Mother of NBA Player, Wife of Yankees Executive Found Dead: Report

Rachel Minaya, the wife of New York Yankees executive Omar Minaya and the mother of Portland Trail Blazer forward Justin Minaya, was found dead in her home Saturday, according to the New York Post.

According to the report, Minaya, 55, was alone in her New Jersey home on Saturday when she was discovered.

According to a person who had been briefed by the family, the Post reported that suicide was ruled out as a cause of Minaya’s death.

Law enforcement in Harrington Park, N.J., and Bergen County, where the Minayas reportedly live, declined comment when contacted by a local radio station.

A native of New Jersey, Rachel Minaya was 55, according to multiple reports.

A veteran of the New York Mets, Montreal Expos, and San Diego Padres’ front offices, Omar Minaya previously worked for Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players’ Association. He was hired by the Yankees as a senior advisor to the baseball operations department in Jan. 2023.

Read more: Yankees Not Interested in Top Starting Pitcher on Trade Market: Report

Justin Minaya has been playing for the Trail Blazers’ summer league squad in Las Vegas, Nevada. Minaya was listed as inactive for the Blazers’ game Sunday against the Houston Rockets. In four Summer League games, Minaya has averaged 20.6 minutes, 8.5 points, 3.3 rebounds and 1.8 assists.

Omar and Rachel met in 1989 at a hair salon in New York City, according to a Sports Illustrated profile of Omar Minaya from 2007:

One day in 1989 O was getting a haircut in a Manhattan unisex salon. Nearby reclined a female customer, long, lithe, and olive-skinned. Part Irish, part African: O’s kind of cocktail.

Dilemma. Richard, the hairstylist, was looking at O the way O was looking at her. “Lay low, Richard,” he’d had to murmur. “Just a haircut.” How, now, could O ask him to ask her for her phone number? Easy—he’s O. Richard sighed and returned with Rachel Albright’s number.

Within a year O had her on Via dell’Amore in Castiglione della Pescaia, requesting her hand in marriage, and three years later they were raising a toddler named Teddy in Texas.

Omar Minaya got his start in baseball as a scout for the Texas Rangers. In the Sports Illustrated profile, Minaya said he considered adding controversial pitcher John Rocker, who previously made racist remarks about New York to Sports Illustrated years earlier and would have acquired the reliever had it not been for his wife’s disapproval.