NARANJEROS TAKE LMP LEAD, ELIZALDE HITTING .429

Hermosillo OF Jose Cardona

    The Hermosillo Naranjeros are one of the proudest teams in Mexico. Dating back to the 1940's (when the team was known as the Queliteros), Hermosillo has won a total of 19 pennants in four winter leagues, the most recent being in 2013-14 under manager Matias Carrillo, who also led that year's squad to their second Caribbean Series title. Since then, the team has gone through manager after manager seeking another flag for the Orangemen. The latest occupant of the perpetually-hot seat in Hermosillo is Juan Gabriel Castro, a former Dodgers infielder and Mexican National Team manager who has already become very well-aquainted with the vagaries of managing a baseball team south of the border.

    Castro inherited the reins of the Naranjeros from ex-skipper Juan Navarrete during the season last winter and led them to a 36-32 regular season record (21-18 under his command) before a first round playoff loss to Monterrey in seven games. He got the chance to start this season at the helm of the team and thus far has the Naranjeros at 8-3 out the gate to lead the LMP standings, good for a one-game lead over Guasave and two games up on four other teams. Defending champion Jalisco is tenth and last at 3-8.

    The Naranjeros are a veteran outfit with the likes of thirtysomethings Maxwell Leon, Luis Alfonso Cruz, Walter Ibarra and Fernando Salas along with relative youngsters Roberto Ramos, Nick Torres, Jasson Atondo and Jose Cardona. Thus far, Cardona (an eight-year Texas farmhand who hit .389 for Jalisco in last winter's Caribbean Series) is hitting .319 with three doubles, a triple and 11 runs scored in as many games while Ramos and Torres have seven homers and 19 RBIs between them.

    Hermosillo's pitching has been solid, if unspectacular, as Salas has two saves in five appearances and has yet to be scored upon while another vet hurler, Juan Pablo Oramas, is 2-0 with a 0.84 ERA and 11 strikeouts in two starts. While it's far too early to think about the postseason with 58 games and two-plus months left in the regular season, Castro is hoping to be a rarity with the Naranjeros: A manager who lasts two full seasons in orange and black.

    One player who's off to a hot start is veteran outfielder-first baseman Sebastian Elizalde of Culiacan. Now in his 12th Mex Pac season (starting at the tender age of 18 with Hermosillo in 2010-11), Elizalde is the only .400 hitter in the early LMP going with a .429 average, 35 points ahead of Mexicali's Leo Heras at .394. Hermosillo's Torres is tied with Felix Perez of Monterrey with four homers each while Perez, who's also hitting .366, is leading with 14 RBIs, three up on Torres and Navojoa's Ian Sagdal. Justin Dean (Los Mochis) and Jared Oliva (Obregon) are tied at the top of the stolen base charts with six apiece.

    At least eight pitchers are tied with two wins each, among them Guasave's Jeff Kinley, Braulio Torres-Perez of Mazatlan and Navojoa righty Luis Payan (who are all sporting 0.00 ERAs less than two weeks into the schedule). Fabian Cota of Los Mochis had four strikeouts in his last start to raise his total to 14, one more than Kinley. Brandon Koch has been a standout as Guasave's new closer, saving each of the Algodoneros' seven wins to lead the loop, while Mazatlan's Elkin Alcala has five salvados for the Venados.

MEXICAN PACIFIC LEAGUE Standings: Hermosillo 8-3, Guasave 7-4, Los Mochis 6-5, Mazatlan 6-5, Mexicali 6-5, Navojoa 6-5, Culiacan 5-6, Monterrey 4-7, Obregon 4-7, Jalisco 3-8.

MEXICO FALLS SHORT IN U-23 GOLD CUP BRONZE GAME

Angel Camacho at 13 in 2017

    Despite taking a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the first inning when Angel Camacho motored home from third base on a Lee Chen-hsun wild pitch, Mexico went scoreless the rest of the way in a 3-1 loss to host Taiwan in Sunday's Bronze medal game at the World Baseball Softball Confederation's U-23 Baseball Gold Cup tournament in Taipei.

