WATCH: UC Research Examines Cubans, Class Perception and Cincinnati Baseball

The Cincinnati Reds are hoping to strike gold on the field and with the fans with rookie and Cuban defector Aroldis Chapman’s 100-mile-per-hour fastball. Looking back on the history of the Reds regarding race and ballplayers, the team was among the first in the major leagues to sign Cuban players more than a century ago – in an era when African-American ballplayers were still banned from playing professional baseball.

University of Cincinnati sports researcher Kevin Grace, head of UC’s Archives and Rare Books Library and adjunct assistant professor for the College of Education, Criminal Justice, and Human Services (CECH) and the University Honors Program, presents his research “Cubans, Class Perception and Cincinnati Baseball” at the Baseball in Literature and Culture Conference on Friday, March 26, at Middle Tennessee State University.

In 1911 when Cincinnati Reds President Garry Herrmann signed two Cuban ballplayers – Armando Marsans and Rafael Almeida — it was with an acute awareness of local sentiment about race and class. The Reds were playing baseball in the working-class neighborhood of the West End and Grace says Cincinnati was perceived as a southern city with conservative, southern values regarding race and ethnicity.

Grace says it was Herrmann’s national prominence that paved the way for Cubans in baseball. He also promoted the ballplayers as “pure as Castilian soap,” emphasizing they were light-skinned amid some angry fan sentiment about signing ‘un-American’ ballplayers. “They were also promoted as being of the upper class in Cuba,” says Grace.

The hot-tempered pitcher Adolfo Luque, hired by the Reds in the 1920s, was more prone to legal troubles and controversy with fans and fellow players, and at one time made headlines for bringing a gun to the ballpark. “There was one comment that they wouldn’t be able to find a ball-cap big enough to fit his oversized head, and that sort of reflected the opinion he had of himself,” Grace says. “He was hot-tempered and that did promote a negative stereotype about Latino ballplayers for decades to come.”

Grace says Cincinnati’s negative sentiment toward Latino ballplayers was finally tempered in the 1960s by the affable Tony Perez. “He was friendly enough, he was productive enough and he was a positive influence in the clubhouse, so the fans loved somebody like that,” Grace says. “He also swayed fan sentiment that Cubans were politically desirable because they had escaped Castro’s Cuba, so in essence, he was leaving Cuba to become an American, which resonates pretty highly with sports fans.”

And, it’s a history that has paved the way for welcoming Cuban defector Aroldis Chapman to the 2010 Cincinnati Reds ball team. “Over the past century, our perceptions of the proper background of ballplayers have shifted from race and social class to what we consider today as politically acceptable,” Grace says. “And Chapman fits that bill very well.”

A good part of the historical research of Grace’s paper came from The Urban Studies Collection, which is housed in UC’s Archives and Rare Books Library. The collection reflects the development of the city in 20th and 21st century America, including the role of sports and leisure and the politics, economics and sociology of ballpark and arena construction.

Grace has more than 30 years of background researching the social history of sports, ranging from popularity and marketing to racism, corruption, violence, gender and mass media. He has authored a number of books on Cincinnati’s history and the sports history of the Queen City, including “The Cincinnati Reds: 1900-1950” (Arcadia Publishing, 2005) and “The Cincinnati Reds: 1950-1985” (Arcadia Publishing, 2004).

The Cincinnati Reds were first to

• Travel by airplane
• Hold the first modern night game in the major leagues
• Have a considerable influence on the development of the World Series
• Make Opening Day a Cincinnati community celebration