BBM EXTRA: MEXICAN LEAGUE CANCELS 2020 SEASON

The Mexican League has canceled its 2020 season, marking the first time in the loop's 95-year history that no games will have been played. After media outlets in Mexico reported earlier this week that the move was pending the LMB office in Mexico City issued this (translated) official statement on Wednesday:

Mexico City (lmb.com.mx) July 01 - The Mexican Baseball League (LMB) reports that, derived from the multiple meetings held with the federal health authorities as well as the arguments made by the State Governments regarding to the health of its inhabitants and conversations with Minor League Baseball (MiLB), to which we are affiliated, the 16 owners of the LMB teams together with the Mexican Baseball League have made the difficult decision not to carry out the 2020 season.

We owe much to Baseball and we had the firm objective of launching the activities of our sport. However, to date it is considered that the conditions do not exist that guarantee the integrity of our fans, players, members of the technical bodies, umpires and the staff of collaborators.

This determination was reached adhering to the indications and projections of the health authorities and the opening traffic light by state entity.

Being a responsible national league and with a great interest in evolving, we present the following actions:

1) The LMB and its 16 teams agree to provide financial support to the players as well as to the Umpires corps.

2) We will take advantage of the time of a forced pause to implement a deep re-engineering that will allow us to innovate and strengthen ourselves by 2021

3) We will generate a new and updated Governance System (Statutes and Regulations) that the LMB has not implemented in the last 30 years.

4) We will invest in the technological and digital transformation of the LMB, thus facing the challenges that the future has for our sport.

5) We will invest in a television and media infrastructure, turning our weakness into a strength towards the future.

For the first time in 95 years we are forced to make a resolution of this magnitude. However, be assured that upon our return, we will outline an advanced version as has never been seen in the history of the Mexican Baseball League.

In related news, the WBSC Under-23 Baseball World Cup, scheduled for Obregon and Los Mochis in October, has been postponed until 2021. We'll have complete stories on both developments in next Monday's edition of Baseball Mexico.