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B a s e b a l l
M e x i c o
Monday,
March 1, 2021
CRIMINAL
COMPLAINT AGAINST LMB PRESIDENT RATIFIED
Puro Beisbol editor Fernando
Ballesteros reports that the Mayor's Office in a Mexico City borough
has
confirmed the filing of a criminal complaint against Mexican League
president
Horacio de la Vega for his alleged "fraudulent administration" in the
Magdalena Mixihuca Sports City of the nation's capital, when he was
Director of
the Sports Institute during the period between 2013-2018.
Puro Beisbol obtained the
copy of the original document with the complaint filed on July 30 with
the
Territorial Investigation Prosecutor's Office in Iztacalco against de
la Vega
and two other former officials, in addition to confirming its
ratification on
February 10 with new elements contributed by the affected party.
The complaint was presented by
Enrique Escamilla Salinas, Executive Director of Legal Affairs and
legal
representative of the Iztacalco mayor's office. De la Vega, who assumed
the
presidency of the LMB on November 26, 2019, has not declared anything
about the
criminal complaint against him.
As part of the alleged
"fraudulent administration," the current head of the LMB has been
accused of awarding all contracts directly in the Sports City with
millions of
pesos that do not coincide with the works that were carried out. The
documents
point to one of these direct award contracts dating to 2017 with the
minor
maintenance of the baseball fields, whose company Pastos y Juegos
Deportivos
invoiced the amount of 15,037,906 pesos.
On the other hand, the Mayor of
Iztacalco considers the construction of a lake within the Sports City
as one of
the biggest frauds, which led to the destruction of five soccer fields
and four
basketball fields. The lake has been inoperative and is considered one
of the
mostuca "fraudulent" works in Horacio de la Vega's administration at
Indeporte.
Another act that has aggravated
Iztacalco authorities who now administer the Ciudad Deportiva is that
the
Mexico City Diablos Rojos built their new Estadio Alfredo Harp Helú
ballpark
within the complex but they have yet to pay a single peso since it
opened on
March 23, 2019. De la Vega awarded the team room for the stadium as
administrator of the Sports City, and Ballesteros notes that it was the
Red
Devils who promoted him for the LMB presidency of the LMB with the
support of
the Monterrey Sultanes after his term as leader of Indeporte ended in
2018.
Sources have informed Puro
Beisbol that the Diablos have sought to negotiate these
irregularities with
Iztacalco mayor Armando Quintero Martínez. It's unknown if they have
already
reached an agreement with the team but in the case of de la Vega, what
the
Mayor's Office did was ratify the criminal complaint against him. "We
are
going to go to the end of the day," said an official for Quintero, who
will seek re-election for another term as mayor.
SAN
LUIS POTOSI TO HOST LMB PRESEASON EVENT
The central Mexico city of San Luis
Potosi is returning to the Mexican League (sort of) with a four-week
series of
weekend exhibition games between late April and mid-May. At this point,
five
LMB teams have signed on for at least one three-game series to be
played at the
6,500-seat Estadio 20 de Noviembre. Organizers are hoping the San Luis
Potosi
Cup serves as a launching pad for future use of San Luis Potosi as a
spring
training site.
The tournament, which will include
Mexican League umpires officiating 12 single games, will be held to an
as-yet-determined capacity in the stands. Game times will be at 7PM on
Fridays,
6PM on Saturdays and 5PM on Sundays. “It is going to be a great,
unprecedented
event,” said SLP Cup organizing committee director Patricio Perez. “For
a
month, we want San Luis Potosi to be one of the main focuses of the LMB
preseason, with a quality show on and off the field of play.”
Perez envisions the competition
leading to his city becoming a magnet for multiple Liga teams to
conduct their
training camps and exhibition games: “The idea is ambitious. We want to
turn
San Luis Potosí into something similar to what Arizona or Florida is
for Major
League clubs; that is, the base of training camps for clubs that wish
to join
in the future.”
San Luis Potosi is a city of more
than 2.8 million residents (19th-largest in Mexico) that serves as
capital of
the similarly-named state north of Mexico City and south Monterrey. The
region
was once of the country's most prominent mining areas and it remains a
leading
industry there, although agriculture employs a large percentage of
people and
the service sector is growing.
