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B a s e b a l l
M e x i c o
Monday,
September 19, 2022
The Yucatan Leones have proven that
they are not phased when facing elimination from a playoff series.
After
overcoming a 3-games-to-1 deficit to defeat Mexico City for the Mexican
League
South Division championship series, the Lions delayed their offseason
one more
day with a 6-2 Game Six win Sunday in front of a full house of 21,909
at
Estadio Monterrey to force a seventh and deciding Serie del
Rey game against the Sultanes Monday night. All six
games of the LMB title series have had sellout crowds and with all
tickets gone
for Monday’s Game Seven, a total of 132,387 fans will have clicked the
turnstiles, an average of 18,912 per opening.
Manager Roberto Vizcarra’s charges
never trailed Sunday after taking a 2-0 first-inning lead on Cristhian
Adames’
two-run double with two out off Monterrey starter Cristian Castillo,
the 2016
Appalachian League Pitcher of the Year as a Royals farmhand. The Leones
built a
3-1 lead before the Sultanes made it a one-run contest in the bottom of
the
seventh when Gustavo Nunez tagged third and scored on Sebastian
Elizalde’s
sacrifice fly to center, but Yucatan put the game in their hip pocket
with
three more runs in the top of the eighth as Yadir Drake and Luis Juarez
contributed RBI singles. Jorge Rondon held the Sultanes scoreless over
the last
two innings in relief to close out the win.
Adames was 2-for-5 for the night
with a double, a run scored and three RBIs for the winners while Juarez
singled
and scored twice. Victor Mendoza went 2-for-3 for Monterrey, doubling
in Zoilo
Almonte with the Sultanes’ first run in the fourth off Yucatan starter
Onelki
Garcia. Hunter Cervenka pitched one shutout entrada for the Leones and
was
awarded the win while Castillo absorbed the loss for Monterrey.
The Sultanes took the Serie del Rey
lead by winning two of three games on the road last week in Merida,
where
sellout crowds of 14,917 packed Parque Kukulkan for all three tilts.
After rain
washed out Game Three on Tuesday night, the two teams were able to take
the
field Wednesday. Yucatan gained a 2-games-to-1 advantage with a 6-1 win
behind
the standout pitching of ex-MLBer Henderson Alvarez, who was supported
by a
pair of three-run innings from his teammates. Alvarez lasted Vizcarra
lifted
him with two out in the top of the eight, by which time he’d scattered
seven
hits and allowed one unearned run.
Yadir Drake drove in the first run
of the night in the bottom of the second by doubling in Jose Martinez
from
second. Sebastian Valle’s one-out single brought home Cristhian Adames
and a
Norberto Obeso sacrifice fly to left plated Drake from third. The lone
Monterrey run came in the fifth, when Jose Cardona’s infield single
moved
Ramiro Pena to third and Pena scampered home after an errant throw from
Adames
at shortstop. The Leones pushed three insurance runs across in the
bottom of
the fifth as Art Charles and Martinez each had run-scoring singles.
Charles,
Martinez and Adames combined for six hits, three runs and two RBI for
Yucatan
while Pena doubled twice off Alvarez for the Sultanes.
The visitors bounced back to win the
next two games, including Thursday’s 5-0 whitewash in Game Four behind
the five
shutout innings from 2022 ERA champ Yohander Mendez, who allowed three
hits and
struck out six Yucatan batsmen.
All five Sultanes runs came via the
longball as Elizalde socked a two-run homer off Leones starter Jake
Thompson in
the top of the first after rain delayed the game’s start by a
half-hour.
Mendoza victimized Thompson, a former Phillies starter, two innings
later with
a three-run bomb of his own to end the scoring for the night. At that
point,
Vizcarra replaced Thompson with Yoanner Negrin and while the 2016 LMB
Pitcher
of the Year gave the Leones three scoreless innings, the damage was
done as
Yucatan collected just six hits (two each for Drake and Josh Fuentes)
and went
0-for-4 with runners in scoring position for the night.
