DOLF LUQUE

Adolfo Luque came up from Havana with a small man's build and a big man's disposition, five-foot-seven and a hundred and sixty pounds of pure orneriness, and for a long while the National League could not decide whether to hit him or duck him. He broke in with the Boston Braves around 1914, a cup of coffee and out again, and it took the years to bring him back whole. Cincinnati gave him the ball in 1918 and he kept it most of a decade.

The year was 1923. Luque won twenty-seven and lost eight, worked three hundred and twenty-two innings, and finished with an E.R.A. of 1.93, which is not pitching so much as arithmetic done with a grudge. Twenty-eight complete games, six of them shutouts. He was mean on the mound, and mean was enough.

The Pride of Havana, they called him, and he carried the name without apology. In 1925 he went 16-18 with a 2.63 E.R.A., which tells you what the Reds' bats did for him. In 1922 he lost twenty-three. A lesser man quits. Luque simply got stingier.

Brooklyn took him in 1930, the Giants in 1932, and he pitched in the big leagues into his forties, which for a small right-hander from Cuba in those years was a long road with no shortcuts.

He finished at 194-179, an E.R.A. of 3.24, 206 complete games, 26 shutouts. Adolfo Luque died in 1957. The numbers stayed.