For those wishing to explore the baseball tradition of the Mexican Baseball League, the online portal of the Mexico-city based Fototeca Nacional del INAH, otherwise known as the National Photo Archive at the National Institute of Anthropology and History, offers a rich, vibrant text. Striking, playful, and at times haunting, the individuals and scenes captured in the Archive’s photos provide powerful insights into the dynamic nature of early organized baseball in Mexico.

Most of these scenes were photographed in Mexico, and many have been specifically attributed to Mexico City in the cataloging information. This would seem in keeping with the overarching nature and mission of the archives to preserve national history. However, it cannot and should not be assumed that all of the pictured ballplayers were Mexican. In fact, Mexican League teams were well known for contracting players from other Latin American countries as well as players from the United States.

The Mexican League took particular interest in players from the Negro Leagues. Another group of ballplayers who visited Mexico included the barnstorming City of David team consisting of members from a northern religious sect. Many of the photographed player and spectator subjects appear uncredited, unnamed in the library catalogue. With these caveats in mind, it’s all the more important to closely interrogate the available evidence and guard against making unsubstantiated suppositions of players’ national and cultural identities while at the same time pursuing the research goals of player and team identifications.

The pictured subjects are often presented without names; so many of these photographs lack other concrete attributions. While presumed dates do appear, many are five-year ranges that a closer examination suggests may be in error. The vast majority of photos are, again, geographically attributed to Mexico City. While that may be possible, it seems doubtful. Other descriptions and details regarding these artifacts are likewise scarce. In some cases, few informative notes are provided about the pictured locations, i.e. the ballparks.

Open-sourced research efforts via popular baseball history discussion forums (such as Net54baseball.com) and social media have proven especially helpful in identifying some of the individual ballplayers (Ray Dandridge and José María Fernández, to name a couple). For others, that quest unfortunately has fallen short.

To aid in the photographic sleuthing, just enough clues exist scattered about the colorful presentations of ballpark dust and milieu: flags of different shapes and sizes, uniforms and hats emblazoned with team initials or decorative emblems, and, in some cases, team names. Hopefully, this impressive archive will continue to develop in the future—and, with such development, further online cataloging information may become available.

Meanwhile, these photos provide clear, visual insights into early Mexican baseball, including the Mexican Baseball League (or Liga Mexicana de Béisbol). The photos date back at least as far as 1915 and continue on through the 1940s.

As such, this project is arranged into four installments to better manage this expansive timeframe and the significant archival finds that span a wide range of baseball subjects, from anonymous players, some of whom are mere boys and girls, to renowned Hall of Fame baseball legends. As it stands, these photographs represent a significant piece of history—a history of the international game that is baseball.

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Historic Images of Béisbol in Mexico: Early days through the 1920s

“Baseball has a shadowy history in Mexico,” writes William Beezley in Judas at the Jockey Club and Other Episodes of Porfirian Mexico, “with its origins as hazy and confused…as the origin of the sport in the United States.” Beezley accounts for the “apocryphal tale” that includes none other than Abner Doubleday and his fellow U.S. troops supposedly finding an outlet for recreation during an occupation of Mexico City from 1847 to 1848 and thus an opportunity to promote the novel game of baseball. The anecdote later developed a twist with a soldier who “captured General Antonio López de Santa Anna’s wooden leg as a war trophy” and decided to employ the souvenir as a bat in one of the games.

In reality, baseball appeared “first in Mexico City in the early 1880s” and elsewhere in Mexico in the early 1890s. The baseball revolution in Mexico (along with the real forthcoming revolution) came in fits and starts, beginning with some audacious American immigrants crossing into Mexico and bringing with them their foreign English language and cultural baggage. Per Beezley:

Doubleday’s heirs and the carriers of his legend were the Yankee employees of the Mexican National and the Mexican Central railroads, who organized company teams in the summer of 1882 to play scrimmage games. A challenge match pitted the National Baseball Club against the Telephone Company, Sunday morning, July 28. The railroad men, perhaps because of their greater experience, prevailed 31 to 11 before a crowd of foreigners, Mexicans, and some ladies…The rise of baseball’s popularity was facilitated [in 1888] the same year when D. S. Spaulding imported merchandise and Mexican curio shops began selling sporting goods in Mexico City… Prospective ball players could obtain the proper equipment from this time on without difficulty…Beginning in 1904, Mexican teams established two leagues, the Liga de Verano (the summer league) for amateurs and the Mexican Association of Baseball for semiprofessionals…It was [the team] El Record that won the 1906-1907 season and played against the visiting world champion Chicago White Sox.

