Plaque Unveiled in Cuba Honoring African-American Baseball Athletes

A plaque dedicated to African-American baseball athletes who played for the Santa Clara Leopards team was unveiled today here, in front of the grounds of the former La Boulanger Park in this central Cuban city.

The Santa Clara Leopards were a franchise created in 1922 to expand the Cuban League to other cities on the Island. Their performance over nearly two decades in the Caribbean's premier professional baseball tournament led them to win the championship on four occasions.

The unveiling was part of the scientific conference and related events "Identity, Society and Culture on the Shared History of Baseball in Cuba, the Caribbean and the United States," which concluded this Friday in this city, the capital of the central Cuban province of Villa Clara.

Félix Julio Alfonso, a prominent Cuban historian and organizer of the event, told Prensa Latina that this constituted a tribute to the North American Black baseball players who came to play in Cuba, specifically in Santa Clara, in the 1920s and 1930s.

"Those players turned the Santa Clara Leopardos team into the most competitive team in the Cuban National Baseball Series of those years. Several of those players are recognized in the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, and in the Negro Leagues Hall of Fame as well," emphasized Félix Julio.

"The list includes more than twenty players, among whom are Leoy [Satchel] Paige, Oscar Charleston, Willie Wells, Hilton Smith, and in a special way John 'Pop' Taylor, whose daughter Maureen Taylor came here today to unveil the work, which will remain as a perennial homage to those Latino and North American players," he highlighted.

He added that this plaque is the only one of its kind in Cuba which recognizes the legacy of those African-American players who, in that era, could not participate in the Major League tournament and yet found in Cuba a natural space to develop their sports careers.

Sculptor Mario Fabelo noted, for his part, that the work is made of bronze, measuring eighty by seventy-five centimeters, and is a creation by him and the visual artists Juan Carlos Pérez and Amauri Mederos. It is based on a remembrance of how the stadium was constructed in those years, replacing wooden patches with a more enduring material like reinforced concrete.