    After surprise starter Nestor Anguamea (who'd been Mexico's closer) pitched a 1-2-3 top of the first, Camacho hit a leadoff single off Lee, took second on an Aldo Nunez bunt and moved to third on a bunt by Jose Zepeda before scampering home when Lee uncorked a wild pitch to Brandon Valenzuela. Lee settled down to end the inning without any further damage and went on to limit the Mexicans to two more singles through the fifth frame, retiring the last eight batters he faced before giving way to reliever Chuang Hsin-yen in the sixth.

    By then, Taiwan had taken the lead after tying the score on Chen Sheng-ping's RBI double in the top of the second and then going up 3-1 one inning later on Chen's two-run single up the middle off reliever Erubiel Armenta, who had just replaced Anguemea with the bases loaded. Armenta and three relievers held Taiwan scoreless for the next four innings while Chuang pitched two perfect entradas for the hosts as 481 onlookers watched at Tianmu Stadium. Besides Camacho, Zepeda and Hugo Sanchez singled for Mexico but no runner reached base after the third inning. Later in the Gold medal game, Japan shut out South Korea, 3-0, as Asian teams took all three medals home.

    It was somewhat miraculous that Mexico got as far as they did. They advanced to the Super Round with five other teams despite being shut out in both of their last two First Round games: a 2-0 loss to Cuba last Tuesday in what had been a scoreless contest until the Cubans pushed two runs across in the top of the seventh, followed by a 1-0 defeat to South Korea in Wednesday's make-up of an earlier rainout. That one was likewise scoreless until the Koreans scored the game's lone run in the top of the eighth on a throwing error by Mexican catcher Valenzeula, who was trying to nail tiebreak lead runner Kim Tae-yun at third after Kim had first advanced from second on a throwing error by reliever Manuel Castro.

    Despite failing to score over their last 15 innings and collecting eight hits over the two shutouts, Mexico was one of five Group B teams to finish 2-3 behind 5-0 South Korea, and was waved to the Super Round along with Australia due to tiebreaker arcana we won't go into here (life is short enough already).

    Mexico then went 2-1 in the Super Round, starting with a 4-3 win over Colombia last Thursday in which they overcame a 3-1 deficit with three fifth-inning runs thanks to a pair of walks and a wild pitch (all with the bases loaded). Camacho and Valenzuela each had two of Mexico's eight hits in the game.

    That was followed by 2-1 Friday shocker over host Taiwan in eight innings. Mexico recorded ten singles for the night, none more important than Ruben Salinas' poke to left field that allowed Zepeda to score from third with the go-ahead run. After getting the last two outs of the seventh, Castro held the Formosans hitless in the bottom of the eighth to nail down the victory.

    Mexico suffered their first loss of the Super Round Sunday in a 4-2 defeat at the hands of 2016 Gold Cup champion Japan. The game wasn't that close, with the Japanese scoring a run in the second inning and three more in the third as Kanta Aiba and Kaido Saida had RBI singles. Mexico finally got on the scoreboard via Salinas' bases-loaded walk in the sixth and Zepeda's double in the seventh bringing in Christopher Escarrega, but manager Che Reyes' team had just three hits overallas Japan's Raiku Katayama tossed five no-hit innings in another Mexican offensive meltdown after two solid games at the plate. Japan advanced to the title game against South Korea with the win while Mexico was sent to the third-place game against Taiwan. Sunday's loss dropped the Mexicans' overall record to 4-5 for a fourth-place finish in the 12-team tournament.

    Mexico hit .203 as a team for the Gold Cup. Camacho's .333 average the only one above .250 among individual players. A California native, Camacho's nine hits led the team, as did his one triple. Valenzuela and Javier Sanchez had three RBIs each while 2021 Mexican Winter League batting champion Oliver Carrillo's four runs scored were tops.

    The pitching was much better, as the squad turned in a collective 1.59 ERA. Castro was 2-1 in relief and one of four hurlers with a 0.00 ERA. Fernando Sanchez had no decisions in two starts but he had a 1.50 ERA while his 15 strikeouts in 9.1 innings led Mexico. Anguamea's ERA went from 0.00 to 3.32 with his rocky start against Taiwan in the Bronze medal game and he finished 0-2, but he also had both saves at the World Cup.

WHERE DO THIS YEAR'S LMP PLAYERS COME FROM?

