Barber: Why doesn’t MLB have more Mexican-born players?
Last Monday was Mexican Heritage Night in Oakland. Before the A’s faced the Kansas City Royals, ballet folklorico dancers stamped and twirled in center field. Mexican flags hung on the railing in left field and waved here and there in the stands. Stadium cameras showed fans wearing sombreros (Latinx people, as far as I saw, gracias a dios) and tri-colored scarves. A mariachi band, invisible to me in the press box, played throughout the evening, a tradition at baseball games in Mexico.
It was a particularly festive night at the Coliseum. And though the A’s would go on to lose in the ninth, reliever Joakim Soria - born in the Mexican state of Coahuila - marked the occasion by pitching a 1-2-3 eighth inning.
“Always Mexican culture has a lot of color,” Soria said in the clubhouse after the game. “And I like to see all the flags and all the people enjoying theirself in the stands. And it was fun. It was fun to watch it.”
The A’s have a lot of promotional nights. None could have presented a more natural fit than this one. So many of the Bay Area’s sports fans were born in Mexico, or have parents and grandparents who were. Besides that 2,000-mile border, the U.S. and Mexico share a passion for baseball.
Why, then, are there so few Mexican-born players in Major League Baseball?
The honor roll is solid, with names like Fernando Valenzuela, Teddy Higuera and Bobby Avila. But the overall numbers, never spectacular, have further stagnated recently.
On opening day 2019, MLB rosters included 102 players born in the Dominican Republic, 68 born in Venezuela - and exactly eight born in Mexico, including Soria. Even Cuba (19) and Puerto Rico (18) had more than double the representation.
The numbers are a puzzle. Mexico has a massive population of more than 120 million. Though the country isn’t as desperately poor as, say, the DR, you would assume the promise of American dollars is a big lure to Mexican prospects. We know they play baseball in Mexico. And it’s right there, just beyond the president’s cartoon wall.
“I don’t know that there’s any one reason we get more players from other countries,” A’s assistant general manager Dan Feinstein told me.
But one is pretty obvious.
“First and foremost, as much as they love baseball, Mexico is still a soccer culture,” Feinstein said. “There’s so many young kids that are playing soccer down there.”
No doubt. But Mexico’s fútbol team isn’t exactly an international power. And the country is big enough, and diverse enough, that it shouldn’t be an either/or issue.
Another idea I kept hearing is that Mexican prospects tend to be unprepared for the American minor-league system once they arrive. One person I spoke to informally, someone who was born in Mexico and rose through multiple levels of baseball there, described ballplayers from his country as lazy. That’s a pretty broad condemnation.
Edgar Gonzalez, who coached the Mexican team in the most recent World Baseball Classic, offered a more nuanced take to the Arizona Republic, which published a thorough examination of this subject in March. Mexico, Gonzalez said, has “a lot of guys who go (to the big leagues) and get a cup of coffee and go back down. It all has to do with discipline and habits of eating and weight training, all of that.”
Feinstein dismissed this one out of hand. “Our experience has been extremely positive with the young kids that have come through,” he said. “We have a catcher in Arizona who, if anything, plays above his ability, and works even harder than some of his peers. And I’ve seen Edgar’s academy, and the kids all play hard, and are full of energy and excitement.”
The real root of the problem, if you would call it that, is the Mexican Baseball League, or as it’s known there, Liga Mexicana de Béisbol. It’s a venerable league, founded in 1925. It once employed Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson, and is now considered on par with Triple-A ball.
LMB’s existence is great for Mexican baseball fans, with 16 teams spread geographically from Tijuana to Cancun to the edge of the Sierra Madre (in Conclava, Joakim Soria’s hometown) to the thin air of Mexico City. Some of those teams draw close to 10,000 fans per game. But the league provides a disincentive to young baseball players who might otherwise look to the United States.
There is no Dominican or Venezuelan equivalent. Top prospects there have little choice but to move full speed toward the distant glory of MLB. In Mexico, young players know they can fall back on a solid salary playing in a more familiar, perhaps more welcoming environment.
“It’s not like in here. But they make good money,” Soria noted while sitting in front of his A’s locker. “And they play over there all year round, because they finish summer, they rest for a month or so and then go back to winter ball.”
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