Cuba (1864-1908): The Origins of Modern Baseball

[dbussell12]

Link: https://davidbussellarchive.substack...gins-of-modern

I've just published a deep historical text that goes into the fabric of what constitutes modern baseball, how, and why; determined that what we consider to be the contemporary nature of baseball originates in Cuba at the hands of a college student who returns from the American South in the middle of the Civil War and introduces baseball to an emerging Cuban nation -- locked in a decades long struggle for sovereignty with the Spanish colonial government.

From and through this 50 year period emerges a radically integrated professional baseball league which regularly proves itself capable of defeating the best the American circuit has to offer, so much so that Ban Johnson attempts to prevent American teams from participating in exhibitions with the Cuban integrated league.

Rube Foster, founder of the Negro Leagues in America in the 1920's, has a formative experience in this league; notably with the Habana Club -- the founding club of the Cuban professional circuit in the 1800's; the first to integrate at the turn of the 20th century. In the radical political atmosphere of abolitionist, nationally sovereign and liberated Cuba, you have the emergence of a truly modern league: one in which some of the greatest Black American baseball players of all time like Pop Lloyd and Oscar Charleston play alongside the best Cuba has to offer across racial and ethnic lines.

In writing this text, it was my work to reclaim this critical aspect of baseball history and restore Cuba to its fundamental historical position as the cradle of baseball's birth into modernity.

I hope you enjoy if you choose to read; would love to hear your thoughts.

My best,

David