In Cartagena in 1897
| Date of Game | 1897 or 1903 |
|---|---|
| Location | Cartagena, Colombia |
| Modern Address | |
| Field | Add Field Page |
| Home Team | Add Club Page |
| Away Team | Add Club Page |
| Score | |
| Game Number | |
| Innings | 9 |
| Number of Players | |
| Game Officials | |
| NY Rules | Yes |
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| Description | If one looks back to the 1850s when Panama was a Colombian province, there are four different accounts of the introduction of baseball to the republic. First, Ramon B. Pérez Medina in his book, Historia del baseball panameño asserts that American traders and men affiliated with the Panama Railroad Company were playing baseball in the mid-1850s, and Panama's Daily Star and Herald on January 9, 1883 reported a game that took place in the Chiriqui Plaza on January 7. The opponents were a team from Chiriqui Province and members of the Panama Cricket and Baseball Club. The contest was won by the latter, a team made up largely of West Indian workers brought in for that period's French-managed canal construction (Pérez Medina, 1992). Second, Milton Jamail suggests that a Cuban, Francisco Balmaceda, established the game within Colombia proper in the mid-1870s. Balmaceda planted sugarcane on land in María la Baja, about one hundred kilometers south of Cartagena. He brought in cane cutters from Cuba and reportedly built a baseball diamond for the recreational use of his workers ( Jamail, 2008, 136). Riola García offers a third account stating that Raúl and Eduardo Enrique Segrera, coming from Panama and Cuba respectively, introduced the game to Cartagena on July 20, 1897 by playing in Apolo Park near the house owned by then President Rafael Núñez. How long and/or often their contests took place is unclear, but the outbreak of the War of the Thousand Days in 1899 ended them, and the brothers returned to their countries of origin (Riola Garcia, 2015, 11-12) The fourth, and most commonly cited account, is that after the end of the Thousand Days War, three brothers-Gonzalo, Ernesto and Ibrahim Zúñiga Ángel- having completed their university studies in the US, returned to Cartagena bringing with them baseball gloves, bats and balls. On September 10, 1903 they donned their gloves and began tossing a ball around in the Plaza Santo Domingo-a spectacle that captured the attention of congregants who at that moment were leaving the nearby church. Also watching were local boys eager to join in the new game. As interest grew, the Zúñigas had to find a new space to play that was larger than the Plaza Santo Domingo, because fly balls were damaging the residences located around the plaza. After searching for another site, they finally chose the Plaza de la Carnicería, between Boquete and Tablón streets, a location occupied today by the National Building, the Parque de las Flores and the City Bank. |
| Sources | Porto Cabrales, Raúl. “El Béisbol es el deporte más antiguo en Colombia, Cartagena es la cuna.” Special to John Jairo Capella’s “Playball” blog, March 22, 2007. |
| Source Image | [[Image:|left|thumb]] |
| Source Image | [[Image:|left|thumb]] |
| Source Image | [[Image:|left|thumb]] |
| Source Image | [[Image:|left|thumb]] |
| Source Image | [[Image:|left|thumb]] |
| Has Source On Hand | No |
| Comment | The 1897 date is sourced in recollections recorded 50 years later. Edit with form to add a comment |
| Query | Edit with form to add a query |
| Found by | Bruce Allardice |
| Submission Note | |
| Entered by | Bruce Allardice |
| First in Location | Colombia |
| Players Locality | |
| Entry Origin | |
| Entry Origin Url | |
| Local-Origins Study Groups |
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