Though Almada lacked power, he was a good contact hitter and base-stealer. He often led off, with a batting style that appears similar to Ichiro Suzuki’s many years later. Tommy Holmes, writing from Brooklyn in the July 6, 1939 Sporting News, called him the “most pronounced ‘water bucket’ hitter in the majors. You never saw a guy in such a hurry to keep a date at first base. He seems to be running towards the initial hassock even before his bat meets the ball.” Alas, Mel Almada never won a batting crown … despite his noble conquistador blood.

Baldomero Almada Quirós, who was named for his father, traced his paternal ancestry back centuries to Iberia. Washington sportswriter Shirley Povich recounted this history in the May 15, 1938 Washington Post. Don Álvaro Váz de Almada died in the 1449 battle of Alfarrobeira serving Don Pedro, the rebellious regent of Portugal — but not before being knighted in London by King Henry VI of England and designated Count of Abranches by King Charles III of France. One of Don Álvaro’s forebears, Don Antonio Vásquez de Almada, had served with valor in the battle of Aljubarrotta more than 200 years earlier, routing the Spanish from Portugal. And that’s not to mention Don Ruy Fernández de Almada, Don Cristóbal de Almada, Don Francisco de Almada, and Don Antonio, who fought to restore Portugal’s independence and became King John IV’s ambassador to England. There were several other Dons of note, and some Doñas as well.

It was Don Antonio’s son who expanded the family to Mexico. Melo’s great-grandfather was said to have owned a lucrative silver mine and enough acreage in Mexico that one could fit the country of Belgium within its boundaries. Shirley Povich reported that one of Mel’s uncles was “brutally butchered by the Yaqui Indians.” The forces of Pancho Villa imprisoned another uncle for a few months and confiscated the family properties. Mel’s great-grandfather had a sister who was to be married in the church across the street from the family abode, but the road was exceptionally muddy. Servants prepared to lay down some boards when the patron had bars of silver brought up from storage and laid across the road, making for the “most expensive road crossing in history.” [The Sporting News, September 5, 1935]

In Povich’s account, it was Mel’s great-great-grandfather, Don José María, who laid down the silver bars. The story delves into legend in several places, offering such tales as the 52 legitimate children fathered by Don José María and the time he fired an enemy’s pistol into his own chest to prove he was unafraid. A later Almada was said to have buried strongboxes of silver at various locations on his vast lands but was struck with cholera and died, unable to reveal the locations where the silver had been hidden.

The elder Baldomero Almada was a buyer for the Mexican government and supervised a string of ranches. In 1920, he was appointed governor of Baja California by President Álvaro Obregón, following the last throes of the Mexican Revolution. He had most recently worked as an exporter of “foodstuffs, cement, and mobile houses.” [Washington Post, June 3, 1920]

When Mel’s father arrived to take over as governor, incumbent Esteban Cantú simply refused to vacate the office. As Mel himself said, Cantú had “a large well-equipped army, while my father’s army consisted of my mother and eight children.” [The Sporting News, September 5, 1935]

Amelia Quirós, herself descended from a noble Spanish family, had another son named José Luis and six daughters (Amelia, Esther, Concepción, Aurora, Carmen, and Neli). [Los Angeles Times, June 3, 1920]
Melo told Harry Edwards of the American League Service Bureau that his father “decided his family would prefer the glorious climate of Los Angeles to the excitement of trying to oust the governor who refused to be ousted.” Several Almadas were killed by warring factions and it seemed like a good time to serve elsewhere. Baldomero was offered the position of Ambassador to France, but didn’t want to travel that far from his homeland. The consulate in New York would probably be too cold in the winters, he thought. He finally took the post of consul in Los Angeles. At one point, he also served for a stretch as commercial attaché in San Francisco for the Mexican government.

His son Melo had moved to southern California with his family at the age of one in 1914, amid the political and business turmoil of the Revolution. (The April 25, 1935 Hartford Courant said that Melo had left Mexico four weeks after he’d been born, but Mel himself said he was a year and a half old at the time. See The Sporting News, September 5, 1935.)