Despite the chaos of the revolutionary years (1910 to 1916), including the assassination of Emiliano Zapata and another threatening revolt, the sport of baseball continued to enjoy success. For example, the year 1919 was the occasion for an epic, six-week-long international championship series in Mexico City that included a home team (Reforma), three Cuban teams, the All-Americans (comprised of major leaguers), and the American Giants (a team of black players).

After a “rebirth” in 1920, baseball thrived. Softball appeared during this time as well; soon girls and young women were playing on teams, too. By 1925 “the Mexican Baseball League was reestablished and continues to the present, recognized as an AAA minor league,” the only one of its kind outside the U.S.

A Hardball Times Update by Rachael McDaniel Goodbye for now.

Rieleros, or Railroaders, or Railroad Workers (ca. 1940-45, Mexico City)

Catalog Title: Beisbolistas realizan honores a la bandera durante una ceremonia

Echoes from that early documented game in July of 1882 with railroad workers playing ball resonate elsewhere in Mexican baseball history. A Rieleros team portrait may document an early version of the team known as the Rieleros of Aguascalientes.

According to the historical narrative authored by the present-day Rieleros franchise, the origin story reads more like a lively blend of embellished truth—although it certainly succeeds in constructing an evocative mythos for a brand of baseball literally scraped and pieced together by callused hands and ingenuity with raw materials. The legend goes that, as early as 1902 or 1903, itinerant American and Mexican railroad workers in the city of Aguascalientes united together to play games of baseball using little more than the wood poles of shovels for bats, the skilled craft of leatherworkers to fashion mitts from the very fabric lining the railroad cars, and mere rags moulded and wound into swattable spheres.

Los Rieleros have not been without team as well as league growing pains; setbacks include the destruction of Obrero Park, the municipality’s “Cathedral of local baseball,” during a fire in the summer of 1945. However, the current incarnation of the Rieleros and organized ball in Aguascalientes has been going strong since 1956 or 1975—or 1902-1903, for those credulous enough to indulge in team legend and marketing lore.

Warming up (ca. 1913, Mexico City)

Catalog Title: Pitcher realiza calentamiento durante un partido de beisbol

Many of the photographs of early baseball in Mexico leading up to and including the 1920s consist of simple poses, often stationary if not staged. Though no longer in its infancy per se, sports photography and its practitioners would require yet more time to develop the methods and technology to faithfully capture on-field action. Certainly the sport and region of coverage had some bearing, too, in terms of news organizations’ resources and decisions about where and when to dispatch trained photographers. The same may be said of noted photographer Agustín Casasola’s own successful press agency—with the vast majority of INAH’s baseball photographs originating from Casasola’s massive collection.

Nevertheless, these posed individual and team portraits offer vivid insights into particulars of Mexican baseball. For example, what was the apparent quality of uniforms, equipment, and grounds maintenance? What impact did those factors have on quality of play? Look at the ballpark milieu: How were spectators dressed, and what might that reveal about the socioeconomic dynamics of the game? Baseball in Mexico initially held appeal to the Mexican elite. But what evidence can be gleaned from these pictures about the fast-growing democratization of baseball in Mexico?

Tranvías, or Streetcars (1920, Mexico City; at Parque Unión, or Union Park)

Catalog Title: Beisbolistas del equipo Tranvias en el Parque Unión, retrato de grupo

Not unlike early baseball teams organized by various industries in the U.S. (i.e. shipyard, steel mill, and mining company teams), the team Tranvías was among several such baseball teams in Mexico. According to Puro Beisbol, around the time or shortly after the closure of Union Park, Tranvías played against the Compañía Mexicana de Luz y Fuerza (Light and Power) team in Mexico City with an inaugural game at the historic Parque Delta. Delta Park was an even better known “Cathedral of Baseball” and stadium for many Mexican Baseball League contests—games among professional teams that included the Veracruz Blues and Mexico City Red Devils.

Radio Baseball (ca. 1915, Mexico City)

Catalog Title: Equipo de beisbol Radio, retrato de grupo

Company sponsored teams took on various forms. From the professionals all the way down to youth leagues, business sponsors have long been an important part of baseball by providing funding for team uniforms, equipment, and, of course, ballparks.

Batter wearing stars (ca. 1914, Mexico City)

Catalog Title: Bateador espera lanzamiento

In the photo “Bateador espera lanzamiento,” the stars on the batter’s uniform suggest the player may be a member of one of the Cuban Stars teams. Two such traveling teams (the Cuban Stars, East and Cuban Stars, West) consisting of Cuban players operated approximately between the early 1900s and early 1930s.

