Twenty percent of Cuba’s population has fled the island in the more than half-century since Fidel Castro’s Marxist revolution. Roberto “Bobby” Maduro (1916–1986) was one of those two million-plus individuals compelled to abruptly leave behind an established career or cultural way of life.
Although he lost all of his wealth in the process, he was luckier than many Cuban émigrés in that he escaped with his immediate family unit intact. “I remember most of all my father as being a very dedicated, almost fanatically so, person who really cared about the game of baseball,” says Maduro’s oldest surviving son Jorge. “He had a mission to help Cuban kids to be able to develop a better life and proudly represent the country he loved so much. His most dedicated mission was trying to get his team into the major leagues.” That team was the Cuban Sugar Kings (1954-1960). A popular team both at home and away, the 1959 Sugar Kings won the AAA Junior World Series against the American Association’s Minneapolis Millers in a thrilling seven-game series. Perhaps no one in baseball history has worn as many important hats within the game as Bobby Maduro. He co-built the first million-dollar ballpark in Latin America (Gran Stadium del Cerro de la Habana).
His Havana stadium was confiscated by the Castro dictatorship. Maduro was also owner of multiple clubs, general manager, scout, agent, youth baseball organizer (Los Cubanitos), creator of baseball academies, major league baseball’s only named ambassador to Latin America (Coordinator of InterAmerican Relations, 1965-1978), and founder of a league. Bobby Maduro was a visionary baseball team owner and executive. His dedication to promoting the game internationally from the 1950s through the 1970s remains unrivaled.
He headed Havana-based clubs in the Cuban Winter League and teams in the U.S. minor leagues, which helped brand Caribbean baseball in the eyes of North American fans. Maduro began a new life in exile in the U.S., first as a minor league owner, then as a front office executive. He founded the short-lived Inter-American League in 1979, composed of five Caribbean-basin teams and one U.S. entry from his adopted hometown of Miami. In a life of selfless dedication to the sport he loved—spanning five decades of triumph and tribulation—Maduro tirelessly applied himself in all of his various capacities, with promotion and expansion as resonating themes in his major undertakings.
Former baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn said of his many achievements, “No one was more dedicated, more knowledgeable or more concerned about the game than Bobby Maduro.”
Lou Hernández is the author of several baseball histories and biographies, including Bobby Maduro and the Cuban Sugar Kings. Email: beisbolparaiso@msn.com
