All Cubans

History

Abel Linares organized the team, with Tinti Molina as field manager. The 1899 tour was sponsored by former player and entrepreneur Alfred Lawson. Linares later called the tour calamitous, recalling that he arrived in New York in June 1899 with $25 and 12 players. So little money was earned that at the tour's end, Linares and two players were stranded in New York until funds arrived from Havana. The team's first recorded game, on July 28, 1899, was a 12–4 victory over a white semi-pro team in Weehawken, New Jersey. Three days later, 1,800 spectators saw them lose 8–5 to the West New York Field Club. The All Cubans then beat Mountain AC 9–3 before losing 14–4 to a Jersey City team. Their most famous 1899 games came in August against the Cuban X-Giants, a premier Negro league team with no actual Cuban players. Newspapers described it as a challenge; the New York Sun reported that the All Cubans protested against the X-Giants posing as representatives of Cuba. The X-Giants won both games in Hoboken, New Jersey, 7–3 and 11–6. This series preceded the X-Giants' tour of Cuba the following year, the first major tour of Cuba by an American Negro league team. The 1899 All Cubans were Cuban criollos and mestizos, but the 1902–05 teams included afro-cuban black players. In 1903, reports indicated the team encountered trouble in Florida because it carried three black players. These later teams continued to play successfully against independent white semi-pro teams and Negro league teams such as the Cuban X-Giants and the Philadelphia Giants.