    

While most of the the 300 players on the Mexican Pacific League's opening night rosters overwhelmingly hail from Mexico, to the surprise of nobody, there are many countries that contribute talent to the Mex Pac's ten teams. Writer Christan Vernet of Mexico's ScoreDeportes website recently took a deep dive into the numbers to find out exactly where these guys DO come from. Here are translated and edited excerpts from his column on the matter (thanks to Carlos Fragoso of Mexico City for forwarding the story):

    Two Mexican locales with a rich history and baseball tradition, Sonora and Sinaloa, top the list of States in Mexico with the largest number of players represented, according to birthplaces listed on the Mexican Pacific league's opening rosters.

    This article shows the distribution of the origin of the 300 baseball players who started in the rosters of the 10 teams for their respective opening games of the 2022-2023 season of the Mexican Pacific League. The players and places of birth were listed by the 10 teams on their respective rosters, which were distributed to representatives of the media.

    There are 234 players born in Mexican territory, or 78 percent of the total of players. In addition, there are 7 other nations represented, led by the United States, which has 52 (17.3%), including players who are regarded as Mexican “nationals.” The overall percentage of foreigners born outside of Mexico is 66 playrs, or 22 percent. Cuba is the second foreign country with the most players with seven (2.3%), followed by Colombia with three (1%) and the rest are Germany, Brazil, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico with one each (0.3%).

    Now it's time to distribute them by states: Sinaloa is unsurprisingly number one in that category, since of the 234 Mexicans, 67 (28.6%) were born in Sinaloan territory. Sonora is number two with 62 players, or 26.5 percent.

    In total there are 22 states of the Mexican Republic represented. Third place is occupied by Baja California Norte with 31 (13.2%), followed by Jalisco with 12 (5.1%), then Coahuila and Nuevo León with 9 apiece (3.8%). The “Top Ten” is completed by Veracruz with 6 (2.6%), Baja California Sur, Chihuahua and Yucatan with 5 each (2.1%).

    Regarding the distribution by municipalities, Ahome, a suburb of Los Mochis, is the leader of all with a total of 30 players, or 12.8% of the 234 Mexican baseball players. Hermosillo and Cajeme are tied for second place with 19 baseball players (8.1%), followed by Guasave with 14 (6%), Tijuana and Culiacán each have a dozen (5.1%) while Mexicali and Mazatlán both have 10, or 4.3%.

    Looking at the United States, California has 21 players, which could be the fourth best mixed with those in Mexico, just behind Sinaloa (67), Sonora (62) and Baja California Norte (31). California has 40.4 percent of the LMP's American 52 players, followed by Texas with 6 (11.5%), Arizona has 5 (9.6%), Florida and Illinois have 3 each (5.8%) and Indiana has 2 (3.8%). In total, there are 18 US states.

    As for the foreign cities with the largest number of players, they are Cartagena, Colombia; Havana, Cuba; and Dallas, Texas (all with 3), followed by Camagüey, Cuba; Tucson, Arizona; and Anaheim and Long Beach, California with 2 each.

    The Mexcali Aguilas have the most players born outside of Mexico with nine, while Guasave, Obregon and Los Mochis have 8 each followed by Hermosillo (7), Culiacan (6) and Mazatlan, Monterrey, Jalisco and Navojoa with the minimum regulatory amount of 5.

    These are only numbers and statistics of places of origin of the players who started the season. In January, we'll have a second installment to know the origin of all the players who participated during the season.

DIABLOS OPEN NEW BALLPARK WITH LOSS TO PADRES

Full house at Estadio Alfredo Harp Helu opener

While it's rarely fun to lose a lopsided exhibition baseball game to a team of prospects, players with the Mexico City Diablos Rojos may be forgiven if they were smiling after such a result last Saturday in the nation's capital.  The Red Devils were pounded, 11-1, by a collection of San Diego Padres minor leaguers but the game itself took second billing to its environs as over 20,000 fans packed the stands at Estadio Alfredo Harp Helu, the Diablos' brand-new home.

The man for whom the ballpark was named (after he provided all funding for its construction) was the Man of the Hour during pregame ceremonies.  Also known as Don Alfredo, Harp addressed the capacity crowd by thanking the people who built the stands they were sitting in.  "I want to thank the more than nine thousand people who participated in the construction of this dream, the construction of the home of the Diablos Rojos," Harp said.  "With this, we show that we can do great things together.  Mexico is a championship country and we will continue to be a championship country.  I hope that together, we will enjoy our new home."

