Tampa their permanent home. Alfonso Ramón López, the seventh of nine children, was born there on August 20, 1908. Ybor City was a thriving immigrant neighborhood during Al López's childhood with a population of over 10,000. The cigar industry was the most important in town, and most residents were employed either by one of the dozens of large cigar factories or by businesses catering to the cigar industry and its employees. Modesto Lopez found work as a skilled selector in a cigar factory, which involved sorting raw tobacco leaves for use in different grades of cigars. Al often visited his father's workplace as a child and later said that he "hated" the smell of tobacco leaves that permeated the building and clung to his father's clothing when he came home from the factory. "I vowed never to work in one." As a teenager, López took a job delivering Cuban bread door to door for La Joven Francesca Bakery, which was located in a building which later became the Ybor City State Museum. He began to follow baseball when his elder brother Emilio introduced him to the game during the 1920 World Series, which coincidentally involved two teams that Lopez would later play for - Cleveland and Brooklyn. According to Al López, his brother Emilio also had excellent baseball talent, but he himself was more driven to excel at the game. Baseball player López's professional career began in when, at the age of 16, he signed on as a catcher with the Class-D Tampa Smokers of the Florida State League, quitting his job at the bakery and dropping out of high school at Sacred Heart College (later known as Jesuit High School) to focus on baseball. His starting salary with the Smokers was $150 ($ today) per month, which was much needed by the large Lopez family since his father's health was deteriorating and he could not work regularly. (Modesto Lopez died of throat cancer in 1926.) Soon after signing with the Smokers, Al López impressed Hall of Fame pitcher Walter Johnson with his catching skills during a winter barnstorming exhibition game. At Johnson's recommendation, Al was hired as a practice catcher for the Washington Senators during spring training in 1925, a valuable learning opportunity that he later credited with making him a better ballplayer. The Senators offered the Smokers $1000 for López's contract, but the minor league club demanded $10,000,