John Drohan of the Boston Traveler later wrote, “Had Carranza remained president of Mexico, Mel might have become a bullfighter or possibly just another deceased hero of the cause.”Melo learned baseball as a child playing on the sandlots of Los Angeles, as did his older brother José Luis (Americanized to Louis, “Louie”, or “Lou”). [The Sporting News, November 1, 1934]

Their father had become a passionate baseball fan and encouraged his sons to play the game. They attended Jefferson Grammar School, John Adams Junior High, and Los Angeles High School.Lou Almada played outfield for nine full years in the Pacific Coast League, spending 1929 through 1937 with Seattle and the Mission Reds. He turned pro with Albany of the Eastern League in 1927, the year before he joined the PCL, as a New York Giants pitching prospect.

Lou won his only decision, leaving him with an undefeated 1-0 pro record (he made very brief appearances as a pitcher in three other seasons). It must have been quite a game. Lou gave up 16 hits, walking two and striking out one. He might well have become the first Mexican big-leaguer that year. However, he was injured by a line drive off the bat of Fred Lindstrom during batting practice in spring training. Author Gilberto Garcia notes that Lou later got homesick and bolted Albany for home.

In 1928, he played one game with the Hollywood Stars.Melo Almada first made the Los Angeles Times as a halfback for the Los Angeles High Romans in September 1929. He earned his first headline on October 26, for a 53-yard touchdown run. He also excelled at track, at one point setting the southern California record for the running broad jump with a leap of 23 feet, 4 3/4 inches. (Late in his third season with the Red Sox, this led a Sporting News cartoonist to dub him a “Mexican jumping bean.”)

When City League baseball began in May 1930, L.A. High coach Herbert White gave the left-handed Almada the starting assignment. The Romans beat their archrivals from Polytechnic, 8-1, holding them to five hits; Melo contributed both a single and a home run in the team’s five-run sixth inning. Mel pitched throughout high school and played outfield. He also played American Legion ball with the William Lane Junior Legion Post and for a semipro team in the area named the El Pasos.

After Mel graduated from high school, he went to be with his brother, then playing with the Seattle Indians. Manager Ernie Johnson (later a scout with the Red Sox) spotted his potential, giving him a shot — but Johnson urged him to quit pitching and become an outfielder. Johnson told college-bound Melo that he’d be “crazy if he wasted his time on the so-called higher education.” [Collier’s, August 24, 1935]

Louis — also known as “Ladies Day Lou” for his success on those occasions — cost himself his job with Seattle in 1932. There was a good deal of publicity about the talented pair of brothers, both of whom had starred on the mound for L.A. High. Lou thought to bring Melo to Santa Cruz, where the Seattle team trained. The Times’ Bob Ray told readers back in Los Angeles that “Melo got a job with the Tribe and Louie, who was looking for a better salary package, was given the gate. Fortunately for Louie, though, he caught on with the Missions.” [Los Angeles Times, May 2, 1932] Louis was released in April [The Sporting News June 7, 1934].

Though originally intended as a utility outfielder, Melo played in 127 games for Seattle, hitting .311 in 438 at-bats, with six home runs. Those of Almada’s hometown fans arriving even a minute late for the start of the September 5 doubleheader missed out — he hit the first pitch of the game for a long home run. The Times writer honored Melo with a bit of melodramatic prose: “Many of the fans were still standing, but the concussion from this blow staggered them into their respective reserved seats, stupefied if not actually stunned.” [Los Angeles Times, September 6, 1932] Mel also stole 28 bases. [The Sporting News, December 21, 1933] Louis did even better with the bat in 1932, hitting .320 for the San Francisco Missions.

Even in March 1933, Melo was being touted as perhaps the “best young outfield prospect” in the Coast League. [The Sporting News, March 23, 1933] He started the season strongly. Playing left field again with Seattle, he led off with a double and hit safely four more times for a 5-for-5 day on April 8 in L.A. He had four-hit games on May 7, June 10, and June 20 as well, and a 17-game hitting streak from May 28 to June 11. Under a headline VIVA ALMADA!, it was already being predicted that the 20-year-old would be sold to a major league club before the season was out.