Mexican president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has practically become a ubiquitous presence at baseball events south of the border as a power-broker in the sport and an ally of billionaire Harp.  AMLO was on hand for Saturday's opener and took part in the pregame ceremony.  Although Puro Beisbol reports that many in the crowd booed the country's new leader, Lopez Obrador revelled in the moment, telling those in attendance, "We will support baseball, a sport that requires intelligence, heart and a lot of passion."

The game itself was almost anticlimactic and, for all intent and purposes, settled somewhat early.  The Diablos took a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the third inning when Jesus Fabela (back from his trip to Japan with the Mexican National Team) scored the stadium's first run from third base on an Adonis Garcia sacrifice fly, but the Padres roared back with four scores in the top of the fourth to take the lead.  San Diego scored four more times in the sixth, with a two-run homer by Michael Gettys giving the visitors an 8-1 lead and effectively salting the contest away.  Despite the final 11-1 score, few (if any) attendees went home disappointed.

Prior to Saturday's game (the first of two played between the two sides over the weekend), a number of Mexican players with the Padres visited with players and coaches from the Liga Olmeca, a Mexico City youth baseball organization and Little League Baseball affiliate headed by Carlos Fragoso, who has scouted for both the Red Sox and Yankees over the years while building strong ties within Mexican baseball.  In his Septima Entrada column for Solo Beisbol, writer Gilberto Ruiz Razo said that Esteban Quiroz and Luis Urias were among those San Diego players expected to spend time at the Liga Olmeca facility.  Ruiz added that Fragoso is a longstanding friend of Monterrey Sultanes co-owner Jose "Pepe" Maiz, who was a member of Monterrey's 1957 Little League World Series champions (along with Hector Torres and Angel Macias) and instrumental in Liga Olmeca's later inclusion as an LLB affiliate.


LMP LEADERS DISCUSS EXPANSION DRAFT, PLAYOFF FORMAT

Guasave ballpark will see extensive renovations

Executives from the Mexican Pacific League met in Culiacan recently to talk about developments regarding the LMP's two new teams as well as a potential change in next winter's playoff format (including the elimination of the "lucky loser" method of advancing teams who lose their first round series to the second stage of the postseason.

According to Puro Beisbol editor Fernando Ballesteros, MexPac president Omar Canizales was at Culiacan's Fiesta Inn Hotel with LMP league directors Hector Ley of Culiacan and Joaquin Vega from Los Mochis Caneros to confer with representatives from the league's two new franchises, the Monterrey Sultanes and Guasave Algodoneros.  Although the Monterrey entry will be owned by the same Multimedios group that oversees the city's Mexican League club (along with part-owner Jose "Pepe" Maiz), the LMP version of the Sultanes will be operated separately from their summer LMB counterpart.  Rosters will not carry over from one team to the other, although it's possible that some players may perform double duty without changing cities.  Mexico's president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador facilitated Monterrey's entry into winter baseball to partner with Guasave, where AMLO promised the return of the MexPac during his campaign last year.

 The Algodoneros are partly owned by a group of Guasave businessmen who will operate the team, but they will be largely underwritten by Mexico City Diablos owner Alfredo Harp Helu.  Harp will be funding the majority of an offseason renovation of Estadio Francisco Carranza Limon for 120 million pesos, which is approximately US$6 million.  The ballpark was completed when Guasave joined the LMP along with Navojoa in 1970 and was used for 44 seasons (with some 2002 upgrades) before the original Algodoneros were sold to moved to Guadalajara in 2014.  It'll be expanded from 8,000 to 10,000 seats in time for October's opener.  The facility's traditional playing surface was smallish: Both foul lines are 305 feet away from home plate while the centerfield wall is a chummy 375 feet away.

Franchise fees for the respective new entries were considered with Guasave, the loop's smallest market, expected to have received a price break.  An expansion draft was also discussed and a format comparable to when Arizona and Tampa Bay joined Major League Baseball was decided upon.  Each existing Mexican Pacific League team will be allowed to protect 18 players on their current rosters.

