The Cuban Giants were the first fully salaried African-American professional baseball club. The team was originally formed in 1885 at the Argyle Hotel, a summer resort in Babylon, New York. Initially an independent barnstorming team, they played games against opponents of all types: major and minor league clubs, semiprofessional teams, even college and amateur squads. They would go on to join various short-lived East Coast leagues, and in 1888 became the "World Colored Champions". Despite their name, no Cubans played on the team. The "Cubes" remained one of the premier Negro league teams for nearly 20 years, and served as a model that future black teams would emulate. History Name Early newspaper accounts mention John Lang (the team's early financial backer) and refer to the team alternately as "Lang's colored giants" or "Lang's Cuban Giants", emphasizing the size of the players, with one newspaper noting that "nearly every man is six feet in height". Jerry Malloy, a baseball journalist and researcher, believes that the team was likely named after the National League's New York Giants; while Michael E. Lomax theorizes that they may have considered themselves "giants among the black independents" of the era because they were born out of a merger of three separate teams. Opinions also differ on how the word "Cuban" came to be used. There were no Cubans on the team, although a handful of players had played in Cuba prior to the creation of the team. The team would go on to play in Cuba, but the name predates those eventual trips. Malloy states that "avoiding the opprobrium of hostile white Americans by 'passing' as Cubans may have been a factor in naming the team" and that it might have been easier for management to schedule games if the team was seen as being composed of Cubans rather than African Americans. Lomax finds this reasoning to be problematic since it was widely known at the time that the team was made up of black players; according to him this reasoning "suggests that the Cubans were cowards and ashamed of their cultural heritage." Rather, Lomax believes the key to understanding "Cuban" lies in the team's status as both competitors and entertainers, as well as their skin color: In terms of skin color, virtually every player, not to mention the ones who played in organized baseball, was a light-skinned black. Thus, the name 'Cuban' could have referred