Long Branch Cubans

Long Branch Cubans
Minor league affiliations
Previous classesD
LeagueAtlantic League (1914)
Previous leagues
New York–New Jersey League (1913)
Minor league titles
League titles 1913
Team data
Previous names
  • Long Branch Cubans (1913–16)
  • Newark Cubans (1914, first half)
    Jersey City Cubans (1916, first half)

The Long Branch Cubans (also known as the Newark Cubans and the Jersey City Cubans) were a professional baseball team that played from 1913 to 1916. It was the first U.S. minor league baseball team composed almost entirely of Cubans.[1] Several players, including Dolf Luque and Mike González, went on to play in the major leagues. The Cubans played in Long Branch, New Jersey from 1913 to 1915, except for the first half of the 1914 season, when they played in Newark, New Jersey. In 1916, they started the season playing in Jersey City, New Jersey as the "Jersey City Cubans." Later that summer, they moved their home games to Poughkeepsie, New York, where they were usually referred to as the "Long Branch Cubans."[2] In late July 1916 they briefly moved to Harlem and finally to Madison, New Jersey in August.[3]

From 1913 to 1914, the Cubans played minor league baseball in the Class D New York–New Jersey League, which in 1914 was renamed as the Atlantic League. In accordance with organized baseball's practice of racial segregation, all of the team's players were white.[4] The league folded at the end of the 1914 season, and from 1915 to 1916, the Cubans played independent baseball outside of the organized minor leagues. The 1915 and 1916 teams competed during part of the season in a new, independent Atlantic League, representing Long Branch in 1915 and Poughkeepsie in 1916. When they played in Madison in August 1916, they were competing in the Tri-County League, a short-season, independent professional league that featured both all-white and all-black teams.[2][3] Because they frequently played against Negro league teams and some of the players may have been multiracial, baseball historians and statistical databases have classified the 1915–16 independent teams as part of Negro league baseball.[5]

Sunday baseball was not yet legal under blue laws in New York City, so major league teams often traveled to the seaside resort community of Long Branch to play Sunday games against the Cubans. According to research by David Skinner, the Cubans' record in these games was 10–24.[6]

  1. ^ Figueredo 2003, p. 107.
  2. ^ a b McKenna, Brian (June 25, 2011). "The Henriquez Long Branch Cubans". BaseballHistoryBlog.com. Archived from the original on April 13, 2013. Retrieved March 17, 2012.
  3. ^ a b Ashwill, Gary (May 11, 2006). "1916 Tri-County League, New Jersey". Agate Type. Retrieved April 6, 2012.
  4. ^ González Echevarría 1999, pp. 140–141.
  5. ^ "Jersey City/Poughkeepsie Cubans". Seamheads.com Negro Leagues Database. Retrieved March 17, 2012.
  6. ^ Ashwill, Gary (May 5, 2009). "The Henriquez Brothers". Agate Type. Retrieved April 6, 2012.