BROWNSVILLE'S MALDONADO A TRUE BASEBALL LEGEND

Special to El Rrun-Rrun

The late Juan Ybarra, who once tried out as a pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, when asked who he thought was the best local baseball player in recent history, would not hesitate for a moment.

"That would be Pancho Maldonado," Ybarra would say. "Frank could throw, hit, field and run the bases like no one else. He was an all-round baseballer."

His bateria, Pete Avila, who would catch for Ybarra, echoed the praise of Maldonado.

"He was a legend," Avila, a former county constable and a baseball player into his 80s, said. "He knew all the basics and could also coach."

Maldonado, on May 2, passed away at 93.

Maldonado was featured on the front page of "Mexican American Baseball in South Texas" Richard A. Santillán, Gregory Garrett, Juan D. Coronado, Jorge Iber and Roberto Zamora, all renown academics. 

In the book, they say that Maldonado played in the era from the late 19th century through the 1950s, when "baseball in South Texas provided opportunities for nurturing athletic and educational skills, reaffirming ethnic identity, promoting political self-determination, developing economic autonomy, and reshaping gender roles for women."

The games were "special times where Mexican Americans found refuge from backbreaking work and prejudice."

His obituary and numerous news stories narrate how this multi-sports athlete broke into sports after his birth in 1924 in Berclair, a hamlet southeast of Goliad, Texas and his family moved to Brownsville. Little dis anyone know that he would loom large in local sports lore and become an all-district performer at Brownsville High School during the late 1930s who later embarked on a lengthy coaching career.

 From 1942 to 1954, he participated in basketball and baseball in four different countries- playing basketball, military service baseball and semi-pro baseball.

He was inducted into the Rio Grande Valley Sports Hall of Fame in 2000. Maldonado was all-district in basketball and football for the BHS Eagles from 1939 to 1941, and once played against Mission native and fellow Hall of Famer Tom Landry.

“I played against him in one basketball game in a tournament, and we just happened to play Mission in that tournament,” Maldonado told the Brownsville Herald.

He went on to play football and basketball at Brownsville Junior College before Maldonado’s athletic career was interrupted by World War II.

Maldonado served with the Army Medical Corps in New Guinea and the Philippines, and was on hand for the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the biggest naval battle of World War II. When he was a child, Maldonado’s father owned a bakery, La Poblanita, across the street from Fort Brown.

“I used to see the soldiers march every morning,” he said. "By 6 o’clock or 6:30, I was already up. I never did think that a few years afterwards I was going to be part of that.”

Maldonado came home from the military in 1946 and tried out for the New York Giants before attending the University of Colorado on a baseball scholarship. He was a regular first baseman for the Buffaloes from 1949 to 1950. After graduation he returned to the Valley, organizing an RGV semi-professional baseball league in 1956.

He also played football and basketball in 1946-1947 at Brownsville Junior College. In 1946, he was given a professional baseball tryout with the New York Giants farm system and played semi-pro baseball with the Brownsville Charros and Donna Cardinals in 1947-48. 

In 1946-47, Maldonado coached the Packard Clippers and then went back to college and played varsity baseball at the University of Colorado in 1949-50. The picture on the cover of the Suth Texa baseball book shows him in a batting stance with the Buffaloes.

In 1959, he coached McAllen High School baseball to the South Zone district title, the first McAllen team championship in 10 years. He then joined the Brownsville High football coaching staff as a varsity assistant in 1962, helping the team reach the State Quarterfinals. He then entered private business in 1967. On October 1998 and October 2017, he was honored by "Leo Najo" Day Baseball Hall of Fame. He was inducted into the Rio Grande Valley Sports Hall of Fame in 2000.

A proclamation was issued by the Mayor and the Commission of the City of Brownsville on May 2, 2017, honoring Mr. Maldonado as a citizen of Brownsville for all his accomplishments and contributions to the community.

"Frank was a seminal figure in local sports and we all looked up to him," Avila recalls. "He was a true talent and coach. We will see him again in the big diamond in the sky."