Indeed, Eddie Collins signed him for the Red Sox on July 2, acquiring Almada from Seattle as part of a reported $40,000 transaction also involving the 1932 PCL home run champion, second baseman Freddie Muller. It was one of owner Tom Yawkey’s early deals — he’d only purchased the ballclub at the end of February. The Sporting News wrote in December that the transaction had saved the Seattle club “from financial ruin.” [December 14, 1933]

The Sox left Almada with Seattle for further seasoning. Meanwhile, Muller fizzled out quickly. He debuted on July 8, but only got into 15 games, made five errors, hit zero home runs, and batted just .188. After two 1934 at-bats without a hit, his days in the major leagues were complete.

On July 23, “Melo Almada Day” at Wrigley Field took place. Mexican consul Alejandro V. Martínez and Rosita Moreno, the “beautiful Mexican screen actress of the Fox studios,” presented him with a gold baseball. A photograph of Moreno and Almada was headlined “Thees for You, Senor”. [Los Angeles Times, July 24, 1933] The golden ball was a gift from what the paper called the “Mexican colony of Angeles”. Boxers Kid Azteca and Baby Face Casanova also made appearances. Bob Ray wrote of Almada’s tribute, “He’s a dandy chap and deserves it.” Almada was 2-for-7 on the day, but Seattle lost both games to the Hollywood Sheiks.

Almada made his big-league debut on September 8, 1933. He played center field and led off in both games of a Fenway doubleheader against Detroit, going 1-for-4 in each game. He hit his only home run of his first season off New York’s Herb Pennock on September 23. Mel had replaced Smead Jolley during a 16-12 slugfest, and he scored three of Boston’s dozen runs. The left-handed outfielder batted .341 in 14 games before the end of the season, with three RBIs. He played a few games at first base as well, plus left field in an exhibition game against the Braves near the end of the month.

It was a sign of the era in which he played that Collier’s described him as a “radio nut” and said “He even carries a portable radio with him on baseball trips, plugging it into his hotel room and listening to the programs.” One of the reasons he finished with such a good average was that he batted against Babe Ruth in the last game the Babe ever pitched, the October 1 game that ended the season. In Yankee Stadium, Ruth gave up 12 hits — 25% of them to Almada, who drove in one run. But Ruth also homered and earned the win in the 6-5 game.

At the time of his debut, the Los Angeles Times had noted that Almada was the third Mexican ballplayer to play in the major leagues. The prior two were born in the United States. One fact the newspaper did not note: all three played for the Boston Red Sox. The Sox had previously fielded pitchers Frank Arellanes and Charley Hall (who pitched for the Red Sox from 1909 through 1913). Would that the Red Sox had pioneered in the signing of African American ballplayers as well!

During the offseason, Melo played in a few exhibition games in the Los Angeles area, including one against Satchel Paige and the Philadelphia Royal Giants and another with a group of all-stars against the USC Trojans. The Portland All-Stars traveled to Mexico to play 13 exhibition games against Mexican ballclubs. Portland owner Roy Mack was impressed with the quality of play and said, “I understand that the Almada brothers will soon come to Mexico to advise the Mexican leagues and their visit undoubtedly will result in a better kind of baseball being played in this country and a better knowledge of the game by the Mexican players.” [The Sporting News, November 30, 1933]

Lou Almada had made the PCL All-Star team, but was seeking more money. He almost quit the Missions to take an offer to teach baseball and coach in Mexico City, but perhaps things worked out better for him. In any event, he elected to stay and hit very well, batting .332.

Mel Almada’s averages were up and down in Boston. He batted .233 in 23 games in 1934, .290 as a regular in 1935 (607 at-bats in 151 games), and .253 in 1936 (as a semi-regular, appearing in 96 games). The 1934 Red Sox, entering their first full year under new owner Tom Yawkey, began to build a farm system. They developed working relationships with the New England League club in Worcester and the American Association’s Kansas City Blues. The only club the Red Sox owned was in Reading. On January 10, the Red Sox exercised a $10,000 option they held on Almada; three days later, he was optioned to Kansas City. [Los Angeles Times, January 14, 1934]

He played excellent ball, made the All-Star team and won the club’s MVP award over the course of 135 games, thanks in good part to his .328 average and 30 stolen bases. Near the end of the year, Boston (under manager Bucky Harris) recalled Mel, and he drove in another 10 runs. The “Spaniard” had two of the three hits the Sox mustered against Detroit’s Elden Auker on September 10. The “Spanish recruit” (again, the Atlanta Constitution) singled and scored the lone run in the September 12 1-0 win against the Tigers. After his first 36 games, he’d only committed one error in the field.

