Passenger list from MORRO CASTLE for October 14-17, 1930 voyage

passenger list

A passenger list from the October 14-17, 1930 voyage of the MORRO CASTLE from Havana to New York. Among the passengers are at least 10 American major league baseball players, including Clyde Sukeforth of the Cincinnati Reds, Pie Traynor of the Pittsburgh Pirates, Heinie Manush of the Washington Senators, Rabbit Maranville of the Boston Braves, Thomas Oliver of the Boston Red Sox, Donald Hurst and Chuck Klein of the Philadelphia Phillies, and Glenn Wright and Wally Gilbert of the Brooklyn Robins. These players were all returning from a series of exhibition games played in Havana that month. The major league players were divided into two teams, one managed by Jewel Ens, manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates, and the other by David Bancroft, who played for the New York Giants, and the two of them are also on this passenger list. Also on the passenger list is Julio Blanco Herrera, the president of Cuba's La Tropical brewery, who had just built Havana's new La Tropical baseball stadium and organized the exhibition series to inaugurate it. In 1930, Prohibition was still in effect in the US, and MORRO CASTLE's trips to Havana were popular in large part because of the drinking that went on aboard. This might have been an especially rambunctious trip with so many young baseball players (and a suspiciously high proportion of unmarried women aboard as well). However, there were also plenty of other passengers, including Connecticut Congressman Hart Fenn, who had recently announced he would not run for office again on the advice of his doctors.