Reggie Otero

Regino José Otero Gómez (September 7, 1915, Havana, Cuba – October 21, 1988, Hialeah, Florida) was a Cuban baseball player who had a long career in the minor leagues in the United States (1936–53), and played briefly with the Chicago Cubs in 1945. He also played 13 years in the Cuban Professional League. He was a left-handed batter, but threw right-handed. After his playing career ended, he managed in Cuba, Mexico and Venezuela.

Reggie Otero made his organized baseball debut in 1936 with the York White Roses/Trenton Senators club of the New York–Penn League, where he hit .243 with 0 home runs and 22 RBI. He also played for the International League's Albany Senators that year, but hit only .111. The following year he returned to the Senators but still had trouble, hitting .136 with 0 HR and 3 RBI. In 1938 he moved south to the St. Augustine Saints (Florida State League). There he hit .308, still with 0 HR, but with 52 RBI.

Otero played for the Greenville Spinners in 1939 and 1940. In his two seasons in the South Atlantic League he hit .325-2-57 and then .315-1-50. He moved back north in 1941, when he played for the Springfield Nationals of the Eastern League and hit .223-0-24. Otero played for the Springfield club's farm team, the Utica Braves of the Can-Am League, in 1942, where he led the league in batting with a .364 average, 2 HR and 101 RBI. Inactive in 1943, Otero moved west in 1944, playing for the Los Angeles Angels of the Pacific Coast League. At the end of the 1945 season he was called up to the Chicago Cubs, after hitting .344 with 23 RBI, following a .306-0-54 season.

Otero appeared in 14 games for the Cubs, making his debut on September 2, 1945. He had 9 hits in 23 at-bats, good for a .391 average with 5 RBI. This was his only major league experience. He returned to the Angels for the 1946 and 1947 seasons. Otero could not continue to put up those numbers and hit only .273-1-46, and then .231-0-7 in the following year. After the 1947 season, he joined the Portsmouth Cubs of the Piedmont League, where he would play for the next five years, also serving as manager in 1951–52. In the league Otero hit over .300 four times with a high of .353, and had 4 home runs and 312 RBI. He joined the Springfield Cubs (International League) in 1953 and hit .171-0-4 before retiring from the minor leagues.

In his homeland, Otero played in 480 games in the Cuban Professional League for thirteen years from 1936 to 1953. He began his career with the Club Acción Republicana before joining Habana (1936–37), Santa Clara (1939–40), Cienfuegos and Almendares (1945–46) and then the Havana Reds of the Cuban National Federation before returning to Cienfuegos, where he played for seven years from 1947 to 1953. Otero hit .242 in the Cuban league with 499 hits in 2068 at-bats with 177 RBI.

After his playing career ended, Otero managed the Havana Sugar Kings from 1954 through mid-1956. He also managed in the Cuban league and the Mexican League, but gained the most notoriety in the Venezuelan League. There he led the Industriales de Valencia to three titles (1955–56, 1957–58, 1958–59) and the Leones del Caracas to four titles (1961–62, 1963–64, 1966–67, 1967–68). His seven championships are the most in the league's history.

He also served as a coach for the Cincinnati Reds from 1959 to 1965, and was a member of the Cleveland Indians' coaching staff in 1966. In 1967, he became a scout, working for Cleveland and the Los Angeles Dodgers into the 1980s.

Otero died of a heart attack on October 21, 1988.

References

This article is based on the article "Reggie Otero" at Baseball-Reference.com's Bullpen, accessed November 7, 2006. The Bullpen is a wiki and its content is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.

External links

Career statistics and player information from Baseball-Reference
Cubanball.com

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Reggie Otero

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