[1] González, a right-handed-hitting catcher, made his National League debut with the 1912 Boston Braves, playing only one game.

Before the 1915 spring training, he was traded to the St. Louis Cardinals, where he went on to play/coach/manage 16 seasons (as player 1915–18; 1924–25; 1931–32, as coach 1934-38; 1940-46, as manager 1938; 1940), with stints in New York Giants and Chicago Cubs, batting .253 in 1,042 games with 13 home runs and 263 RBI.

It was the year of the "Gashouse Gang", the hard-playing Cardinal team that stormed to the NL pennant and a seven-game Fall Classic triumph over the Detroit Tigers.

"Slaughter's Mad Dash" scored the winning run and earned the Cardinals the world championship.

He was a part-time infielder his first three seasons before switching to catcher and gaining a full-time roster spot with Habana in the winter of 1913.

Cuban baseball historian Jorge Figueredo calls his 1927–28 Habana team, which included Jud Wilson, Martín Dihigo, Chino Smith, Alejandro Oms, Ramón Herrera, and Manuel Cueto, "probably the best they ever had in their illustrious history.

"[5] During the 1946 season, the Mexican League, then an insurgent circuit outside the control of "organized baseball", raided Major League teams — notably the Cardinals, Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers — for playing talent, signing Max Lanier, Lou Klein and Fred Martin away from the Cardinals alone.

After the Cuban Revolution brought Fidel Castro to power in 1959, and the ensuing chill in relations between Cuba and the U.S., González was cut off from his old friends and associates in American baseball.