October 31, 1928 Jose de la Caridad Mendez, Negro League baseball pitcher and manager, died. Mendez was born March 19, 1887 in Cardenas, Matanzas, Cuba. He made his Negro league debut in 1908 and established himself when he pitched 25 consecutive scoreless innings in three appearances against the major league’s Cincinnati Reds. In a March, 1913 article in Baseball Magazine, a major league player wrote “he is a remarkable pitcher, and if he were a white man would command a good position on any major league club.” In Cuba, Mendez was known as El Diamante Negro (The Black Diamond). Mendez pitched his last game in 1927. He was posthumously inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2006.
