from 1939-49. But it was in Cuba where he tapped a mother lode of talent for Griffith, much to the dismay of others in the Senators' organization.
In 1950, Cambria signed Marrero, a diminutive (5-6, 158 pounds), ageless righthander dubbed "the Satchel Paige of Cuba." When Marrero reported to spring training and displayed his unorthodox delivery, which veteran Washington Post columnist Shirley Povich described as "a cross section between a machete swinger and a fencing masters prod," Senators manager Bucky Harris reportedly scoffed: "Another one of Cambria's bums."
But Marrero soon won Harris over with his wide assortment of pitches, including a knuckleball, and his uncommon command of all of them, and won 11 games in 1951 and the same number a year later as a spot starter. No less an authority than Ted Williams once said of him: "He throws you nothing but the ball. You've got to swing at his first pitch because if you let him get ahead, you're dead."
Marrero was believed to be in his 40s when Cambria brought him to the big leagues, and after he retired in 1954 with a 39-40 record over five seasons, he went back to Cuba - where he lives today, serving Castro as a pitching instructor, adviser and recreation director with the Cuban national team.
A few years later, Cambria signed the much younger Pascual and Ramos, both of whom went on to All-Star careers with the Senators and the Minnesota Twins (where the team was moved by Griffith's nephew, Calvin, in 1961). And in the shortstop Versalles, he brought the 1965 Most Valuable Player to the Twins.
Before Cambria came on the scene, there had only been two Cubans to play in the major leagues - pitcher Adolfo Luque, who won 194 games in a 20-year career from 1914-35, mostly with the Cincinnati Reds, and Mike Gonzalez, a backup catcher for five National League teams from 1912-32. Because they were light-skinned, there was little speculation raised about them in regard to baseball's unwritten color barrier, but it is interesting that, in the height of his forays to Havana and its hinterlands on behalf of Griffith after the war, Cambria restricted himself to signing only light-skinned Cubans.
It's not clear if he was ordered by Griffith to do that, but the Senators were one of the last teams to sign a black player - outfielder Carlos Paula, a Cambria Cuban product in September of 1954, some seven years after Jackie Robinson broke the color line. Whether they were Griffith-ordered or self-imposed, Cambria's restrictions served to open the door for Pompez - a flamboyant entrepreneur and operative in New York's Tammany Hall political circles who owned the New York Cubans in the Negro National League - to capitalize on the black Latin player market.
In and around operating the New York Cubans, the flashy-dressing, bilingual Pompez dabbled in numbers running in New York and, as a reputed associate of the notorious mobster Dutch Schultz, had numerous brushes with the law. Nevertheless, he was highly respected by the Latin players he recruited and signed for his team, especially after they realized the close ties he had with major league baseball.
As the Negro Leagues began to disintegrate after the color barrier was broken with Robinson's signing by the Dodgers in 1946, Pompez became more actively engaged in negotiating deals for his players with major league teams. His most notable Cuban player was Minnie Minoso, whom he sent to the Cleveland Indians after Minoso had led the New York Cubans to the 1947 Negro League World Series.
By that time, however, Pompez had branched out all over Latin America in pursuit of talent for his team and, with the help of a scout named Horacio Martinez, the athletic director at the University of Santo Domingo, he was able to gain a stronghold in the previously untapped rich baseball talent mine of the Dominican Republic. This proved especially to be a bonanza for the Giants, with whom Pompez had formed an alliance that led to the Cubans becoming an adjunct farm team for them.
Out of the Dominican, Pompez signed Felipe, Matty and Jesus Alou, Juan Marichal, Jose Cardenal and Manny Mota and delivered them all to the Giants, as well as Orlando Cepeda out of Puerto Rico. Adding to the core of the Giants' perennial contending teams in their early years in San Francisco, Pompez also was responsible for the signings of Hall of Fame first baseman Willie McCovey and outfielder Willie Kirkland. It is quite a legacy that has gone largely unrecognized by the Giants and baseball, probably because of Pompez's otherwise shady personal life.
Pompez died in 1974 and didn't get to see the ultimate fruits of his labor - the elections of Cepeda, Marichal and McCovey to the Hall of Fame. At least, in his induction speech, McCovey made a point of paying homage to Pompez.
As for Cambria, who died in 1983, he undoubtedly would be saddened by the fact that, of 204 Latin players on major league rosters at the start of the season, only six were Cubans. In a way, though, he might be the one most responsible for that because of his scouting acumen. As the story goes, Cambria was conducting a workout in Havana in the late '40s and was approached by a righthanded pitcher begging to be signed. "Sorry," Cambria reportedly told the kid, "you just don't have a major league arm."
It was a disappointment Fidel Castro never got over in reluctantly abandoning his major league dream to lead a revolution.
SOURCE (http://www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthsuperior/sports/12710146.htm)