Pair of printed broadsides, one in Spanish and one in English, advertising a game between the Cuban players of Almendares and Havana and a U.S. team drawn from the occupying Seventh Army Corps for March 20, 1899. Each 8.75" x 6.15", some chipping, creases, and loss; unrestored, quite fragile, though intact; with accompanying ephemera, including a brief note describing the results of the game.
The success of the Cuban War of Independence, concluded in 1898 with the assistance of the United States, led to an outpouring of goodwill and initial collaboration between the two countries. With baseball having been introduced to Cuba by sailors and students earlier in the century, professional leagues had already been established by the time of the Spanish American War, and in early 1899, the famed Almendares team was able to resume play.
The pair of broadsides here advertise an apparently unknown game played between members of the Almendares team, along with other local Cuban players, and a team drawn from the Seventh Army Corps, then serving occupation duty, under Fitzhugh Lee. Billed as a fundraised to aid in the return of Cubans exiled during the War of Independence, the accompanying manuscript note describes the victory of the game by the Cuban team and the presentation of the broadsides by Raymond Westcott Briggs, a star football player at UPenn and future Army Brigadier General, who initially served in Cuba as a member of the hospital corps.
Shortly after this game was played, matches between Cuba and the U.S. would serve as the basis for the internationalization of baseball with an 1899 tour of the United States by Cuban players and the relaunch of the highly popular American Series in 1900.
The small archive offered here appears to be the only surviving record of this particular game, altogether a superb group of athletic history marking a high point in Cuban-American relations.