Monterrey pulled ahead in the series
Friday night by virtue of a 6-3 win to take a 3-games-to-2 advantage.
Yucatan
did lead, 3-2, in the bottom of the fifth after a Luis Juarez double
drove in
Valle from second and a Charles line-drive single brought home Obeso,
but
Orlando Calixte’s two-run roundtripper in the top of the seventh
regained the
Sultanes’ lead and Monterrey salted the contest away with a pair of
runs one
inning later on an Elizade single and an Almonte double. Yucatan did
have
runners on first and second with one out in the eighth, but reliever
Carlos
Morales settled down and got Drake to fly out to right and struck out
pinch-hitter Lazaro Alfonso swinging on a 3-2 pitch to end the threat.
Juan Gamez
earned the win after manager Roberto Kelly brought
him in to replace a struggling Julio Teheran (4.1 IP, 3 R, 5 H, 3 BB)
in the
fifth and tossed 1.2 frames of shutout ball. Neftali Feliz held the
Leones
scoreless in the ninth to record his second save of the Serie
del Rey. Yucatan starter Elian Leyva pitched well enough to
win (6 IP, 2 R, 4H), although he did allow an Almonte homer in the
second, but
Cervenka gave up Calixte’s go-ahead homer in the seventh and absorbed
the loss.
Monday night’s
game marks the third consecutive season that
the Serie del Rey has gone a full
seven games. Alvarez will start for Yucatan in the contest, which is
slated to
begin at 7:30PM EDT, while Mendez will open for Monterrey.
GIL: MENESES TO
PLAY FOR CULIACAN IN
SECOND HALF
Former major league shortstop Benji
Gil, who is wrapping up his first season as a coach with the Los
Angeles Angels
under interim manager Phil Nevin, says he should return to his
managerial post
in Culiacan just prior to the coming Mexican Pacific League season,
when the
Tomateros will seek their fourth pennant in six winters.
However, Gil said, there is one
player who will not joining him next month for the start of the 2022-23
campaign: Longtime Tomateros slugger Joey Meneses, a Culiacan native
who has spent
all or part of nine seasons playing for his hometown team. Gil adds
that
Meneses is expected to join the Tomateros when the second half of the
LMP
schedule begins in November.
Although he’s become a minor
sensation in Washington since his August 2 big league debut for the
Nationals
at age 30 (becoming the first Mexican to homer in his first MLB game),
Meneses’
baseball journey during the summer has taken several twists and turns
since he
first signed with the Atlanta Braves as a 19-year-old free agent in
2011.
Beginning with a less-than-impressive 19-game stint that year with the
Braves’
Dominican Summer League entry (for whom he hit .206 with no extra-base
hits),
Meneses spent seven years in the Atlanta system and was an
organizational
All-Star in both 2014 and 2019 but never rose above Class AA
Mississippi, for
whom he was a Southern League midseason All-Star in 2017.
After that
season, Meneses filed for free agency and signed
with Philadelphia, who assigned him to AAA Lehigh Valley, where he was
named
the 2018 International League MVP after batting .311 and leading the
loop with
23 homers and 82 RBIs. That earned him a one-year US$950,000 contract
with the
Orix Buffaloes of Japan’s Pacific League. After struggling at the start
of his
first season in Asia (.206 with 4 homers in 29 games), the 6’3” first
baseman-outfielder was suspended for one year in June 2019 after
testing
positive for Stanozolal (a steroid) and the Buffaloes subsequently
voided his
contract.
After sitting
out the 2020 summer season, Meneses signed as a
free agent with Boston last year, splitting 2021 between AA Portland
and AAA
Worcester, before signing with Washington this season. Meneses hit .286
with 20
homers in 96 games at AAA Rochester before his August call-up. Since
then, he’s
hit .317 with 9 homers and 23 RBIs over 39 games for the Nationals.
Meneses has
never played in the Mexican League.
Although his
summers have often been frustrating at best,
Meneses has returned home every winter to play for the Tomateros since
2013-14.
