Brent, you're probably right. There were a variety of ages given on passenger lists for García; this is the oldest I could find. When he died in 1923 his age was reported as 55, which coincided, so for now 1868 it is. But he's probably 3 or 4 years older than that, I'd think. Valentín González is a similar case; passenger lists have him born in about 1876, but that would make him 14 on his Cuban League debut in 1890. We need better Cuban sources.

Isn't there some kind of software that allows you to superimpose old maps on current ones? Of course I guess you could do something like that with Photoshop or Gimp or something...

Incidentally, I really don't know how complete the list of interracial games in Washington in the 1870s is. I have certainly not scoured the microfilm of D.C. newspapers in the early 1870s. The Washington Post wasn't founded until 1877, and the digitized Washington Star from Paper of Record is not especially user-friendly, so I could easily be missing a lot.

Also, rather than parsing the language of a brief newspaper item, it might be useful to step back and think about the most obvious facts here. The Olympics play the Alerts, and the match, unlike most games between Washington clubs, is given quite a bit of publicity (receiving mentions in newspapers from Baltimore to Boston) for the very reason that it's a game between black and white teams. Then, a club cancels its game with the Olympics--not because of any difficulty in scheduling or travel arrangements or disagreement about the receipts or whatever--but expressly because they had played the Alerts. Leaving aside the Alerts being a non-convention club, how often was a game called off because one team objected to the other's previous opponents?

David, a few thoughts. One is that of course right now we only have this scrap of text, so it's hard to say for sure what it really means, and whether or not it fairly represents the Marylands' views. For example, there could have been disagreement among the players or directors of the Maryland Club about the issue, and the "non-convention club" language represented some kind of compromise. More likely in my opinion they were unembarrassed about their racial attitudes, but didn't want to insult the Olympics too explicitly. (The two clubs would go on to play each other four times in 1870.) In 1869 it was not a trivial matter to accuse whites of associating too closely with blacks, and so the Marylands softened their criticism of the Olympics by adding the bit about playing a non-Association club while still making their point.

Mark, the above post is probably the best I can do right now. If you're interested in the Bears, I'd suggest checking out the Chicago Defender, which featured quite a bit of coverage of them in both 1920 and 1921; and also maybe the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, NY Evening Telegram, and possibly New Jersey and Philadelphia papers from those years, too.

Actually I think the photo with the baseball field shows the site of yet another housing development called Terrace Village, which was south of the Central Park location between Centre and Fifth Avenues. (The project built on the Greenlee Field & Ammon Playground site is called Bedford Dwellings.) The baseball backstop in the photo is I think part of Kennard Playground, which still exists and has a baseball or softball diamond (though I'm not sure if it's still on exactly the same location as in the photo). Here's a link to another photo of the Terrace Village location: http://images.library.pitt.edu/cgi-bin/i/image/image-idx?view=entry;subview=detail;cc=accd;entryid=X-MSP285.B012.F15.I07;viewid=ACCD2547.TIF

Thanks, Bill -- the aerial photos are really interesting (I wish they were higher res, though). I'll post the view of the Central Park site later today.

I am *really* looking forward to your book...