SLP has had five previous runs in
the Mexican League. After fielding a team from late 1925 until early
1927
(during which the name Tuneros was first adopted) and again in 1934,
when the
team finished second, a third version of the Tuneros inaugurated
Estadio 20 de
Noviembre in 1946 and played there until moving to Mexico City early
during the
1952 season. Another Tuneros squad played in the Class A Mexican Center
League
from 1960 through 1962 and again in 1971 before the LMB returned in
1986 to provide
six more seasons in AAA ball (they were known as the Reales in 1991,
the final
season of SLP's second Liga stint). One more Tuneros squad played
between 2004
and 2006 before the Liga and baseball left the city for good.
Among the more prominent players to
represent San Luis Potosi over the years have been Hall of Famer Martin
Dihigo,
Hector Espino, Leon Durham and Luis Tiant, Sr. Depite the array of
talent, the
Tuneros turned in just three winning records and one playoff appearance
in 15
full LMB seasons .
After the last incarnation of the
Tuneros moved to Chihuahua for the 2007 campaign, conditions at Estadio
20 de
Noviembre deteriorated to the point where only occasional concerts were
being
held there. The ballpark was remodeled in 2018 and hosted a preseason
series
between Mexico City and Oaxaca one year later. The SLP Cup will open on
Friday,
April 23 with a game between Monterrey and an undetermined opponent and
wrap up
Sunday, May 16 when Aguascalientes meets Guadalajara. Durango and Leon
are the
other teams scheduled to play.
SAN
LUIS
POTOSI CUP 2021 Schedule
April
23-24-25: Monterrey Sultanes vs. TBD
April
30-May
1-2: Durango Generales vs. Aguascalientes Rieleros
May
7-8-9:
Monterrey Sultanes vs. Leon Bravos
May
14-15-16:
Aguascalientes Rieleros vs. Guadalajara Mariachis
CASTRO
ACCUSES CONADE OF BLOCKING OLYMPIC FUNDS
After defeating the United States
along the way and qualifying via the 2019-20 WBSC Premier12 tournament
to play
in the Olympic Games for the first time, Mexico's national team is
standing
still and without funding towards the Summer Games scheduled to be held
this
July and August in Tokyo. In an interview with Mexico City's Proceso,
Mexican manager Juan Gabriel Castro and GM Kundy Gutiérrez launched a
call for
help and publicly denounced that CONADE, led by Ana Guevara, has kept
the
resources that the federal government had already assigned them.
Guevara and CONADE (an acronym for
National Commission on Physical Culture and Sports) have come under
withering
criticism in the past several months for their handling of various
sports at
the national level. According to Proceso writer Beatriz
Pereyra, five
months prior to the start of the Tokyo Olympic Games, the Mexican
Baseball
National Team was “ruined” after President Andrés Manuel López Obrador
left the
project in the hands of Guevara, CONADE's General Director. She has
since been
accused of corruption, poor monetary practices, involvement with bribes
and
other irregularities during her first year in that office in a recently
released 162-page audit.
In Mexico's first Olympic baseball
commitment in history, the national representative must arrive in the
capital
of Japan no later than the end of June to comply with the 14 days of
isolation
required by the protocol for the covid-19 pandemic, allowing the
players and
coaches to get used to the time change and play a series of preliminary
games.
Pereyra says that means the baseball team has only four months to be
ready, but
so far there isn't even a working shortlist of an itinerary.
In an interview with Proceso,
Castro and Gutiérrez called for assistance so CONADE will begin to
disperse the
budget assigned by the federal government and they can start hiring and
working
with a team of scouts, statistical analysts, physical therapists,
nutritionists, specialists in doping and psychology.
“We wanted to keep quiet because we
were waiting for what was going to happen,” said Castro. “We can no
longer be
silent and we have to be honest with people. I don't want to lie. The
project had
already been in place for a year, the Olympic Games were postponed and
everything stopped. Last October, they told us that we were going to
start and
four months have passed and everything is still stopped.”
Gutierrez adds that the allocated
money amounts to 28 million peso to be used to form a pre-selection of
150
players which will be refined until there are 28 players: 24 for the
active
roster and four reserve players. Then there the services of the
coaching body
and the salaries of the aforementioned personnel, as well as the costs
of
accommodation, food, logistics in Japan and requirements related to the
Wuhan
virus. From Gutierrez' point of view, it is urgent to be certain when
the
resources will begin to flow, since the people they have contacted to
work with
the Verdes Grande are already being hired by other teams.
Six nations are slated to compete in Olympic baseball this summer. In addition to Mexico, host Japan, South Korea and Israel occupy four of the berths, while two more qualifying tournaments are due to determine occupants of the final two slots.
