The first 10 legendary Cuban baseball players to be added to the newly reopened Cuban Baseball Hall of Fame received plaques recognizing them as immortal baseball stars in a ceremony held prior to the 28th All-Star Game on December 28.
Esteban Bellán, Camilo Pascual, Orestes Miñoso, Amado Maestri and symbolically Conrado Marrero, plus Omar Linares, Luis Giraldo Casanova, Orestes Kindelán, Braudilio Vinent and Antonio Muñoz received their awards in the Mártires de Barbados stadium in Bayamo, the capital of Granma province.
Last November 7, in Havana’s Latinoamericano stadium, a panel of judges including 25 commentators and historians of the sport, elected from dozens of participants at the event to re-establish the Hall, voted for its first new members, five pre-1959 stars and five players from that year onward.
Bellán, Pascual, Miñoso, the umpire Maestri and Marrero stood out between 1874 and 1961, when the last selection was made, while Linares, Casanova, Kindelán, Vinent and Muñoz shone in the subsequent National Series, as the Cuban baseball season tournament has been called since the triumph of the Revolution.
The Cuban Baseball Federation, led by President Heriberto Suárez, decided to withdraw the numbers used by the last five players included in the Hall from the jerseys used by their provincial teams.
Thus, the Pinar del Río team will no longer use numbers 10 or 14 on their uniforms as these identified Linares and Casanova, respectively.
Nor will the numbers 35 and 46 be used on jerseys in Santiago de Cuba, in honor of Vinent and Kindelán, or the number 5 that Muñoz made emblematic for the Cienfuegos team.
