Preamble
We all know that the Dominican Republic is easily the most baseball mad country outside of the United States. Perhaps, it is even more of a baseball hotbed than even the country of the game's birth. Just consider how many of the superstars you know from the last thirty years hailing from Santo Domingo, La Romana and obviously San Pedro de Macoris. In the 1930's, baseball was also very popular down there, a fact not lost on then dictator Rafael Trujillo. The story of the Ciudad Trujillo baseball team is a tale of how the strongman used baseball to try and boost his image, and of the lengths he would go to achieve this.
The Dictator
First of all, a bit about the man for this team was named. Trujillo was born in 1891 in San Cristobal and worked for a time as a security guard and telegraph operator. During the US intervention in the Dominican Republic from 1916-24, he joined the Dominican security forces and rose quickly through the ranks. By 1927, he was a general in the Dominican military and by 1930, a stakeholder in the struggle for power. As rebels fought to overthrow president Horacio Vasquez, Trujillo kept his troops on the sidelines until the time was right to bring force to bear in eliminating political rivals and taking power for himself in an election widely denounced as fraudulent.
A devastating hurricane was his excuse to install martial law in the country and assume total control. He would govern for thirty years marked by human rights abuses such as aggressive press censorship, torture, extrajudicial executions and the infamous Parsley Massacre of Haitians in 1937. Around this same time, the capital Santo Domingo would be renamed Ciudad Trujillo. This is why the team we will discuss was named as it was.
Underground resistance was swiftly detected and crushed in the Dominican Republic for much of the 1940's and 1950's. The international community had paid scant attention to the crimes of the regime up to this point. This would change in 1960 with the heinous murder of the Mirabal sisters and even more so when Trujillo orchestrated an assassination attempt against Venezuelan president Romulo Betancourt. It failed and soon the OAS cut all ties and a regime of sanctions was imposed. The following year, Trujillo's luck would finally run out when he was shot to death in his car. Further instability would plague the Dominican Republic in the following years culminating in an OAS intervention led by the US in 1965.
Why A Baseball Team
In 1937, Trujillo was looking for further popularity. Yes, there had been some modernization to infrastructure and so forth, but there were already other, much darker things for which he was known. To boost his image at home he decided to create the strongest team ill gotten money could buy for his recently renamed capital Ciudad Trujillo. The story goes that he gave Jose Aybar, a minister in his government, the equivalent of $30,000 and told him to buy the best players he could find. That included Americans. After all, like a lot of dictators, he needed something for the upcoming 1937 election which rest assured was fraudulent but the pretense still had to be there. In a baseball mad country, having the reins of a dominant ball team could not be bad for popularity.
The Players
It was not unheard of for Negro League stars to play winter ball to supplement their income. This was in fact standard practice as salaries were not what major leaguers made then and certainly nowhere near what they make today. Winter ball could mean barnstorming in the southern United States or heading down to Latin America. The Dominican league was not a recognized winter league at the time though and so Negro League owners announced bans on any players who went to play for Trujillo. They also were less than appreciative of Aybar raiding their rosters for some of their biggest stars.
Money was good however and in the depression era, that counted for quite a bit more than usual. The Ciudad Trujillo team was also to be an integrated team, a luxury not then afforded to Negro League players in their own country. That in mind, they went. And these were the very best players. Satchel Paige, Josh Gibson, Cool Papa Bell and Sam Bankhead were the top Negro Leaguers who went. Peruco Cepeda, the father of Hall of Famer Orlando Cepeda, also went. Cuban star Silvio Garcia was also present.
As you might imagine, this team was quite complete. It was also successful although not entirely as dominant as Trujillo perhaps would have liked. Their biggest rival, Aguilas Cibeñas boasted Luis Tiant Sr. and Martin Dihigo, a Cuban legend inducted into more halls of fame than pretty much anyone else I can think of. Dominican pioneer Tetulo Vargas was there too.
In the end, Dragones were the best team as Trujillo wished. He made sure of it with interesting incentives such as lining up troops as if they were assembling themselves into a firing squad, just in case his American stars were thinking it would be a nice tropical getaway. No whiskey for the gringos either. Not much going out or anything that would be a potential distraction. Winning was a matter of life and death, literally. Trujillo would suffer no upsets. Luckily for posterity, Satchel Paige pitched about as clutch as he would ever pitch and the other stars performed up to the pressure also. He wasn't playing around that season.
The end result of all this was the championship that Trujillo craved. His sham election was naturally a win also. He would remain in power until 1961. However, he was less than thrilled with his investment and he would not bring back the super team he had sent Aybar to create. This did not disappoint Paige and the gang who gratefully sailed away on the first American ship they could find.
Aftermath
The Negro League players involved in the Ciudad Trujillo project were handed bans upon their return from America. This would be the case in MLB years later when players were banned for joining Jorge Pasquel's team in Mexico in 1946. However, in the case of the Cuidad Trujillo players, the ban was quick to be rescinded because the Negro Leagues simply had no way of replacing legends like Paige, Gibson and Bell. (All three men are Hall of Famers) These were also fan favorites and attendance would be better with them on the field. In the depression era, clubs needed every ticket sale they could muster. By 1946, MLB clubs were enjoying a post-war boom and could afford to be less forgiving. Also, the players involved were not Hall of Fame caliber.
The Ciudad Trujillo team was the vanity project of a brutal tyrant. It was also an exceptional collection of talent. One can debate the morals of players going to play for teams bankrolled by dictatorships, and that debate is very much alive today. That said, this is a compelling story the likes of which would almost never happen today. For Dominicans playing, it was a chance to rub shoulders with American greats and prove they could hang. Fast forward a few decades and Dominicans are a dominant presence in baseball. As for Gibson, Bell, and especially Paige, this was another chapter in some of the most colorful and fruitful careers baseball has ever seen; another mark of their collective and individual greatness.
Comments