José Méndez

Cuban-born baseball player

• Born: March 19, 1887
• Birthplace: Cárdenas, Matanzas, Cuba
• Died: October 31, 1928
• Place of death: Havana, Cuba

Known in his native Cuba as El Diamante Negro (the Black Diamond), Méndez’s pitching prowess in the Cuban League made him a legend in his homeland. He also was a pitcher, shortstop, and manager in the American Negro Leagues.

Early Life

José de la Caridad Méndez, better known as José Méndez (hoh-ZAY MEHN-dehz), was born in Cárdenas, Matanzas, Cuba, in 1887. In 1907, an official of the Almendares Blues, a team in the Cuban League, recruited Méndez.

In January, 1908, Méndez, a right-handed pitcher with a rising fastball and a snapping curve, made his professional debut, compiling a record of fifteen wins against six losses and leading the Almendares Blues to capture the league’s pennant during his first season with the team. In the summer of 1908, Méndez played his first game in the American Negro Leagues, pitching for the Brooklyn Royal Giants.

Life’s Work

Méndez became a baseball legend as the result of his performance in the fall of 1908, when the Cincinnati Reds competed against Cuban League teams in Havana. Méndez dominated the Reds, pitching twenty-five consecutive scoreless innings in three appearances. In three of his games with the Reds, Méndez allowed no runs and racked up twenty-four strikeouts. His dominance continued during the following six seasons, in which he led the Cuban League in wins three times and had win-loss records of 15-6, 7-0, 11-2, 9-5, 1-4, and 10-0, consecutively. His team, the Almendares Blues, won pennants in three of these six years. Méndez pitched equally well when other American Major League teams, such as the Detroit Tigers, Philadelphia Athletics, and Brooklyn Dodgers, visited Havana and when the Cuban League played in the United States during the summers of 1909, 1911, and 1912.

In 1913, Ira Thomas, a catcher with the Philadelphia Athletics, wrote an article for Baseball Magazine in which he described Méndez as “a remarkable man” and a pitcher who “ranks with the best in the game,” displaying “terrific speed, great control” and “excellent judgment.” Thomas added that if Méndez “were a white man [he] would command a good position on any Major League club in the circuits.”

From 1912 to 1916, Méndez played for All-Nations, an American team founded by the Hopkins Brothers, who owned sporting goods stores. All-Nations was named for its racially mixed roster, which included black, white, Japanese, Hawaiian, Native American, and Latin American players. The team, based out of Kansas City, Kansas, and Des Moines, Iowa, toured the Midwest from 1912 to 1918. One day, however, the team’s manager ran off after he had stolen the daily gate proceeds.

J. L. Wilkinson, one of the team’s players, replaced him as manager and later became the team’s owner. Wilkinson transported the team to its games in a $25,000 Pullman car, which held portable bleachers that would be set up for the games. He did not pay for hotel rooms but arranged for his players to sleep in tents that were set up on the playing fields.

In late 1914, Méndez developed trouble with his arm. An able fielder, he was moved to shortstop for All-Nations and only pitched occasionally. After his stint with All-Nations, he played for the Chicago American Giants (1918) and the Detroit Stars (1919).

In 1920, Méndez signed on with a new professional baseball league, the Negro National League, becoming a player and manager with Wilkinson’s Kansas City Monarchs. While with the Monarchs, he divided his time between pitching and playing shortstop, and his management led the Monarchs to win pennants in 1923, 1924, and 1925. He eventually was able to resume pitching, although his pitching load was lighter than it had been during his prime years, from 1908 to 1914.

From 1923 through 1926, Méndez’s win-loss records were 12-4, 4-0, 2-0, and 3-1, consecutively. His performance was particularly impressive during the first Negro LeagueWorld Series in 1924, when the Monarchs competed against the Hilldale Club of the Eastern Colored League. Méndez pitched in four games, with a shutout victory in the deciding final game.

During the winters, Méndez returned to his homeland to play for the Cuban League. He was the pitcher for the Santa Clara Leopards, considered the most dominant team in the history of Cuban baseball, from 1923 to 1924. He won his last game in Cuba on January 21, 1927. On October 31, 1928, Méndez died in Havana at the age of forty-one.

Significance

José Méndez pitched year-round in the Cuban Winter Leagues and in the U.S. Negro Leagues in the summer. In exhibition games, he defeated Hall of Famer Eddie Plank and won one of two games against legend Christy Mathewson. His career win-loss record in the Cuban League was 76-28, and he ranks first in all-time career winning percentage with .731.

Méndez was one of the first players elected to the Cuban Baseball Hall of Fame in 1939; in 2006, he was elected to the U.S. National Baseball Hall of Fame. He is generally considered to be one of the greatest Cuban ballplayers who did not play in the American major leagues.

Bibliography

Echevarría González, Roberto. The Pride of Havana: A History of Cuban Baseball. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. This definitive cultural history of Cuban baseball from 1860 to the late twentieth century includes numerous references to Méndez.

Holway, John B. The Complete Book of Baseball’s Negro Leagues: The Other Half of Baseball History. Fern Park, Fla.: Hastings House, 2001. Holway provides a complete statistical accounting of the leagues’ accomplishments, with a brief overview of statistics attained by African American players from 1859 to 1882 and an annual accounting for subsequent years through 1948, the year after Jackie Robinson broke the “color barrier” by entering the major leagues.