The Cuban Master
One of an occasional series
Every baseball fan knows that Babe Ruth started his career as a pitcher, but that his batting skills led him to the outfield. But even Ruth never led the league in wins and in hitting in the same year. In fact, he never led the league in wins at all.
Martin Dihigo did.
Few of the American baseball fans who so idolized Ruth ever even knew who Martin Dihigo was, even though their careers overlapped. The color barrier barred Dihigo from organized baseball back then.
And what did those fans miss? Not much. Just a player who, in his time, completely redefined the concept of “dominance.”
From 1923, when he was 18, until 1950, when he was 45, the 6–foot–3, 210–pound right–hander starred as both hitter and pitcher in the United States, Cuba, Mexico, Venezuela, Panama and the Dominican Republic.
The Master led leagues at various times in batting average, strikeouts, wins, earned–run average, winning percentage, home runs and doubles. He could play all nine positions, and sometimes did — in the same game.
Martin Dihigo was born in Matanzas, Cuba, on May 25, 1905. The first record of Dihigo as a player came in the 1921–1922 Cuban Winter League, when he was 16. He played first base the following year for the Cuban Stars, who toured throughout the eastern United States before the Negro Leagues were established.
By 1926, Dihigo was one of the stars of the Eastern Colored League, still playing for the Cuban Stars. He hit .327 with 12 home runs. Not long after that, Dihigo took a break from playing in the United States for several years. He was the star pitcher of a league in Venezuela in the mid–1930s before going on to Mexico.
In 1934–35, with Santa Clara of the Cuban Winter League, he led the league in average (.358) and wins, at 11–2 (11–1 according to some sources).
He also managed the team.
In 1937, he threw the first no–hitter ever pitched in the Mexican League. He also became the first hitter in Mexico to have six hits in six at–bats in one game.
But all that was just the warm–up for 1938.
That year, he was 18–2 pitching for Veracruz, allowed only 104 hits and 32 walks in 167 innings, and struck out 184, including 22 in one 13–inning game. His ERA of 0.90 (0.92 according to some sources), still stands as the lowest ERA ever posted by a Mexican League pitcher. He went head–to–head in a game against the great Satchel Paige, and won.
He also won the batting title that year with an average of .387.
BaseballLibrary.com researched his career — taking note of the fact that some figures from that era simply don’t exist — and concluded that Dihigo had a record of 263–143 as a pitcher, not counting his time in the Dominican Republic or Venezuela. He was 119–57 in Mexico, 115–60 in Cuba.
In the Negro Leagues, he was 29–26 as a pitcher and hit .299 with 69 homers. He batted over .300 six times.
He had a .317 lifetime batting average in Mexico in 10 seasons with 130 home runs. He threw at least three no–hitters in Mexico, Venezuela and Puerto Rico. And he was doing this in seasons generally lasting only three months.
At the age of 40 in 1945, his last good year, Dihigo hit .316 and went 11–4 with an ERA of 2.83 for Torreon in Mexico.
After retiring, Dihigo served as Cuba’s sports minister from 1959 until his death in 1971, shortly before his 66th birthday.
Dihigo was elected to the Cuban Baseball Hall of Fame in 1951, the Salon de la Fama in Mexico in 1964 and the U.S. Hall of Fame in 1977.
Buck Leonard, himself a Hall of Famer, said of Dihigo: “He was the greatest all–around player I know. I say he was the best player of all–time, black or white. He could do it all.”
Another Hall of Fame member, John McGraw, manager of the New York Giants at the same time Dihigo was playing, called him “the greatest natural player” he had ever seen. A generation later, still another Hall of Famer, Brooklyn Dodgers catcher Roy Campanella, agreed.
Severo Nieto (1923–2005), a Cuban author and reporter who knew Dihigo and saw him play, wrote “Martin Dihigo, El Maestro” shortly before his death and sent it to McFarland, a North Carolina publisher.
It has yet to be published.
— Jay Berman
11 June 2007