José María Fernández, right, Cuban Stars (ca. 1920, Mexico City)

Catalog Title: Catcher y beisbolista en instalaciones deportivas, retrato

At left, an unidentified Cuban Stars player appears in a perhaps anxious pose that creates an ethereal photographic defect. On the right, catcher José María Fernández stands wearing his trusty chest protector. From 1916 to 1944, Fernández played for teams in both Cuba and the Negro Leagues. Referring to Baseball Reference, 1930 was at least one high point in his epic career: that year “Fernández played for the Chicago American Giants…hitting .373, 5th in the Negro National League behind the likes of Mule Suttles, Willie Wells, Jabbo Andrews and Frank Duncan.” His 24 seasons as a player in the Cuban Winter League are an “all-time record.”

“A” is for Almendares—and Méndez is for Almendares (ca. 1918, Mexico City)

Catalog Title: Equipo águilas de Veracruza en el campo Reforma, retrato de grupo

While the location of Reforma in Mexico City may be accurate, the attributed date could be off by at least a couple of years when considering some of the familiar faces and the time span of known player careers and team affiliations. The photograph may date more nearly to 1915 or earlier. Also, the “A” embroidered on the breast of the uniforms actually stands for Almendares, as in the celebrated Almendares team from Havana, Cuba—not the Águilas of Veracruz, as misidentified in the INAH catalog. The giveaway: that’s not a Mexican flag in the frame.

Among the pictured players, at least one star may be recognized with reasonable reliability. The scrawny looking player standing third from the left in back (the only standoffish or perhaps merely shy individual posing with his arms crossed) appears to be a young pitcher known as José de la Caridad Méndez. As Nick Wilson writes in Early Latino Ballplayers in the United States, Méndez was called other names, some more endearing (the Black Diamond) than others (i.e. “a questionable nickname” of “‘Congo’” given to a rookie Méndez by his Almandares teammates, many of whom were lighter skinned than their peer).

What at first appears as a meteoric (or rather streaky) career might on one level have more to do with often uneven and missing game and season statistics, just one of the unfortunate byproducts of segregation for players of color. For over the course of his career, Méndez accumulated a list of impressive accomplishments.

Méndez and Almendares once went on a tear against professional teams that included major league competition—namely, the Cincinnati Redlegs in 1908—when the young pitcher hurled a staggering total of 45 consecutive shutout innings across several series and games. Of an impressive exhibition performance against Christy Mathewson and The New York Giants, manager John McGraw compared Méndez to Mathewson as almost on par, adding that “sometimes I think he is better than Matty.” Later, while playing in the Negro Leagues, Méndez was the first manager for the long-running Kansas City Monarchs. During his tenure therein, he enlisted himself as a starting pitcher while playing against Hilldale for the first Negro League World Series—a ten-game series Méndez and the Monarchs won.

Unfortunately, Méndez went through some truly low points in both his baseball career and life. Nick Wilson provides a vivid biographic overview of the peaks and valleys Méndez experienced in a life that was all too short yet intensely lived. Not least among the tribulations would be a harrowing episode in 1915 when, during batting practice, Méndez inadvertently struck a batter in the chest near the heart with a fastball and “instantaneously” killed his own teammate. A sensational and publicly reported story, the event “may have had a jarring impact” on Méndez for years to come. In fact, between the ensuing years of 1916 through 1920, Méndez did not pitch professionally for any team in the Cuban Leagues.

However, Méndez remained an almost mythical figure in his native Cuba throughout his life. In 1927, he struggled with an illness that plagued him throughout much of his final season. By that season’s end, he had amassed a dominating 74-25 record in Cuba alone, while his career totals in the Negro Leagues remain incomplete. But the effects of the tuberculosis caught up with him. Méndez would die from broncopneumonia the following year.

Méndez was not inducted into the U.S. Hall of Fame until 2006—yet another remarkable player of color from the age of segregation who was given his due recognition by baseball only in death.

Unidentified Béisbolero Shows Appreciation (ca. 1920, Mexico City)

Catalog Title: Aquilino, beisbolista del equipo Agraria, retrato

Notes:

INAH and its web servers are presently undergoing maintenance. As such, links to INAH and INAH’s own hosted files of these photos may be unavailable.

Photo catalog titles appear exactly as they are listed in INAH’s archive, including spelling errors or omissions of diacritics. All photos D.R. Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, México.

References and Resources