Finally, the LMP playoffs were restructured into a three-stage competition involving the top eight teams. The league opted to align as a single entity of ten teams rather than split into two five-deam divisions while the 68-game regular season schedule was retained for 2019-20.


TOROS P BARREDA COMPLAINS ABOUT LMB'S NEW FRANKLIN BALL

Manny Barreda celebrates no-hitter for Caneros

The Mexican League is switching to Franklin baseballs this season after decades of using Rawlings balls.  The Liga announced the signing of a multiyear agreement with Franklin in February that also includes the manufacture and public sales of licensed team products and merchandise.  Franklin's new OL4000 baseball will be used.

It didn't take long for one of a group of people whose success depends on what they throw to register his concerns.  Tijuana pitcher Manny Barreda was quoted on the Hitazo site last Tuesday as saying the Mexican League had not sent the new balls to the Toros training camp in Tucson, Arizona yet.  "It's difficult.  It's not long before the season and we haven't really tested them," Barreda said.  "We don't know how they look and we don't know how it'll feel in our hands.  We don't know how it's going to work, like how our pitches will break."

A 30-year-old Arizonan who spent eight years as a reliever in the Yankees organization before becoming a starter with Los Mochis in 2016-17, Barreda subsequently authoring two no-hitters months apart in both the LMB and LMP (using 138 and 135 pitches, respectively).  He was 5-3 with a 2.63 ERA in 11 starts for Culiacan over winter after splitting last summer between the rotation and the bullpen with Tijuana.  The 5'11" righty does seem certain in advance of one likely feature of the new ball:  "We do know it'll fly farther.  It's the show that they (the Liga) want to give to the fans and we as pitchers will be affected.

Barreda doesn't think his fellow pitchers will easily adapt to the Franklin ball.  "It's something very different," he said.  "We've been pitching all our career with the Rawlings ball.  It's thrown in the minor leagues, in winter and summer.

"Now that we have to change it, we're not very happy about that."

Fragoso elected Presidente of Mexico's largest Little League

Whether you attend a pro baseball game in Phoenix, Puebla or Pawtucket, you’re watching athletes who’ve been honing their craft on baseball diamonds for years, even decades.  For nearly all ballplayers, the process of becoming good enough to draw a paycheck begins when they’re grade schoolers, and the yellow-brick road leading to Fenway Park or Estadio Monterrey almost invariably starts on the scaled-down fields of Little League Baseball.  Anyone who has played baseball seriously will tell you just how hard baseball is to play WELL, no matter how gifted you are or where you’re playing it.

Mexico’s largest Little League organization is the Liga Olmeca in Mexico City, where nearly 1,000 boys and girls first swing a bat in earnest and can spend years learning the fundamentals of the sport such as how to field a grounder to their right, hitting against pitchers who can throw breaking stuff and turning a double play around second base.  Since its formation in 1963, the Liga Olmeca has produced future major league pitcher Rodrigo Lopez (AL Rookie of the Month in July 2002 while hurling for the Orioles) along with numerous minor league and college players.  Former Chiquita CEO Fernando Aguirre, who is also owner of the Class AA Erie Seawolves and a minority owner of the Cincinnati Reds, also learned to play ball in the Liga Olmeca.  However, the organization’s new president, Carlos Fragoso, says the focus isn’t on discovering future MLB or LMB players but rather on the traditional Little League values of “helping boys and girls develop into a future valuable citizen through the practice of baseball.  If we happen to find a prospect, well, that will be a plus.”

Fragoso (pictured next to Ken Griffey Jr. at a Liga Olmeca clinic) is a native of Obregon, Sonora who now lives in Mexico City and has worked as an engineer with Siemens for several years.  He is also a certified baseball nut who is godfather to Dodgers star Adrian Gonzalez and has served as an advance scout for both the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees.  He was unanimously voted in as Liga Olmeca president last Sunday in Mexico City, and will begin his term in August.  