In 1935, Mel went to his first spring training with the big league team and came out strong. Paul Shannon of the Boston Post wrote that “by his brilliant showing [Almada] has seemingly earned his right to the center field berth.” [The Sporting News, April 18, 1935]

Mel stuck with the big league team, missing just three games all year — and truly starred in a May 16 exhibition game in Syracuse. The Sox beat the Chiefs, 10-6, largely on the strength of Almada’s two-run double in the sixth and grand slam in the seventh. He impressed throughout the early going; in fact, The Sporting News praised him to the rooftops in its May 30 issue: “Mel Almada, now justly regarded as the greatest outfielder Boston has known since the days of the renowned Tris Speaker, is constantly confirming predictions that he will be one of the real stars of the season.” Mel’s .290 mark included three homers and 59 RBIs, plus nine triples, and he stole 20 bases.

After the season, he played some Winter League ball in the L.A. area, where he lived with his parents.

The Sox added Heinie Manush in 1936 and he won about the same playing time as Almada and Dusty Cooke (all had 300-odd at-bats). Doc Cramer was the only true regular. It was a deeper outfield, but Mel’s hitting dropped off, first in spring training — which gave Cooke an early leg up — and then again later in the season. Manager Joe Cronin sat Mel down in September, with Jimmie Foxx taking over for some 16 games in the outfield. The club was a bit fractious, as temperamental Wes Ferrell was fined and Billy Werber clashed with Cronin more than once. Mel hit one homer and drove in 21. In the winter, he played some more ball in Los Angeles and also spent some time hunting deer in northern Mexico.

Manush was released near the end of the ’36 season, and Cooke spent 1937 with Minneapolis. Buster Mills joined Cramer as a regular outfielder; Fabian Gaffke got most of the replacement work, but Dom Dallessandro and Almada did their parts as well. The Red Sox — who’d featured the only Danish-born big-leaguer, Olaf Henriksen, from 1911-17 — were cosmopolitan for the time. At points that season, their roster included Almada (who spoke Spanish), Gaffke (German), Dallesandro (Italian), and Gene Desautels (French). Multilingual catcher Moe Berg could converse with each.

Mel was beaned in an April 13 exhibition game and suffered a concussion. Not long after he came back, he was asked to fill in four days for Foxx at first. Mills was not hitting well initially, so Mel took over for him for an early stretch. Yet he still wasn’t being used as much, and became part of a large June 11 trade with Washington. Both Ferrell brothers were swapped to the Washington Senators, with Mel, for Ben Chapman and Buck Newsom. Joe Cronin was happy to rid himself of Wes Ferrell, and Senators skipper Bucky Harris was glad to see the last of Newsom — and to welcome Almada. Dan Daniel’s summary of Mel’s career at the time of the trade? “He falls short of being a really good ball player, but these days you can’t be too choosy.” [The Sporting News, June 17, 1937]

Mel played out 1937 with the Senators and really boosted his batting: he’d been hitting .236 for Boston, but hit .309 for Washington over the final 100 games. Though he helped the Senators snap a Yankees winning streak on July 2 with a four-hit game, his standout day was the July 25 doubleheader in St. Louis. Mel scored four runs in the first game and five in the second; overall, he was 6-for-9 at the plate, with a home run in the first game and a double in both. The downside was his two errors in the first game, but Washington swept the twin bill, 16-10 and 15-5.

Apparently, Mel joined the Ferrell brothers playing string music on the road. Wes played electric guitar; what Mel played wasn’t clear. The three shared an apartment in the District and hired a cook to prepare their meals. [See the Shirley Povich column in the June 2 Washington Post and Charlie Casper’s article, “Melo of Mexico” in the December 1938 issue of Baseball.]

