Papa Joe Cambria
Player #165: Joseph C. "Joe" Cambria Part 1. "Papa Joe" (born Carlo Cambria) was an American professional baseball scout and executive who was a pioneer in recruiting Latin American players. From 1929 through 1940, he owned several Minor League Baseball teams, as well as the Negro league Baltimore Black Sox. He is best known, however, for his work as a scout for Major League Baseball, especially for his work in Cuba. From the mid-1930s until his death in 1962, he recruited hundreds of Cuban players for the Washington Senators and Minnesota Twins. Cambria was described as the first of many scouts who searched Latin America for inexpensive recruits for their respective ball clubs.
George Washington Case's association with the Washington Senators was the product of a business relationship which had existed between Clark Griffith and a Baltimore laundryman named Joe Cambria since 1934. Originally from Messina, Italy, but brought to America around 1890 when he was just three months old, Cambria was to become the Bobo Newsom of baseball club owners. Raised in Boston, his baseball travels began in 1910 as an outfielder with Newport of the Rhode Island State League. He hung on to a career as a minor-leaguer until 1916, when he fractured his leg. Cambra nevertheless did serve in World War I and, after the war, got into the laundry business, once sponsoring a boys team on which Clark Griffith's young nephew, Calvin, played.
For ten years beginning in the late twenties, Joe Cambria furthered his career as a nomadic minor-league operator. He successively bought clubs in various leagues in outposts like Hagerstown (Blue Ridge League); Youngstown (Middle Atlantic League); Albany (International League); Harrisburg (New York-Penn. League); Salisbury, Maryland (Eastern Shore League); St. Augustine (Florida State); and Greenville (Sally League).
In 1934, Cambria ran into some difficulty in meeting his payroll. It was then that he introduced himself to Clark Griffith for the first time. Needing $1,500 to stay afloat, Cambria was able to coax the sum out of the Old Fox, who would over the years reap a return worth many times his initial investment. At first, Cambria began beating the bushes for Griffith as a scout on a part-time basis only. He had no license to spend Griff's money, so as a result, he did his bird-dogging in locales less frequented by other scouts, generally in the lower minor leagues.
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