Salon de la Fama member Tomas Morales, a leading Mexican cronista since the days of Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio (think a Latino version of Shirley Povich), devoted his Tommy al Bat column to Fragoso on Monday and I’m barely smart enough to know his words carry more weight than mine.  Here is a translated version of Tommy’s column in its entirety:

For the first time in the history of Little League of Baseball in the capital, a Major League scout was named president of one of the circuits.  That’s what happened on Sunday when the Liga Olmeca chose engineer Carlos Fragoso as the new boss of this circuit, which is considered the jewel of the crown between Little League Baseball organizations in the DF, having the best fields for the practice of the king of sports. Fragoso is currently a scout for the New York Yankees as the right arm of Lee Sigman in Mexico City, and has for several years been linked to the Olmec League that has now elected him as the new president.

Throughout his life Carlos Fragoso has been a lover of our King of Sports and some years ago, as a scout of the Boston Red Sox, discovered the young pitcher Luis Alonso Mendoza, who was signed by Lee Sigman on the recommendation of the engineer, reached the Major Leagues with the Texas Rangers and Kansas City Royals, is currently pitching in Japan and whose right of return is held by the Mexico City Diablos Rojos.  For the Red Sox, Fragoso also signed left-handed pitcher Mauricio Lara, who was injured but after recovering has had a good run on the Mexican ball.  His contacts in baseball meant that past Liga Olmeca season inaugurations were attended by Major League players like Edgar Gonzalez as well as pitchers Alfredo Aceves and Fernando Salas.

Now Carlos Fragoso has put his back into the intense work that will be to successfully lead the destinies of the Olmec League in this new season that started on Sunday with the election of a new president. Of course it is not an easy task to take the reins of this Little League that numbers a population of almost a thousand young people between 3 and 21 years of age who play on the fields of Liga Olmeca, including girls softball.  Carlos Fragoso told us that his main goal is to consolidate the good path that has led the league over the years and praised the work that the previous presidents have done.  One of the goals set by the new president is to improve the quality of baseball that is played, and for this he announced that the Liga Olmeca will take part in tournaments as famous as Williamsport as well as the International Pony League.

Fragoso has the full support of the Mexican Amateur Baseball Federation, which was represented on Sunday in the Liga Olmeca by the president of that body, Enrique Mayorga, and treasurer Carlos Buenrostro, who is also in charge of overseeing all The Little and Juvenile Leagues of the capital.  Fragoso, Mayorga and Buenrostro all came to play in those tournaments of the Metropolitan League with pleasant memories of what for a long time had Social Security Park as a stage, and who one of the founders and president of the circuit for many years was the unforgettable gift Miguel Oropeza.

Fragoso will have a lot of positives to start working with, including a complex of fields (with clubhouses and a food court) considered among Mexico’s best Little League facilities with in-house groundskeepers and maintenance workers.  A crew of 14 full-time trainers and coaches works with the Liga Olmeca’s young ballplayers drawn from the hemisphere’s second-largest city of 21 million inhabitants.

Conversely, the Liga Olmeca now has one more positive to work with: Carlos Fragoso will be occupying their Presidente’s chair.

1,000th BBM post coming Monday: A look back

Sometimes stream-of-consciousness writing goes sideways, especially when you go into it without an exit strategy.  That’s what happened when I first wrote this story on Friday and ended up with over 1,500 words.  Too much, so I’m rewriting the piece using the self-imposed, 800-word limit Rick Reilly employed writing for Sports Illustrated and ESPN.  What better example than (IMHO) the best American sports columnist of our generation?

This was just going to be a “between-jobs” creative outlet in 2005, something exotic (to me) to write about for the OurSports Central site while looking for radio work.  Instead, in 2017, I’m five years removed from my last radio gig while after a pair of time-outs (one for 3+ years), I’m committed to Baseball Mexico for the long haul.  While composing a column sitting next to my mother in a hospital bed the night she died, I knew that writing about Mexican baseball was something I wasn’t going to let go of even as I was struggling with having to let Mom go, a struggle that continues.  My mistake in 2012 when we thought we were going to lose Mom was dropping Baseball America instead of seeing it as the oasis it is.

Monday will mark Baseball Mexico’s thousandth post since 2009, when it was revived and renamed from Viva Beisbol (itself renamed from Pelotero after two or three weeks in 2005...Pelotero is still my favorite name but least-understood by Anglos like me).  It’s all been quite a ride, with lots of excitement interspersed with disappointment along the way.  Even though there’ve been decisions that haven’t worked out and I’ve made less than $1,000 total over twelve years, I don’t regret the decision to cover baseball south of the border in the first place, even though it wasn’t my first choice at the time.

