Yoandry Garlobo Romay

Garlobo is a Cuban baseball player.

A native of Jovellanos, Matanzas. He gained fame in the baseball classic by finishing with an average of .480 points, even though he played as a backup.

Garlobo made his debut in the National Baseball Series of the island in 1996, and remained active for 16 seasons.

From his trajectory in the top Cuban tournaments, he left notable numbers, such as an excellent offensive average of .335, thanks to 1236 hits in his 3770 at-bats.

Furthermore, in his record appear 198 doubles, 33 triples and 109 home runs, along with 621 RBIs and 663 runs scored.

His most brilliant campaign was that of 2005-2006, when the Matanzas native accumulated 96 hits, including 12 doubles, a triple and 12 home runs, to round out an average of .407

He was included in several national selections, in which he offered good performance, such as in the 1995 Youth World Championship, held in the American city of Boston, when he was included in the All-Stars of the event.

But the brightest point of his successful career came during the inaugural edition of the Classic, when from the bench he became one of the pillars of the best result that Cuba achieved in the five editions of these tournaments.

Then Garlobo batted for .480, a figure only surpassed by the American legend of Major League Baseball (MLB), Ken Griffey Jr., among batters with 20 or more at-bats in the tournament.

In turn, he tied the number of hits (12) connected by another elite player of the best baseball on the planet, the Japanese Ichiro Suzuki, a performance that led him to be included in the All-Stars of the tournament as the most outstanding designated hitter.

It is worth noting that despite the fact that the team he belonged to in the Cuban league "Matanzas" was one of the lowest level in the Cuban tournament, Garlobo managed to stand out in the World Classic, when substituting for the regular batter he only had one option if he wanted to get into the Cuban lineup: to bat, and so it was with a forceful hit that gave hope to his team and earned him the right to continue as a regular for the rest of the tournament.

In the 47th Cuban National Baseball Series he won the batting title with an astronomical average of .398. He is one of the players called to make up the Cuba team for the upcoming Olympic Games.

After a time away from baseball he tried to return when manager Víctor Mesa took over the Matanzas Crocodiles, but his comeback never materialized, in part due to the health problems he was already suffering.

He died on July 15, 2023 at the age of 46, due to a decompensation of the diabetes he suffered from.