Los Pelados Brand

Grassroots Baseball - The Fresno Cubs were the first all-black amateur baseball club from the hub of California’s farm industry. Loosely organized clubs and leagues were a staple of life in the San Joaquin Valley at the time (ca. 1914) the source photo for this painting was taken. Entertainer Gabby Hayes, ubiquitous sidekick from film westerns and popular television host of children’s programming in the 1950s, played semiprofessional baseball while still in high school. His love for the game never abated: baseball was part of the core curriculum at the summer camps he hosted around his hometown of Wellsville, NY. He’s seen in “Gabby’s Buckeroos Brand” with a team of Little League whippersnappers from Harlem. In some parts of the country certain industries went out of their way to hire Mexican baseball talent as workers. The Los Pelados (“The Plucked Ones”) was a team from Horton, Kansas sponsored by the Rock Island Railroad Company. The artist has taken liberties with the mid-1920s photograph upon which this painting is based by inscribing player uniforms with some of the most popular team names used during the period.