México vs. Cuba. Serie Mundial Amateur. (1943) from Memoria de Cuba on Vimeo.
Newsreel footage of the 1943 Amateur World Series played at Estadio La Tropical between Cuba, Mexico, the Dominican Republic and Panama. These images show a game between Cuba and Mexico. Cuba won the Series with a 9-3 record.
Former Cuban League star Vicente Lopez died on July 16 in Miami. He was 83.
Here's the Spanish-language obituary that ran in Diario Las Americas.
Lopez was elected to the Cuban Baseball Hall of Fame in 1997. In 10 Cuban League seasons with Almendares, Cienfuegos, Habana and Marianao, he compiled a 21-16 record with a 3.73 ERA. His best season coming during the 1950-51 season when he led the league with a .700 winning percentage (7-3) while notching a 2.64 ERA with Almendares.
Born in Cotorro, in the province of Havana in 1927, Lopez was 2-0 with a 2.37 ERA in three Caribbean World Series (1949, 1950 and '57).
A career minor leaguer, Lopez went 8-11 with a 2.71 ERA for the 1952 Havana Cubans and played two seasons with the Havana Sugar Kings.
But he began is professional career in the United States playing against the Havana Cubans, pitching for the Miami Sun Sox of the Florida International League in 1949. That season he won the inaugural game at Miami Stadium, upsetting the perennial pennant winning Cubans, 6-1.
"The only run they got off me, they got with two outs in the ninth inning," Lopez told me during an interview in 2000. "I never thought the stadium would be filled because Miami was such a small town at that time. There were fans on the field [behind roped-off areas] down the right-field and left-field lines."
Lopez went 18-9 and 20-6 in his two seasons with the Sun Sox but never made it out of the Brooklyn Dodgers' farm system to reach the majors.
June 30: On this date in 1915, Roberto Ortiz was born in Camaguay, Cuba.
The 6-foot-4 first baseman, El Gigante, "The Giant" as he was known in Cuba, played six major-league seasons -- mostly with the Washington Senators -- between 1941-50.
He was a star for Almendares in the Cuban League, so much so he was the subject of a 1952 movie, Honor y Gloria: La Vida de Roberto Ortiz, starring Ortiz as himself.
It's pretty cheesy, but it does have brief footage from actualy Cuban League games.
Ortiz died in Miami on Sept. 15, 1971 at the age of 56.
A set of Cuban baseball cards from the 1920s has been garnering a lot of attention in recent days.
The cards, a complete set of the 1924-25 Aguilitas Segundas series, are part of a large collection (900 cards) that featured celebrities from sports and entertainment fields. The set includes 44 players from the Cuban League, including some of the greatest Cuban and Negro league players.
Among them: Cristobal Torriente, Armando Marsans, Pop Lloyd, Jose Mendez, Adolfo Luque, Oscar Charleston, Alejandro Oms, Biz Mackey and Dick Lundy.
Here's a complete list courtesy of Cubanball.com.
The set sold for $41,434.80 on SPC Auctions.
It was featured in The Miami Herald and in a cool segment on NPR with baseball historian Peter Bjarkman.
The author of the first no-hitter thrown at El Gran Stadium de la Habana has died.
Rogelio "Limonar" Martinez died Monday after a fall at his home in Connecticut. He was 91. Here's the Spanish-language story that ran in Miami's El Nuevo Herald.
A star of Cuba's amateur ranks, Martinez pitched for Almendares, Matanzas, Marianao (left) and Habana in the professional Cuban League.
With Marianao, Martinez threw a no-hitter against Almendares on Feb. 15, 1950. According to Jorge Figueredo's Cuban Baseball: A Statistical History, 1878-1961, Martinez retired the first 21 batters he faced, but he lost the perfect game when he hit Roberto Ortiz with a pitch to open the eighth inning.
For the accomplishment, Bohemia magazine gave Martinez a $1,500 check.
Aside from the amateur ranks, Martinez's greatest success came with the Florida International Leagues' Havana Cubans, with whom he went 9-4 with a 1.90 ERA (1957), 19-9 with a 1.86 ERA (1949) and 10-4 with a 1.72 ERA (1950).
He also pitched one season with the Washington Senators in 1950.
Cuba will be well represented in the inaugural class of the Latino Baseball Hall of Fame.
Nine of the 25 to be inducted on May 29 at the Altos de Chavon Amphitheatre in Casa de Campo in the Dominican Republic will be Cuban.
All the inductees will be divided into three groups -- Cooperstown Historic, Veterans Committee (active before 1959) and Permanent Induction Committee (active after 1959). Here's the breakdown of the Cuban inductees:
Cooperstown Historic
Atanasio "Tony" Pérez, first baseman for the Cincinnati Reds "Big Red Machine" teams of the 1970s. He hit 379 home runs with 1,652 RBI in 23 major league seasons with Cincinnati, Montreal, Boston and Philadelphia before his induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.
Martín Dihigo, a versatile -- he excelled at nearly every position -- star of the Cuban League and Negro Leagues who compiled a 104-56 record in 18 seasons in Cuba pitching for Habana, Marianao Almendares, Santa Clara and Cienfuegos and was the first Cuban-born inductee at Cooperstown. 
Jose de la Caridad Méndez, a Cuban League and Negro Leagues star who compiled a 76-28 record in 13 seasons in Cuba, pitching for Almendares, Santa Clara and Matanzas. He was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame by a special election of Negro League players in 2006.
Cristóbal Torriente, perhaps the Cuban greatest position player of the first half of the 20th Century. The power-hitting outfielder was known as "The Cuban Babe Ruth," and was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame by a special election of Negro League players in 2006.
Alejandro Pompez, a Cuban-American who became one of the most influential figures in the Negro Leagues as owner of the New York Cuban Stars. A Harlem numbers runner with ties to gangster Dutch Schultz, Pompez was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame by a special election of Negro League players in 2006.
Rafael "Felo" Ramirez, the Spanish-language radio voice of the Florida Marlins, has called baseball games in Latin American since 1945, working many years with Buck Canel on the Cavalcade of Sports. Ramirez won the Ford Frick Award in 2001.Veterans Committee
Orestes "Minnie" Miñoso, the former Cleveland Indians and Chicago White Sox all-star batted .298 and stole 205 bases in 17 major league seasons. He was also a star in the Negro Leagues with the New York Cubans and in the Cuban League with Marianao.
Bobby Maduro (Special Award for Outstanding Latino Baseball Personality) was the owner of the Havana Sugar Kings of the International League and Cienfuegos of the Cuban League. He was part of the corporation that built the Gran Stadium of Havana.Permanent Induction Committee
Camilo Pascual, a two-time 20-game winner who deserved better than his 4-games-above .500 174-170 record in 18 major-league seasons, mostly with the Washington Senators and Minnesota Twins.
Happy birthday, Willie Mays. On this date (May 6) in 1931, Hall of Famer Willie Howard Mays was born.
We're used to seeing photos of Mays with the Giants or Mets or even the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro Leagues.
But you might not be as used to seeing Mays wearing an Almendares uniform in the Cuban League.
He was on the Almendares roster for the 1950-51 season.
But he he never played because of a leg injury.
