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B a s e b a l l
M e x i c o
September 15, 2 0 1 7
ALSO READ In Radical Departure, LMB to Play 2 Seasons in 2018
CHANGING
OF THE GUARD: What is Mexican baseball’s future?
Baseball Mexico is meant to be an
English-language information source about the game south of the border for
North American baseball fans unable to read Spanish (myself included), so I've
tried to stay away from opining about a topic that I frankly have much to learn
about. I take what I write here very
seriously because BBM is by default the only site one can regularly follow
Mexican baseball en Ingles and I want
to be fair to the people I'm writing about, but it's like what Aristotle said
centuries ago: The more you know, the more you know you DON'T know. Still, it's hard to write well over a
thousand stories dating back twelve years and not have observations to share,
so here we go.
Baseball in Mexico has been undergoing a hugely transitional
year in 2017 and the changes are only beginning. People who have read this site over the past
year are already aware of the Mexican League's inner turmoil ever since
Monterrey Sultanes then-owner Jose "Pepe" Maiz expressed outrage over
his team losing the LMB North Division finals to a Tijuana side he felt
employed far too many Mexican-American players.
The outrage carried through the winter as Maiz, Mexico City Diablos
Rojos president Roberto Mansur and others squared off against Toros owner
Alberto Uribe, brothers Juan Jose and Erick Arellano (owners of the Yucatan
Leones and Union Laguna Vaqueros) and others in an "Old Guard vs. New
Breed" confrontation that split the loop down the middle. The schism led to outgoing LMB president
Plinio Escalante's ouster in an Old Guard power play and threatened to bring
about two eight-team leagues or the cancellation of the 2017 schedule
altogether until Minor League President Pat O'Connor convened an emergency
meeting in Houston, read the warring factions the Riot Act and forced Escalante's
return to the presidency.
There is no way to minimize the effect of that meeting. Shortly thereafter, Old Guarder Carlos
Peralta, whose family had owned the storied Quintana Roo Tigres franchise since
its inception in 1955 as a Mexico City team and eventual foil to the Diablos
Rojos in Mexican baseball's biggest rivalry, sold the club to former Dodgers
All-Star pitcher and Cy Young Award winner Fernando Valenzuela heading a small
group of investors. The same weekend
that deal was announced amid great fanfare in Cancun, Maiz quietly sold a
majority interest in the Sultanes to the Grupo Multimedios media
conglomeration, taking a back seat as a (relatively) silent partner...at least
until the recently-concluded playoffs.
Mansur recently announced his retirement as president of the Diablos,
citing health reasons. The void at the
top has been filled by Toros owner Uribe, Puebla Pericos and Monclova Acereros
owner Gerardo Benavides and incoming league president Javier Salinas, a former
marketing maven for the Liga MX soccer league.
The classic explanation may be that while the Old Guard won a January
battle that resulted in Escalante's ouster and a brief hegemony over Liga
affairs, O'Connor's intervention handed the New Breed victory in the war.
The past seven months have witnessed a changing of the guard,
but what exactly does that mean? Will
baseball in Mexico be improved as a result?
On the surface, I would say yes, but there remain many items of concern
that make me wonder how much things will really change when the dust finally
settles.
First of all, I can see both sides of the past schism: Part of me understands why Maiz and
compatriots wanted to keep the LMB focused on prioritizing Mexican
players. There was money to be made by
the Old Guard from selling the rights of homegrown players to major league
organizations, something most teams could not do because they lacked funds to
sign and develop those players. More to
the point, there is something to be said in favor of the Mexican League being the
province of Mexican players. Personally,
I want to see Mexico improve from its current sixth-place standing in the World
Baseball Softball Congress' international men's baseball rankings but that
won't happen with benchwarmers. On the
other hand, having sixteen teams in the LMB spreads domestic talent too thinly
and creates the need to bring in players from outside the country to improve
the on-field quality of play, an argument made by New Breed owners. A little of both philosophies would make for
a workable middle ground, but these are not compromise-driven men making those
decisions.
In addition, the break from the Old Guard way of doing things
represents a break from the practice of relying on largesse from state and
local governments to pay bills and even cover payrolls. It's been a common practice for years among
many teams serving as virtual wards of the state to the point that some teams
are in effect "owned" by their local governments. However, the procedure has been in decline
in the wake of complicit politicians finding themselves in hot water for
handing millions of pesos over to privately-owned minor league baseball teams
(among other pecadillos). The New Breed
ostensibly eschews such cozy arrangements in favor of making money the old-fashioned
way: Building winning teams and creating
entertaining in-game presentations to draw more paying fans to the
ballpark. Tijuana has been at the
vanguard of this movement for some time and Grupo Multimedios has made similar
moves since taking over in Monterrey, although the Sultanes still paper the
house with free tickets, a two-edged sword that ultimately devalues a franchise
among its target demographics. Given
Salinas' background in marketing. The
New Breed philosophy will likely be the order of the day and that can only
improve the Mexican League in the long run.
About Salinas. He
announced with little detail over the summer that in 2018, the Mexican League
will adopt a similar format to the Liga MX in that the LMB will play two
separate seasons between late February and mid-November. While many purists are screaming bloody
murder over what is depicted as an abrogation of baseball's one-year,
one-season tradition, that tradition has not helped many teams fill seats in
LMB ballparks. Although Monterrey and
Tijuana both averaged over 10,000 fans per game in 2017 while Yucatan, Monclova
and Saltillo all averaged more than 5,000 turnstile clicks last season, more
than half the Liga's sixteen teams averaged less than 4,000 per game, with six
of them clocking in at less than 3,000 (bottoming out with Tabasco's average of
1,437 that included several nights of fewer than a thousand people at games in
Villahermosa).
