Outside baseball and numbers (illegal gambling), he owned and operated a cigar shop in downtown Manhattan.

His father was a lawyer and cigar manufacturer who had connections to Cuban author and dissident Jose Marti.

Jose Pompez was on the board of directors for the Key West chapter of the Cuban Revolutionary Party;[1] he was elected to the Florida House of Representatives as a Republican in 1892.

[4] He signed numerous Latin American players for his Negro league teams, including Martín Dihigo, Minnie Miñoso and Alejandro Oms.

[5] Pompez was one of New York's leading numbers bankers during the 1920s but was forced to join Dutch Schultz in 1932.