Jorge Yuyo Ginóbili, Manu’s father and Bahía Blanca basketball figure, died

Jorge Héctor Ginóbili, the father of Emanuel Ginóbili, died this Friday in Bahía Blanca at the age of 81. Remembered for being one of the main promoters of basketball in the southern city of the Province of Buenos Aires, Yuyo He was a benchmark of the sport in the Bahiense del Norte club.

Yuyo Ginóbili was the father of Manu, Sebastián and Leandro Ginóbili, and had suffered from a degenerative disease for a long time.

When Manu Ginóbili entered the NBA Hall of Fame, he gave an emotional speech in which he dedicated some heartfelt words to his father: “Dad… how I wish you were here and could understand what is happening today. My first faithful and greatest follower. I miss you so much, old man”said the Argentine basketball player in September 2022.

Yuyo Ginóbili’s legacy is much bigger than the fact that he was the father of Manu, the best basketball player in the history of Argentina and one of the most influential foreigners in the NBA. His whole life revolved around the sport invented by James Naismith.

At the age of 10, according to the journalist Fernando Rodríguez, from La Nueva Provincia de Bahía Banca, he began to flirt with the orange ball while playing for Bahiense Juniors. There, as he reached meter 85, is where he began to shape himself as a point guard who had good shooting percentages from long distance.

He wore the number 5 shirt and at that club, where he was champion as a youth, he made his debut in the First Division at the age of 17. He even came to defend the shirt of the powerful selection of his city for a couple of years. It was also there that his nickname was born: his standing hairs helped an ingenious mind to compare them with the “field weeds”. And from then on, Jorge became Yuyo. For all.

Bahiense Juniors merged with Deportivo Norte in 1975 and that is when Bahiense del Norte was born. At that time, already working for Nobleza Piccardo -the tobacco company where he served for 39 years-, he decided to retire as a player to become the president of the new club.

He was in charge of the institution for a decade, with his wife, Raquel Maccari, as an unconditional bastion. Bahiense del Norte, one of the seedbeds in the national basketball capital, was his second home – the main one was on Vergara street. It was there that the personalities and talents of Leandro, Sebastián and Emanuel were formed and forged.