Mexican Baseball Fiesta Finds Home, Fan Support in Arizona

MESA, Ariz. — Music was playing over the loudspeakers as Carlos Soto muscled up for a solo home run into the Cañeros de Los Mochis’ bullpen beyond the right field fence. Someone then cranked up the volume inside Sloan Park, a soundtrack for Soto’s home run trot.

It was a game between professional baseball teams from Mexico’s Liga Mexicana del Pacifico, Aguilas de Mexicali and Soto’s Cañeros. But this one — as the sun set in the Valley of the Sun — was taking place on a late September night in Mesa, Arizona.

The ninth annual Mexican Baseball Fiesta was in full swing in Tucson and both cities of Nogales, which has one Nogales in Arizona and another Nogales across the border in Sonora, Mexico.

The crowd in Mesa begins as perhaps half of the sellouts the Chicago Cubs draw at their spring training home. Fans of LMP teams Los Mochis, Mexicali, Ciudad Obregon, and Naranjeros de Hermosillo saw their favorite teams prepare for the season with exhibition games in cities like Mesa, Las Vegas and Tucson.

“It’s like nostalgia for the fans who live here in the U.S.,” said Carlos Torres, an Hermosillo and Phoenix-based correspondent for Beisbol Mundial. “They say ‘Come on, let’s go and wear the jerseys and hear the banda like in Mexico.’ Like when the Mexican soccer team comes to the U.S., it’s not to show that they are the Mexican team, here we are. It’s a chance to make some money.”

THE EXPERIENCE

Hermosillo orange and black might lead the pack, but jerseys and t-shirts from most of the other nine teams in the LMP are also in the crowd at Sloan Park. There are parts of Mexico where baseball is bigger than soccer, and the fans give the games a Mexican flavor.

Music during at-bats. Tacos and Tecate sold more than hot dogs and Bud Light. Live music on the concourse. Families decked out in team colors. No MLB merchandise, only tables full of LMP caps and jerseys and headbands, a common sight around the ballpark. Public address announcements in Spanish only.

“The Phoenix area is closer to the state of Sonora,” Torres said. “It’s not too difficult to get here compared to California or Texas. As long as there are people from those cities here, there will always be a place for the Mexican Baseball Fiesta.”

Each game of a Fiesta doubleheader is seven innings long, and as the night wears on, the stands begin to fill with fans of Hermosillo and Yaquis de Ciudad Obregón, the nightcap and marquee game of the day.

No one in any uniform is more popular than Vinicio “Vinny” Castilla, a two-time MLB All-Star most celebrated for his nine seasons with the Colorado Rockies. Castilla is now the manager of the Naranjeros, and fans line up near the Hermosillo dugout to get a photo or an autograph.

The four teams that played on Sept. 28 in Mesa lined up around the infield before the Naranjeros-Yaquis game for the singing of both the Mexican and American national anthems.

By first pitch, most of the seating bowl is filled. It’s an LMP fall training game — the regular season started on October 11. Just like fans do for the Cubs, Brewers, Indians, Reds, Dodgers and other MLB spring training teams, Mexican fans make their way to Arizona for the Mexican Baseball Fiesta, said Francisco Gamez, a former player in Mexico and founder of the Fiesta.

“There’s a huge amount of people who come from there to here for the weekend to follow their teams,” said Gamez.

The Naranjeros fans roared when O’Koyea Dickson, who got seven at-bats for the Dodgers in 2017 and is in his second stint with Hermosillo after spending time in Japan, hit one onto the berm in left field for a home run.

Beto Coyote, the Naranjeros’ beloved mascot who dances to deejayed banda music near the on-deck circle while play continues, is there to high-five Dickson at home plate. Because Mexican baseball.

But the action wasn’t just on the diamond. On the stadium’s main plaza, a scene resembling something between a big backyard gathering and a night club played out as a small band played and couples danced wherever they could find space.

HISTORY

The first Mexican Baseball Fiesta took place in 2011. It was played at other spring training stadiums until settling at Sloan Park the past few years. Gamez and Mike Feder, a longtime presence in front offices of several Tucson sports franchises, came up with the idea to invite the LMP teams to hold preseason training games in the American Southwest.

“The principle idea was to bring the teams from the Liga del Pacifico to the people who live here that couldn’t return to Mexico to see them for whatever reason,” Gamez said. “But we were surprised that so many people from down there followed their teams up here.”

Gamez said the Phoenix area games are always a week before the Tucson games, which were held a week before the start of the LMP regular season.

In the Phoenix area, playing at Maryvale Ballpark, the spring training home of the Milwaukee Brewers, was designed to draw from the overwhelmingly Mexican population from Sonora and the state of Sinaloa on greater Phoenix’s west side. The move to Sloan Park, a much newer facility, drew Mexicans from other states as well.

NEW RELATIONSHIPS

The Mexican Baseball Fiesta and the LMP tried something new this year. With the Arizona Fall League starting about a month earlier than it had in the past, the LMP teams touring the States didn’t have to always play themselves or an Arizona college team.

Mexicali, Obregon, Los Mochis and Culiacan played Fall League teams featuring the top prospects from MLB teams, who were already in Arizona for the annual showcase. It’s an opportunity that is likely to continue to be there as long as the schedules intersect.

“Bill Bavasi (Arizona Fall League director) saw what we were doing and was interested,” Gamez said. “From the beginning we played against Instructional League teams from the major league teams. For us, it’s important to develop and prepare the players from both sides. They get to play teams with high-level players.”

There is also another opportunity for the Mexican Baseball Fiesta to get some publicity from the Arizona Diamondbacks, who held the extremely popular Liga Mexicana del Pacifico Day at Chase Field at the end of August.

That game, bolstered by a postgame concert and the presence of the LMP teams, drew the largest crowd to ever watch a game at Chase Field.

Every team from the league was represented at tables and booths set up in the upper deck concourse. The Diamondbacks have fostered the strongest relationship of all MLB teams with the LMP.

“It was our concept to begin with,” Gamez said. “But the Diamondbacks invited us to promote our event and what happened was that they helped us. We aren’t working together hand in hand, but we’re on the same page.”

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