In 453 games over nine LMP seasons, the right-handed batter has hit
.283 with
42 homers and 268 ribbies, appearing in five Caribbean Series including
last
February in Mazatlan, where he hit .158 as a pickup for the Jalisco
Charros and
manager Roberto Vizcarra.
PEREYRA: MEXICAN WOMEN
SHOWING THEY CAN PLAY, TOO
The Mexican National Women’s Baseball Team
secured a berth in next year’s World Championship tournament, the first
time
the country will appear in that event, after securing a bronze medal at
the
Americas Qualifier in Venezuela last month. As Beatriz Pereyra of
Mexico City’s
Proceso writes, it marks one more step in the process of women being
seen
simply as “ballplayers” south of the border instead of being limited to
playing
softball in the public’s perception.
The following is a Google translation of Pereyra’s piece
in Proceso, lightly edited for clarity:
The members of
the Mexican Women's Baseball Team have
something in common: as girls they began playing baseball with boys in
some
leagues in the country, then were forced to switch to softball because
they
were not allowed to compete with men. Players like Rosi del Castillo,
Dafne
Mejía and Samaria Benítez from Nayarit have become known for being the
first to
participate in men's amateur or semi-professional leagues. On the way
to
Mexico's participation in its first World Cup and given the lack of
infrastructure for them in the ninth, they warn: "People need to
believe
that women can also play baseball."
Despite the fact
that Mexican women's baseball is in an
incipient stage, the national team qualified for the 2023 World
Championship, a
tournament in which Mexico will have its first international
participation.
The squad, made
up of 21 players from different states, is
currently ranked 12th in the world. Recently, they won the bronze medal
at the
Venezuela 2022 Women's Baseball Pre-World Championship, where five
other teams
participated: Venezuela (5th in the world), the Dominican Republic
(6th), Cuba
(7th) Puerto Rico (9) and Nicaragua (17th).
This is the
second time in which the Mexican Women's Baseball
Team gets its ticket to the World Cup which in this edition, its first
stage
will be played in 2023 and the rest in the summer of 2024, with dates
and
venues to be defined. The first time they qualified was in the 2019
Aguascalientes Pre-World Cup tournament. However, the World Baseball
and
Softball Confederation (WBSC) decided to cancel the 2020 World Cup
event as a
result of the covid-19 pandemic.
The Mexican team
is made up of “veteran” players such as
Dafne Mejía (30 years old) and Thalía Villavicencio (34) plus other
younger
ones such as Rosi del Castillo from Puebla and María José Valenzuela
from
Sonora (both 24 years old), but all with a lot of experience because
they have
played baseball since they were very young. Regardless of her deafness
since
birth, Valenzuela, the only Sonoran on the team, is one of the most
outstanding
players.
“It has been an
important achievement. We were able to transcend,
we classified as we wanted and one goal was to bring the medal that we
couldn't
before,” says Mejia, who was Mexico’s designated hitter in Venezuela. “
Although it was not gold, we are proud of that achievement, of giving
Mexico a
medal.”
Sisters Laura
and Melody Cortés Tapia also stand out in the
team as daughters of Julio Cortés, a promoter of women's baseball in
the city
of Pachuca, where he runs the Rancho Beisbolero Academy. They are
joined by
pitchers of the quality of Adriana Palma from Yucatan, Marlene Lagunes
from
Veracruz and Narda Andrade from Puebla, catchers Itza Hernández and
Marcela
Díaz, who is a player in Mexico City’s Anahuac League.
Almost all of
them have followed the same process in their
careers as ballplayers: as girls they started playing baseball with
boys in
some little league, then they were forced to switch to softball because
they
are not allowed to participate with men, but they clung to staying in
the sport
they love.
Players such as
Rosi del Castillo, Dafne Mejía and Samaria
Benítez from Nayarit have become known because they have been pioneers
in
participating in men's amateur or semi-professional leagues, because if
women's
baseball still lacks something, it is that it does not have the
facilities and
enough coaches that is not an appendage of men's baseball.