He was not on the list.
HAVANA – Family members say Conrado Marrero, the oldest living former Major League Baseball player, has died in Havana. He was 102, just two days short of his 103rd birthday.
Grandson Rogelio Marrero confirmed the death Wednesday afternoon.
Marrero was a diminutive right-hander from Cuba who went by the nickname "Connie" when he pitched for the Washington Senators in the 1950s.
He was renowned for his control and for his presence on the mound despite standing just 5 feet 5 inches tall and weighing 158 pounds.
Marrero was born April 25, 1911, in the town of Sagua la Grande, about 220 miles (350 kilometers) east of Havana.
He became the oldest living ex-Major Leaguer in February 2011 after the death of former Brooklyn Dodgers infielder Tony Malinosky.
Marrero's career Cuban League record was 69–43. His .600 winning percentage is the sixth highest in league history among pitchers with at least 40 wins. (Of the five pitchers with a higher career winning percentage, three are in the U.S. Baseball Hall of Fame—José Méndez, Ray Brown and Martín Dihigo; the other two are Carlos Royer and Camilo Pascual.) Despite not pitching in the Cuban League until he was 35 years old, his 69 victories ranks 10th on the Cuban League all-time list.
From 1947 to 1949, Marrero pitched for the Havana Cubans in the Florida International League. The team was a minor league affiliate of the Washington Senators. In 1947 Marrero went 25–6 and led the league in wins (25), complete games (28), strikeouts (251), shutouts (seven) and ERA (1.66). On July 12, 1947, Marrero pitched a no hitter against the Tampa Smokers, allowing only one base runner on a hit by pitch. The Cubans finished in first place with a 105–45 record. The Cubans also won the playoffs against the Miami Sun Sox and the Tampa Smokers, with Marrero pitching two shutouts.
In 1948, Marrero went 20–11 with a 1.67 ERA. The Cubans again finished in first place with a 97–57 record, their third consecutive title. In the playoffs they beat both the Lakeland Pilots and the Tampa Smokers. In 1949 Marrero won the league MVP award after going 25–8 with 11 shutouts and a 1.53 ERA. He set a league record by pitching 44 consecutive scoreless innings. Havana again finished in first place with a 95–57 record (the fourth of their five consecutive first-place finishes) and beat Miami Beach in the first round of the playoffs. In the second round, however, the Cubans were swept by Tampa, with Marrero losing to Tampa's Oscar del Calvo.
After five years with the major league Washington Senators, Marrero returned to Havana to play with the minor league team from 1955 to 1957. In 1954, the team had moved to the International League and had been renamed the Havana Sugar Kings. Marrero didn't travel with the team, pitching only for their home games. In 1955 he went 7–3, pitched five shutouts (one of them a one-hitter), and had a 2.69 ERA. In 1956, the 45-year-old pitcher pitched only 45 innings and went 3–1. His only loss was to an even older pitcher, Miami's Satchel Paige. In 1957, Marrero pitched only five innings in three games, as his pitching career came to an end.
From 1950 to 1954, Marrero pitched for the American League Washington Senators. During that period, Washington's roster also included a number of other Cuban players, such as pitchers Sandy Consuegra and Camilo Pascual and catcher Mike Guerra. The Senators were a second division team, never finishing higher than fifth place in the eight-team league while Marrero pitched for them. His first major league appearance came on April 21, 1950. In 1950 he pitched 152 innings in 27 games (19 of them starts), and finished with a 6–10 record and a 4.50 ERA.
In 1951, Marrero led his team in wins and innings pitched, going 11–9 in 187 innings with a 3.90 ERA. On April 26, 1951, he pitched a one-hitter against the Philadelphia Athletics, beating them 2–1. The only hit given up by Marrero was a home run by Barney McCosky.
In 1952, he went 11–8 with a 2.88 ERA (ninth in the league), as Washington improved to a 78–76 record. The following year he went 8–7 with a 3.03 ERA. In 1954 he was the oldest player in the major leagues, as he slipped to 3–6 with a 4.75 ERA. On January 24, 1955, the 43-year-old Marrero was released by the Senators.
Marrero finished his major league career with a 39–40 record and a 3.67 ERA, which was eight percent better than the league average (after adjusting for ballpark differences). He pitched 51 complete games, including seven shutouts, in his 94 starts. He was selected to the 1951 American League All-Star team, though he didn't play; at age 40, he was the oldest first-time All-Star to that point.
After retiring as a player, Marrero became a coach for the Havana Sugar Kings. He was listed as a scout in 1960 by the Boston Red Sox during Bucky Harris's term as Boston's general manager.
After the Cuban Revolution, Marrero was one of the most prominent players to remain in Cuba under Fidel Castro, thereby providing a link between the old professional Cuban League and the new amateur Cuban national baseball system and its Cuban National Series. He was a pitching coach for several years for the Havana Industriales and was also a roving pitching instructor. Marrero is a respected figure in Cuba; his portrait is shown on a mural at Estadio Latinoamericano, and he threw out the first pitch at the 1984 baseball World Championship. He also threw out the first pitch at the 1999 Baltimore Orioles – Cuban national baseball team exhibition series.
In 2006, Marrero was featured along with his Almendares teammate, Hall of Famer Monte Irvin, in a documentary about Cuban baseball, "The Bases Are Loaded." He did not draw a major league pension and was reported to be living modestly in a room in a relative's Havana apartment. As recently as early 2007, a baseball tour of Cuba advertised that participants would have an opportunity to visit with the 95-year-old Marrero.
On April 25, 2013, Marrero celebrated his 102nd birthday with family and friends, "an unlit Cuban cigar in his mouth and a baseball cap on his head." Earlier in the year, he received a $20,000 payout from Major League Baseball, a payment granted to those who had played between 1947 and 1979, which had been held up due to issues surrounding the United States's embargo on Cuba. Marrero was a fan of the current Cienfuegos team.[28] Marrero died on April 23, 2014, at his home in Havana just 2 days shy of his 103rd birthday. According to Wikipedia's List of MLB player Centenarians, Marrero is the second oldest living major league baseball player of all time (102 years, 363 days).
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