Alex Pompez

Alejandro Pompez was born in Key West to Cuban immigrant parents, grew up in Havana after his father died funding the Cuban revolution, returned to New York as a young man, opened a cigar shop on Seventh Avenue in Harlem, ran an illegal lottery out of the back room that grossed thousands of dollars a day, used the money to build one of the most important baseball franchises in Negro League history, fled to Mexico under an alias when Thomas Dewey indicted him for racketeering, came back to testify against the Tammany Hall machine, walked out of court with a suspended sentence, reinvented himself as a scout for the New York Giants, and spent the next 25 years building the Latin American pipeline that produced Orlando Cepeda, Juan Marichal, Felipe Alou, and Willie McCovey. Adrian Burgos, his biographer, wrote that Pompez "was present at the creation of Negro-league baseball and was there at its end, and as a major-league scout, he helped shape its historical legacy." The Special Committee on Negro Leagues elected him to the Hall of Fame in 2006.

Key West

Pompez was born on May 3, 1890, in Key West, Florida. His father Jose Gonzalo Pompez arrived from Havana in the 1870s, obtained a law degree, opened a cigar factory, served on the board of the Cuban Revolutionary Party's Key West chapter, where he had connections to the author José Martí, and was elected to the Florida State Assembly around 1893 as a Republican from Monroe County. Jose died in 1896 and willed his entire estate to fund Cuban independence fighters, leaving the family destitute. His mother Loretta Perez Pompez returned to Havana with her four children around 1902. Alejandro was the oldest.

Pompez played baseball in Tampa as a young man and returned to New York by 1910, working first as a cigar maker earning $20 a week. He soon opened a cigar store at 2122 Seventh Avenue in Harlem that he maintained for the rest of his life. From the shop, he ran an illegal numbers lottery that paid 600-to-1 on a game where the actual odds were 999-to-1, with a minimum bet of one penny. By 1931, Pompez claimed daily earnings of $6,000 to $8,000. He lived in the exclusive Sugar Hill neighborhood, drove the best cars, and smoked the best cigars.

The community saw him as a benefactor rather than a criminal. Numbers operations provided jobs, extended loans, and donated to local causes throughout Harlem. When a heavily played number hit and Pompez lacked the funds to cover payoffs, the Mafia reportedly intercepted his train and removed him before he could leave town.

The Cubans

Pompez created his baseball team in 1916 and named them the New York Cubans. He renamed them the Havana Cuban Stars in 1917 and housed them at Dyckman Oval, where he eventually invested $60,000 remodeling the park to hold 10,000 fans with modernized amenities and a lighting system.

The team played exclusively with Latin players until 1935 and joined the Eastern Colored League in 1923. Pompez signed Martín Dihigo, Alejandro Oms, Juan Tetelo Vargas, and Luis Tiant Sr., establishing himself as the first Negro League owner to sign players from Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, and Panama. He helped negotiate the first Negro World Series in 1924 and served as Negro National League vice president from 1946 through 1948.

In 1947, the New York Cubans won the NNL championship and defeated the Cleveland Buckeyes in the Negro World Series, four games to one with one game tied due to rain. The roster included Luis Tiant Sr., who went 10-0 that season at 41, and Minnie Miñoso. In 1942, the Cubans trained in Havana and defeated the Brooklyn Dodgers three times in a four-game exhibition series.

Dewey

In the late 1920s, Dutch Schultz forced Harlem's numbers kings into his criminal organization through violence. Pompez described the meeting that ended his independence, saying, "I was ordered to visit the home of Dixie Davis in West End Avenue in 1932. The Dutchman came after I got there. He took me in a small room and placed a gun on the table." Pompez was reduced to a Schultz agent at $250 a month. When Schultz was murdered in October 1935, Pompez reclaimed his operation immediately.

Special prosecutor Thomas Dewey went after the numbers networks Schultz had reorganized. In January 1937, Dewey's men raided Pompez's Lenox Avenue office. Pompez arrived with former pitcher Juan Mirabel, received a warning from the elevator operator, and escaped down the fire escape while authorities seized his cash and records. He landed in Mexico City under the alias "Antonio Moreno" and was arrested on March 28 while entering a bulletproof automobile with Chicago license plates.

After extradition in October 1937, Pompez agreed to testify against Tammany Hall boss James J. Hines in exchange for near immunity. Hines was convicted on all thirteen counts of policy racketeering on February 26, 1939. Pompez received probation and a suspended sentence on May 16, 1939, upon a guilty plea of conspiracy. He vowed to abandon the numbers business. He was described as the only man who ever informed on another racketeer and lived.

The Pipeline

In 1943, Pompez struck a deal with Giants owner Horace Stoneham for permanent use of the Polo Grounds, and by 1948 the New York Cubans entered a formal working agreement with the Giants, becoming the only black club ever formally aligned with a major league organization. As integration drained talent and attendance from the Negro Leagues, the Cubans folded after the 1950 season. Pompez sold Ray Dandridge, Dave Barnhill, and Ray Noble to the Giants for $20,000.

Stoneham hired Pompez as a full-time scout on the recommendation of scouting director Jack Schwarz, and Pompez built a network of bird-dog scouts staffed by former players who understood his talent evaluation criteria. His primary scout in the Dominican Republic was Horacio "Rabbit" Martinez, a former shortstop for the Cubans who coached at the University of Santo Domingo. Pompez had a special standing with the Trujillo government that enabled him to operate where other scouts could not.

Pompez reportedly facilitated the Giants' signing of Willie Mays, negotiating with the Birmingham Black Barons' owner on the club's behalf. He advised Stoneham to sign Monte Irvin. He discovered Felipe Alou through Martinez after the 1955 Pan American Games in Mexico City and signed him for $200. He signed Juan Marichal in the fall of 1957 for $500. He signed six of the first twelve Dominican-born major leaguers, among them Ozzie Virgil, Matty Alou, Manny Mota, and Jesús Alou.

Orlando Cepeda credited Pompez with his entire career. Pompez had tried to sign Cepeda's father Pedro "Perucho" Cepeda for the New York Cubans in the early 1940s, but Perucho refused to endure Jim Crow segregation. Pompez later secured Orlando for the Giants, and when the organization considered releasing the young Cepeda from spring training, Pompez intervened. Cepeda said, "Alejandro Pompez had 100 per cent to do with my career. In 1955, the Giants wanted to release me from spring training and he begged the Giants not to let me go because I had a future in the big leagues."

Beyond scouting, Pompez served as a caretaker for Black and Latin players entering the Giants organization, handling room assignments, cultural orientation, and media interactions. He worked for the club for approximately 25 years, eventually rising to Director of International Scouting. In 1971, he served on the first Hall of Fame Special Committee on Negro Leagues, which unanimously selected Satchel Paige as its first honoree.

Pompez died on March 14, 1974, at St. Johns Hospital in Flushing, Queens, at 83. He was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. His career in baseball spanned nearly 60 years, from 1916 to at least 1971. Lawrence D. Hogan, the historian, credited him with "engineering the opening of the Dominican pipeline," and Burgos placed him alongside Rube Foster, Gus Greenlee, J.L. Wilkinson, Effa Manley, and Cum Posey as one of black baseball's most significant executives.