Julio Moreno González was a Cuban-born right-handed pitcher in North American professional baseball. Nicknamed "Jiquí" (after a hardwood tree) and "the Cuban Bob Feller" for his blazing fastball, Moreno was a star in Cuban amateur baseball circles before he turned professional in 1947 and his mound career would extend into 1966, when he was 45 years of age. 18 wins and 2 saves in 4 MLB seasons. Moreno appeared in 73 games for the Washington Senators from 1950–1953.
From Moreno's SABR biography: “Jiquí” Moreno was not big (5’8” and 165 pounds) — but he threw hard. How hard is jiquí wood? In Cuba, Moreno’s native land, linemen could not sink their spurs into telephone poles made from this tree — they had to use ladders. Brick stair steps wore down, yet their jiquí binding was simply polished. That’s how tough this pitcher was in his heyday at home.
Author Roberto González Echevarría, who has also written extensively on Cuban ball, further set the scene for Moreno’s early career.
“A significant development in the thirties and forties was the emergence of players, mostly pitchers, from the provinces. . .white guajiros — country bumpkins.” He added that “the rural aristocracy of the Amateur League. . .fed on the nationalism of the period.” The foremost of these “revered amateurs and later professionals” was Conrado Marrero, El Guajiro del Laberinto, but Moreno was a distinguished runner-up. The pair met in some renowned duels as amateurs. They would later pitch together in the U.S. with the Senators, as did Sandalio “Potrerillo” Consuegra (known as “Sandy” in the U.S.) and Rogelio “Limonar” Martínez. In their amateur days, all four “often appeared in magazines, sometimes even on the covers.” One such picture of Moreno shows him with the pencil mustache he then sported, as did many Hollywood stars of the time.
According to a capsule biography on the Círculo Güinero de Los Ángeles website, young Moreno started to play baseball in Güines with a team known as Estrellas de Pancho (Pancho’s Stars). He started to attract wider attention in 1938. In his obituary of Moreno, Fausto Miranda told the story of how he first saw the pitcher. Julio, then just 17, was facing a visiting team called Películas Cubanas (Cuban Movies), organized by two famous comedians and baseball enthusiasts named Alberto Garrido and Federico Piñero. The smiling youth was very fast. . .and very wild. After watching a batter hit the deck, Garrido said, “Careful, that skinny boy’s going to kill someone here today!” Miranda said, “We all came back to Havana talking about the terrifying speed of this kid who barely weighed 135 pounds.”
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