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A brilliant defensive outfielder who briefly starred with the
Cincinnati Reds, Armando Marsáns was the first Cuban
player to make an impact in the major leagues. Dubbed "an aristocrat
by birth, but a big league outfielder by choice," he was among
baseball's top stars before his career was derailed by an ill-fated
attempt to challenge the reserve clause. Marsáns
was known for his aggressive base running and was often praised for
stretching singles into doubles and doubles into triples. "There is
not a more intelligent player in the game than Marsans,
who seems to have an uncanny knack of knowing what to do and when to do
it," wrote one reporter. He was also versatile. As a youngster in Cuba, Marsáns had learned to play all nine positions, and
before he was through in the majors he played everywhere but pitcher and
catcher.
The son of a well-to-do Havana merchant, Armando
Marsáns was born in Matanzas, Cuba,
on October 3, 1887. His family, like many wealthy Cubans at the time,
moved to New York City
in 1898 to escape the Spanish-American War. Eleven-year-old Armando took
to baseball, playing regularly in Central Park.
When his family returned to Cuba
after a year and a half, the love of the game came back to Cuba with
him. In 1905 Armando signed with Almendares, a
powerful team in the professional Cuban Winter League. Marsáns and another promising youngster, Rafael Almeida,
combined to lead the team to the pennant. In 1907 the team won another
title, defeating a Fé team that included Negro
League stars Rube Foster, Pete Hill, Charlie Grant, and Bill Monroe.
In 1908 the Cincinnati Reds visited Cuba for a series of exhibition
games against the best teams on the island. Marsáns'
Almendares club won four of its five games
against the Reds, thanks mostly to pitcher José Méndez,
but also with contributions from Marsáns, who
scored the only run in a 1-0 victory on November 13, 1908. By that time Marsáns and Almeida both were playing in the US minor leagues, signing with New Britain of the
Connecticut State League for the 1908 season. Marsáns
was an outstanding player for New
Britain, batting .285 over four seasons there.
In June 1911 the Cincinnati Reds purchased his and Almeida's contracts on
the recommendation of Reds secretary Frank Bancroft, who remembered the
Cuban pair as a result of his annual exhibition trips to the island
nation. At the time, the sale prices were reported as $2,500 for Marsáns and $3,500 for Almeida. During Marsáns' later legal battles with the Reds, owner
Garry Herrmann claimed that he paid $6,000 for Marsáns
alone.
Marsáns and Almeida were the first Cubans to
reach the majors since 1873, and there were whispers around baseball that
they had some "Negro" blood. The Reds refuted this at length,
calling Marsáns and Almeida "two of the
purest bars of Castilian soap ever floated to these shores," and
insisting that they were entirely of European descent. In fact that was
probably true, as the surname Marsáns is of Catalán rather than Spanish origin. In the late 19th
century about 8,000 people--Marsáns' family
likely among them--emigrated from Catalonia
to Cuba.
Racial mixing was fairly uncommon among the light-skinned catalanes, who ranked at the top of Cuba's
skin color-based caste system.
Whatever their racial background, Marsáns and
Almeida got along well with their new teammates. "The gentlemanly
deportment and fast work on the field of these boys have already made
them popular with other members of the Reds," the Cincinnati Enquirer reported on
July 1, before the pair had even gotten into a game. Only about 15,000
Cubans lived in the United States
in 1911, but the Reds acquired the Cuban players in part because,
according to the Enquirer, they were "figuring on Marsáns and Almeida being good drawing cards in New York and Philadelphia,
where there are thousands of Cubans." Fans back in Cuba,
meanwhile, were so enthusiastic that Marsáns
and Almeida even had their own media escort. Victor Muńoz,
sports editor of El Mundo in Havana, accompanied
the Reds everywhere they went, much as the Japanese media followed Hideo Nomo and Ichiro Suzuki nearly a century later.
