Cuban Baseball Hall of Fame
| Established | 1939 |
|---|---|
| Location | Estadio Latinoamericano, Havana |
| Number of inductees | 78 |
The Cuban Baseball Hall of Fame (Salón de la Fama del Béisbol Cubano) is a hall of fame that honors eminent baseball players from Cuban baseball. Established in 1939 to honor players, managers, and umpires in the pre-revolution Cuban League, by 1961 it had honored 68 players, managers, and umpires whose names are shown on a marble plaque at Havana's Estadio Latinoamericano. After the revolution, however, the Hall of Fame languished for more than 50 years, seldom mentioned or acknowledged and with no new inductees. Following a campaign led by Cuban filmmaker Ian Padrón, a meeting was held on November 7–8, 2014 to reformulate the Hall of Fame and to propose a museum in which it would be housed. The reformulated Hall recognized the original 68 members, and a jury of 25 people selected 10 new inductees—five from the pre-revolution period and five representing for the first time the post-revolution Cuban National Series. The planned site for the new museum is in the José Antonio Echeverría Workers' Social Club (also known as the Vedado Tennis Club).
The Cuban Baseball Hall of Fame was established by the DGND (Dirección General Nacional de Deportes), a government agency supervising sports activities in Cuba. The hall was inaugurated on July 26, 1939—about six weeks after the June 12 dedication and opening of the U.S. National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown—by placing a bronze plaque at Havana's La Tropical Stadium. The first ten inductees were selected by former and current baseball writers and the DGND's baseball advisers (asesores de baseball). The inaugural class included 19th-century Cuban stars (Antonio María García, Valentín González, Adolfo Luján, and Carlos Royer), black players who had achieved success in the U.S. Negro leagues (Luis Bustamante, José de la Caridad Méndez, Gervasio González, and Cristóbal Torriente), and white players who had played Major League Baseball (Rafael Almeida and Armando Marsans). Méndez and Torriente, along with later inductee Martín Dihigo, subsequently were also recognized by the U.S. Hall of Fame.
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