María Elena ("Mari") Batista is a former sports administrator in Puerto Rico. As the city of San Juan, Puerto Rico's longest-serving Director of Sports and Recreation from January 2001, to January 2012, she helped revive the previously underused and dilapidated Hiram Bithorn Stadium, attracting MLB's Opening Day Game in 2001, twenty-two yearly home games of the now defunct Montreal Expos in 2003 and 2004, the 2006 and 2009 World Baseball Classic games and a series of MLB New York Mets games in 2010. In the summer of 2006, she brought NBA's "Basketball Without Borders" program to San Juan. In September 2006, Mayor Jorge Santini inaugurated the San Juan Municipal Sports Magnet School. In December 2006, another of her projects, the $28 million San Juan Natatorium opened to the public and attracted winter training from over 10 stateside college swim teams, including the United States Military Academy. In March 2007 she personally began a campaign to rescue low-income youths who were dangerously diving off city bridges into polluted waters and introducing them to the diving facilities at the new Natatorium.