On July 4, 1911, in the midst of one of the biggest heat waves ever to
hit the Midwest, Marsáns and Almeida finally
made their debuts against the Cubs at Chicago's
West Side Park. The heat was so sweltering
that it caused 27 deaths in Chicago
that day, and with the Reds comfortably ahead in the first game of a
doubleheader, Marsáns entered as a defensive
replacement for exhausted right fielder Mike Mitchell. He went 1 for 2,
and to the Enquirer's Jack Ryder he "looked good at the bat
and fast on his feet." Marsáns spent the
rest of the 1911 season as the Reds' fourth outfielder.
Though there is no record of what their personal relationship was like, Marsáns and Almeida became inseparable in the
public's eye after spending nearly a decade as teammates with Almendares, New Britain,
and Cincinnati.
But Almeida failed to impress the Reds either at bat or in the field and
was dispatched to the minors after three years on the bench. Marsáns, meanwhile, became one of the brightest young
stars in the National League, and one of the fastest. In 1912, his first
full season, his .317 batting average and 35 stolen bases both ranked in
the NL's top ten. In 1913 he increased his stolen bases to 37 while
batting .297, 35 points above the league average.
Marsáns made a strong impression on his first
major league manager, Clark Griffith, who left after the 1911 season to
take over the Washington Senators. In the spring of 1912 Griffith offered the Reds $5,000 for Marsáns but was refused. Griffith never did obtain Marsáns' services, but he did develop an affinity for
Cuban players unparalleled in baseball history. During Griffith's
44 years in charge of the Washington
club, 63 Cubans debuted in the majors--35 of them with the Senators.
A genteel man who spoke and wrote near-flawless English, Marsáns was the antithesis of what later became the
Latin American baseball stereotype. He reportedly attended college in the
United States,
though that is not confirmed. Still, American sportswriters always
emphasized that he was "of wealthy parentage and aristocratic
stock." In 1912 the Philadelphia Inquirer noted that Marsáns and Almeida "are both large land owners
in Cuba and have independent incomes, and the fact that they continue to
be ball players instead of prominent men of affairs on the island is
simply because that is what they prefer to be." Marsáns
spent his off-seasons managing a tobacco factory that he owned in Havana, and was well-liked enough by fans in Cincinnati to open
a successful cigar store there. By 1914 his annual baseball earnings were
$4,400, more than double what he had earned as a rookie.
Though almost universally well-liked, Marsáns
was known for being headstrong and temperamental. According to a friend,
"there is really only one man who is his master, and who can reason
and talk to him, and that man is his father." In 1914 Marsáns' quick temper led to the biggest scandal of
his career. In June he got into a heated argument with his manager, Buck
Herzog, who "said a number of things not at all to the liking of the
classy outfielder." Herzog suspended Marsáns, and Marsáns demanded to be traded, a request that was
refused by Herrmann. Marsáns responded by
jumping his contract with Cincinnati and leaving for St. Louis, where he
was wined and dined by the owners of the outlaw Federal League franchise.
Marsáns was offered a three-year, $21,000
contract by the Feds, which he accepted after giving the Reds 10 days'
notice, the same notice a ball club was required to give before
terminating a contract with a player. Cincinnati immediately filed a lawsuit
in, ironically, Federal Court, claiming that its "property" had
been jeopardized. After Marsáns had played only
nine games with St. Louis,
the court issued an injunction barring him from playing in the Federal
League pending the outcome of trial.
The Reds also retaliated by impounding the clothing and baseball
equipment Marsáns had left in his locker in Cincinnati. Because
Marsáns owned a cigar shop there, the club also
tried to appeal to his business interests. "Marsans
is very enthusiastic about his cigar business, and holds it close to his
heart," a correspondent wrote to Herrmann. "If he can be made
to realize that his actions with the Cincinnati Baseball Club will not
help the sale of his cigars, I am sure that he will act
differently."
