Tell me about Vic Power

[Brian McKenna]

I recently watched a great documentary - Viva Baseball - about Latin ballplayers. Vic Power was thoroughly amusing and a great addition to the cast. I don't really know much about him.

Can anyone shed some light on his career and life sans numbers? Especially his early life and career.

[hellborn]

There's a great article about Vic in "Cult Baseball Heroes", which I highly recommend.
I remember that Vic was a tremendous glove man at 1B who hit for a good average with some power and little patience. He suffered a lot from discrimination early in his playing career. There is a famous story about him being told in a restaurant, "We don't serve Negroes", to which he responded, "Good, I don't eat them, give me some rice and beans instead." He was widely viewed as being a showboat, making easy plays look hard to get attention. I think that everybody did allow that he was an excellent glove man, though. Vic claimed that Puerto Ricans would flock to games he would play in Yankee Stadium and root for him in Spanish even as a visiting player, even to the point of begging him to hit a home run in a long game so everybody could go home and eat (not sure if he hit it).
A great story from the book mentioned above involved Vic meeting a baseball fan in PR after his playing days, and mentioning that he played ML ball. The fan was not impressed and ignored him...after Vic mentioned that he played in PR as Victor Pellot (mother's name, I think), the man jumped up and embraced him, bursting into tears. Vic had been the man's favorite player, but he didn't even know that Vic had played ML ball under a different name.

[Brian McKenna]

Pellot was his name. Power is just another made up baseball name that someone gave him.

I wonder if the "showboating" sticker got tagged to him because of his skin color and Latin background.