Cuban X Giants

The Cuban X Giants were among the strongest Black clubs of their decade, and the recorded 56-48 across seven seasons covers only a small share of what they played: this was independent baseball before any Negro league existed, and results were reported when a newspaper felt like reporting them.

Four Hall of Famers played here: Sol White, Frank Grant, John Henry Lloyd and Rube Foster, who pitched for the club in 1903 and beat the Philadelphia Giants in a series billed as the championship of Black baseball. Foster left for Philadelphia the next year, taking several teammates, and later founded the Negro National League.

The name came from a split: an earlier club called the Cuban Giants divided, and the breakaway added the X. Neither club was Cuban. The original had adopted the name in the 1880s and spoken gibberish on the field in the hope that crowds would take them for foreigners rather than Black Americans, which was thought to draw less hostility.