Simply put, this can't continue and Salinas is betting that
cutting seasons back from 112 to 66 games will lead to less ennui among fans
who've been disinterested by teams out of postseason contention with weeks and
even months to go in the schedule.
Speaking for myself, I'm intrigued how this will work out, but it's
proven to be a successful format in a Liga MX that is drawing nearly 24,000 per
match in the month-old Apertura tournament, which will run between August and
December. Whether or not Salinas' gamble
works, it will put a strain on the winter Mexican Pacific League whose own October-to-January
schedule will be a month old by the time the LMB's second season concludes next
November, which brings us back to the talent dilution question: If 16 teams are having a hard time finding
quality players, how will 24 teams in two leagues playing simultaneously do
it? The MexPac recently raised its limit
of foreign players from six to eight per team, but that won't do much in the
face of so many players who’ve performed in both leagues being locked up in LMB
playoff competition.
Then there is the question of those 16 Liga teams, an
estimated half of which are either in bankruptcy or a hare's breath away from
it. Tabasco has been an unqualified
disaster, Valenzuela's partners bailed out on him and wife Linda Burgos in
midseason, both Veracruz and Puebla teams are looking north for potential moves
to cities along the Texas border (not the wisest choice of destination, given
how the same drug cartels that helped drive the Broncos out of Reynosa in 2016
are alive and well in both Nuevo Laredo and Juarez), both Durango and Leon
teams had difficulty paying players and league assessments during the season,
Saltillo's ownership is in turmoil despite operating in one of Mexico's best
baseball cities and the list goes on. In
short, there is not enough support in enough places for the Mexican League to
operate with 16 teams. Rather than
letting franchises set up in other cities with no assurance they'll do any
better in Ciudad B than they have in Cuidad A, there desperately needs to be a
contraction to 12 teams at the most.
Which four teams should disappear?
It's a tough call because there are so many basket-case operations in
the LMB, but I'd go with Tabasco, Leon, Campeche and Veracruz (the latter
reluctantly, because there's so much baseball history in the port city). The Oaxaca franchise should probably close
shop because they've never been well-supported but the team is owned by Alfredo
Harp Helu, who also owns the Diablos, is the richest owner in the Liga and is
very unlikely to allow the Guerreros to fade into history. To me, contraction would do far more to
solidify the LMB than extending the schedule will, but we're not hearing
anything about it from the league, only columnists.
The question of people owning multiple teams should also be addressed,
but it won't. Salinas has said he'd
rather have owners with solid financial credentials operating two franchise
than unstable owners operating one apiece.
While Salinas' view makes perfect sense from a fiscal standpoint, try
selling it to fans in Puebla who saw more than twenty players from their 2016
championship teams transferred to Monclova after Gerardo Benavides bought his
hometown Acereros last winter. The
Pericos earned a moral victory by advancing to the Serie del Rey this year while the Steelers were knocked out in the
first round of the playoffs, but Puebla fans largely stayed away from Estadio
Hermanos Serdan in 2017 until the LMB South championship series against Yucatan
and whatever trust might've existed between team and fan base there has been
obliterated as a result of Benavides' machinations. Multiple team owners like Benavides, Harp and
the Arellano brothers may have the wherewithal to pay bills in more than one
city, but they'll never shed the impression among fans in one city that their
team is secondary to the team they own in another location. Major League Baseball wisely outlawed
syndicate ownership after the disastrous 1899 Cleveland Spiders season, but
it's full steam ahead with Salinas and the LMB.
Finally, what is to become of the Mexican Pacific League if,
indeed, the LMB schedule stretches a month into the MexPac season while players
previously allowed to play winterball out west are kept out of the LMP for
rest? There will be a meeting between
Salinas and MexPac president Omar Canizales on September 18 in Miami that one
hopes will lead to a compromise that works for everyone, but Salinas has not
shown any indication that compromise is in his makeup while Canizales has
wisely refrained from making any comment on the scheduling overlap's potential
effect on his league. It's hard for me
to envision any solution coming out of Miami that will work for teams in both
circuits, but it's also hard to envision Canizales quietly accepting a move
that will harm the LMP's future.
Like Salinas, Canizales entered the presidency of the MexPac
in 2009 with a media background light on baseball experience (Salinas has none
in the sport). However, Canizales took
over a league that was already well-supported with eight teams in the baseball-mad
states of Sinaloa, Sonora and Baja California Norte and he has overseen a
circuit that has grown in popularity to the point that an average of nearly
10,000 fans attended LMP games leaguewide.
While MLB has reaffirmed its support of the Mexican League as the
country's go-to source for all things baseball, Canizales and the LMP are
dealing from a position of strength because they enjoy better support, better
ballparks and passable to solid ownership in all eight cities from Mexicali to
Mazatlan. While it'll be business as
usual for the MexPac this winter, they face a potentially severe player-pool
shortage for 2018-19 if the LMB does extend their schedule two months as stated
by Salinas. A solution? How about no limits on players due to their foreign
or Mexican-American status? Fans out
west have been used to seeing extraneros
form the core of their teams for decades, so an open policy on player
recruitment may not be a problem if it means the standard of play is maintained
(if not actually improved).
It's been a long year in Mexican baseball, on and off the
field, and the intrigue begun last fall is not going to abate anytime
soon. If anything, it may accelerate
over the months ahead. With the changing
of the guard in the Mexican League, the sport itself will change south of the
border and I hope and pray it'll be for the better. I love baseball, I love writing about it and
(thanks in no small part to Carl Franz' The
People's Guide to Mexico) I love Mexico and its people. It's selfish of me, perhaps, but I don't want
to see any of that screwed up.
Thanks for staying awake long enough to read this. We now return you to your regularly-scheduled
programming, with Baseball Mexico's
2017 Summer Award winners to be announced next week.