I’d written for OSC before, including covering the Pacific Coast League’s 2001 season, but wanted to write about something different in 2005 after losing a radio job in Washington state.  After first floating the idea of covering cricket and then pitching Japanese baseball (both were turned down by OSC editor/webmaster Paul Reeths in Wisconsin), we settled on the Mexican League because it is an official Class AAA baseball circuit.  I figured the LMB season would run into August, by which time I should have a new radio job to concentrate on.  I did land a radio job, but I also discovered something about Mexican baseball: I was fascinated by it and didn’t want to stop writing about it.

If you’ve read BBM for any real length of time, you know that baseball in Mexico is not the same as baseball in the United States.  Even though the Mexican League is indeed a AAA league, there is no other loop in Minor League Baseball with the Liga’s autonomy.  It’s a different world down there, sort of like the minors were before Branch Rickey invented the farm system.  The results are often confounding but rarely boring, and the fact baseball is played year-round between the LMB and the Mexican Pacific League (which has become a juggernaut in recent winters) means there’s almost always a game going on.  Mexico is Baseball Heaven.

As mentioned, there’ve been disappointments over the years, but two individuals have done more than anyone to keep my flame burning when it’s flickered.  Jim McCurdy is a retired college professor in Texas who played semipro ball in Mexico and has always been a source of encouragement.  Everyone needs an El Profe in their life and I’ve been blessed to have Jim in mine since VB's earliest days.  Then there’s Carlos Fragoso in Mexico City.  

Sometimes I think Carlos knows everyone in Mexican baseball and maybe he really does.  When Craig Tomarkin added Viva Beisbol to his Baseball Guru website, Carlos was the Guru’s “Latin Insider” who reported on Mexican baseball.  Far from being resentful of a gringo invading his territory, Carlos was supportive from the start and his personal kindness over the years would take up an entire column.  I can’t describe how much these two guys have meant to both me and VB/BBM...it’s very possible I wouldn’t be here without them.

By the way, Carlos is running for president of the Olmeca Little League in Mexico City, the largest LL in Mexico.  The election is Sunday and while I try to keep BBM as politics-free as possible (don’t we sometimes turn on a ballgame for three hours WITHOUT politics?), I will wholeheartedly endorse Carlos Fragoso for that job.  So does Tomas “Tommy al Bat” Morales, who’s still writing about baseball after more than 65 years and is a national treasure as well as a full member of the Mexican Baseball Hall of Fame.  If Carlos is good enough for Tommy…

Finally, thanks to you for reading BBM.  I hope that my love for writing, baseball and Mexico shows through.  We should always follow our passions, and I get to follow three. Even though this has been an awful year personally, I’m so lucky that I can do this and that someone like you actually reads it.  Monday may be BBM’s thousandth post, but it’ll be far from the last.

GONZALEZ BROTHERS TO VISIT LIGA OLMECA OPENER SATURDAY IN MEXICO CITY

Brothers Adrian and Edgar Gonzalez (pictured with Edgar on left) will be on hand Saturday in Mexico City for the annual opening ceremonies of the Liga Olmeca youth baseball organization. The Liga Olmeca is one of Mexico’s biggest and strongest organizations for budding ballplayers, and a number of current and former major leaguers have taken part in past openers, including Vinny Castilla, Jorge Cantu, Esteban Loaiza, Rodrigo Lopez and last year's special guest, Alfredo Aceves.

The Gonzalez brothers were invited by New York Yankees scout Carlos Fragoso, an Obregon native and current Mexico City resident active with the Liga Olmeca. Fragoso is a godfather to both as the result of a lifelong friendship with their father David, himself a former star amateur ballplayer and head of what ESPN senior writer Jorge Arangure, Jr. once called “the first family of Mexican baseball.”

Adrian Gonzalez is coming off another banner season with the San Diego Padres, for whom he hit .298 with 31 homers and 101 RBIs this year. Edgar, who played alongside Adrian in San Diego, played for the Yomiuri Giants in Japan last summer and hit .263 with 12 homers in 100 games.

Opening ceremonies will be streamed live on the Liga Olmeca website at www.ligaolmeca.mx.