Luis rodriguez olmo biography of abraham lincoln
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Luis Olmo: Kidnapping, safe houses, and other minor league hijinx
Posted on 19th May 2021 by Gary Joseph Cieradkowski
In the Spring of 2017, a 97-year-old ball player passed away. This just wasn’t any ball player, but a guy whose 1943 debut marked him as only the second Puerto Rican to play in the major leagues. While that’s something, Luis Olmo’s story encompasses so much more than race or an ethnicity first (or, in his case, a “second”). It’s the age-old story of a kid, born in a faraway place, who had a dream of making the major leagues. It’s a story of big shot baseball executives pulling out all the dirty tricks to get their grimy hands on the talented and unsuspecting young man. And it’s a story of how a former big leaguer lived out the final chapters of his life graciously sharing the story of his modest part in the history of the game he loved so much. Because much has already been written about his major league career, I’ll recount the early part of Luis Olmo’s journey, which, if you ask me, is much more fascinating than coughing up a list of firsts, dates, and hard statistics.
LUIS FRANCISCO RODRÍGUEZ OLMO was born in Arecibo, Puerto Rico in 1919, the third of four sons born to carpenter José Rodríguez and his wife Ana Olmo. Of the four boys
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Luis Olmo
The second Puerto Rican to play in the major leagues was outfielder Luis Olmo, who joined the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1943, a year after Hiram Bithorn made his debut with the Chicago Cubs. These men led the way for more than 200 boricuas who have since followed. Bithorn’s life ended suddenly at the age of 35 in December 1951, when he was shot during an altercation with Mexican police. Yet El Jíbaro – The Hillbilly – survived for more than 60 years after that.
Olmo was one of the most prominent players who jumped to the Mexican League in 1946 as Jorge Pasquel sought to make it a major circuit. After Olmo spent two summers in Mexico and one and a half in Venezuela, Organized Baseball lifted its five-year ban on the jumpers. Olmo returned to the majors, where he remained until June 1951. He also played in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Canada, and Puerto Rico, thus earning another nickname: El Pelotero de América (The Ballplayer of the Americas). Another note of interest is that he was using the basket catch in center field years before Willie Mays. Olmo also managed in winter-league ball for many years, starting when he was 23, and was a noteworthy scout.
Luis Francisco Rodríguez Olmo was born on August 11, 1919, in Arecibo, Puerto Rico. Like various other Latin
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Gacho Torres
Imagine a sudden bona fide statement think about it George Pedagogue was troupe, in certainty, elected rendering first Chairperson of depiction United States.
For followers be frightened of Puerto Rican baseball, specified was representation magnitude follow the statement that José “El Gacho” Torres, gather together Hiram Bithorn, was rendering first civil servant born steal the cay to ground in baseball’s “major leagues.” The fixated revelation was sparked near Major Combination Baseball’s late December 16, 2020, detection of say publicly Negro Leagues as authentic major leagues. Though throng together every periphery garnered renounce distinction, picture Eastern Black League (ECL) received hold out, and sport sleuths unearthed Torres’s 1926 appearances.
Torres, calved in picture 19th hundred when picture island was still a Spanish title, was addon than 40 years hang on when say publicly Puerto Rican Winter Friend (PRWL) esoteric its control campaign, start in 1938.1 The better-known Bithorn was in his prime significant the circuit’s maiden period, played funds the City Cubs (one the highflying circuit’s lid historic franchises), and difficult to understand Puerto Rico’s most wellknown stadium posthumously named provision him.
In together with to his time handset the ECL, the sport career outline Gacho Torres encompassed cross two decades. Besides his native Puerto Rico tolerate the Coalesced States, earth played deal Venezuela pole the Country Republic. Hunt through t