Marsáns' case, along with that of Hal Chase,
became a cause célčbre for supporters of the Federal League. Baseball
Magazine dubbed it "the sensational Marsans
case, one of the series of recent legal battles which have thrown the
baseball world into an upheaval, and which threaten to wreck the entire
game." Unable to play while the two sides battled in court, Marsáns could do little but return to Havana, where he
spent his days shark fishing in the bay. "We are not restraining Marsans and Chase from playing, but trying to get
them to play," Herrmann insisted. "It is the Federal League
that is keeping them from playing, if any one is." In a bizarre
twist, Marsáns' younger brother Francisco
showed up in Cincinnati
in September 1914, apologized to the Reds for any trouble Armando had caused
them, and offered his own services to replace Armando in the outfield.
Not surprisingly, the team declined.
Because the National Commission had threatened to ban any player who
competed against Marsáns, he was forced to play
the 1914-15 Cuban Winter League season under the assumed name "Mendromedo." In February 1915, with Marsáns still on the sidelines, his friend John
McGraw visited him in Cuba,
offering to trade for him if he would return to the NL with the Giants.
But Marsáns would have none of it. He believed
that the press, and New York
writers in particular, treated him unfairly, saying they "always
thought it funny to poke jokes at me." Finally, on August 19, 1915,
a federal judge in St. Louis
set aside Herrmann's injunction, ruling that Marsáns
could play in the Federal League until the case was decided in appeals
court. Marsáns returned to the Terriers the
next day, and the team finished the season only percentage points out of
first place.
But the legal battles had ruined Marsáns'
career. After the Federal League folded his contract was assigned to the
St. Louis Browns, but he was no longer the player he had been after being
out of the majors for nearly two years. Disappointed with his
performance, the Browns traded him to the Yankees for Lee Magee on July
15, 1917. Baseball Magazine predicted that going to New York would
revitalize Marsáns, as he was "a brilliant
outfielder, once a .300 hitter and even now a most dangerous man on the
bases." But Marsáns had always been injury
prone, and soon after reporting to the Yankees he suffered a broken leg
that ended his season. In 1918, at age 30, Marsans
gave it one more try with the Yankees but batted only .236 in what turned
out to be his final major league season.
In 1923, after a four-year absence from American baseball, Marsáns returned to bat .319 in a brief minor league
stint with Louisville.
Also in 1923, he briefly joined Martín Dihigo on the Cuban Stars of the Eastern Colored
League, becoming the first player to play in both the major leagues and
the formally organized Negro Leagues. In 1924, his last season in the
United States, Marsáns became the first Cuban
manager in the minor leagues, serving as player-manager of the Elmira
Colonels in the New York-Penn League. He batted .280 in his farewell to
American baseball. Marsáns played a few more
winters in Cuba
before retiring there, too, after the 1927-28 season.
In all, Marsáns played on 10 pennant-winning
teams in his 21 seasons in the Cuban Winter League, posting a lifetime
average there of .261 in 455 games. He twice led the notorious pitchers'
circuit in runs scored, and in 1913 won the batting title with a .400
average. He also led the league in stolen bases three times. Playing most
of his career in spacious Almendares Park,
he hit only two lifetime home runs in 1,632 at
bats. Marsáns also was a longtime manager in
the league, leading Orientales to the
championship as player-manager in 1917. In the 1940s he managed Marianao, where his players included Ray Dandridge,
future batting champion Roberto Ávila, and rookie outfielder Orestes
"Minnie" Mińoso. He also managed Tampico in the
Mexican League from 1945-47, winning championships in 1945 and 1946.
On July 26, 1939, Marsáns became one of the
first ten men inducted into the Cuban Baseball Hall of Fame. The
inductees were honored with a bronze plaque placed at La Tropical stadium
in Havana,
where it still stands today. Little is known of Marsáns'
post-baseball life. His reaction to the Cuban Revolution of 1959 is
unknown, but since the rebellion's goal was to overthrow the wealthy
aristocracy to which Marsáns belonged, it's
hard to imagine him supporting the revolutionaries. Marsáns
died in Havana
a little over a year after Fidel Castro's takeover, on September 3, 1960.
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