Almada’s work for Washington was “a revelation to Washington fandom and even his employers.” He was one of the few Senators to get a raise for 1938. [The Sporting News, December 30, 1937]  The euphoria didn’t last long, though. Almost a year to the day, he was swapped again — on June 15, 1938, to St. Louis for outfielder Sam West. Browns fans wondered why. Again starting the season slowly, Almada was hitting a soft .244 at the time of the trade. He had particular trouble hitting left-handers. “I’ve always been a slow starter,” he said, ‘because I’m always trying to get started off on the right foot. I guess I kinda get tense and all tied up when I’m trying to hit in that first month or six weeks and just mess everything up, but once I get started, I usually finish up pretty good.” [Casper, “Melo of Mexico”, Baseball, December 1938] 

West was hitting .309 and had hit .328 the year before. The Browns knew he was 10 years older, and felt Almada was a better fit for their needs.

There’d been a little excitement during spring training when Almada hit a home run, and later shouted something off the bench to Cardinals catcher Mickey Owen about the pitches to his head. The two had known each other since their L. A. sandlot days. Owen charged the Washington bench and the two grappled with each other on the ground for a few minutes before being ejected. Though Melo’s flashy outfield work won him a strong following among the fans, Harris had given up on him as a force on offense, even disliking his batting stance. “When he swung, he had nothing behind his stroke,” wrote the D.C. correspondent in the June 23 Sporting News. Shirley Povich said a few months later that he’d become “a colossal joke as a hitter” — before the trade. [Washington Post, August 16, 1938]

The change of scenery seemed to help once more. Mel batted .342 for the Browns, helped considerably by a 29-game hitting streak. His total of 197 base hits set a mark for Mexican big-leaguers that would not be surpassed until 1998, when Vinny Castilla got 206 for the Colorado Rockies. Only George McQuinn hit as well for St. Louis in 1938. Washington was satisfied with Sammy West, too. It was one of those trades that worked out for both parties.

Melo claimed that his hitting streak was broken during the season “because John Hanley, Browns’ clubhouse attendant, failed to bring his daily letter from his loved one back in California.” [Casper, “Melo of Mexico”, Baseball, December 1938] The romance bloomed, though, and after the season was over, Melo departed quickly south of the border and on October 30 he married the former Alicia Terminel in Navojoa, Sonora. [Los Angeles Times, November 1, 1938]In 1939, for the third year in a row, Almada was moved in mid-June. St. Louis sold him to the Brooklyn Dodgers for $25,000. This time Mel’s average went down instead of up, from .239 to .214. He didn’t seem to have it anymore. It hadn’t started out that way — he earned a subhead “ALMADA STARS” in the March 6 Atlanta Constitution; the Associated Press saw him as a “strong contender for the regular centerfield post” with the Dodgers.

Mel traveled north with Brooklyn out of spring training but saw no early season action. His last at-bat in a major league uniform was a pinch-hitting appearance in the April 14 exhibition game against the Yankees in New York; he grounded into a double play. A couple of weeks into the season, manager Leo Durocher made a decision, selling him to Rochester on April 24 when the roster was cut down. Durocher reportedly “didn’t have the heart” to tell him, so he ducked out a side door and left it to Brooklyn’s traveling secretary to inform Almada. That probably didn’t make Mel feel any better — he refused to report and “disappeared from view”. [The Sporting News, May 2 and May 23, 1940]

Though he was still only 26 years old, Mel Almada’s career in the majors had ended. Despite his solid .284 lifetime average, his lack of power (.367 slugging percentage) was his biggest drawback. He’d driven in 197 runs but scored 363. He always had a good arm in the outfield and racked up 47 assists.

SABR researcher Carlos Bauer asked Lou Almada why his brother’s career had ended so early. Lou answered, “Melo couldn’t stand being thrown at. ‘Louie,’ he once said to me, ‘They’re throwing at me because I’m a Mexican!’ ‘No, Melo,’ I told him, ‘They’re throwing at you because you’re a batter!’”Bauer added, “Melo, on the other hand, became obsessed with the notion that pitchers had it in for Mexicans — or him personally. Had he played today, I’m sure he would have been at least a near Hall of Famer. But then was then, and now is now. Pete Coscarart, who played with Melo, told me that the moment one pitcher found out that Melo could be intimidated by a brushback pitch, every pitcher in the league began throwing at him like there was no tomorrow.”

Mel then returned home to southern California — but he wasn’t quite done playing. First he appealed to Commissioner Landis, asking that he be declared a free agent so he could have a shot at signing with another major league team. Landis asked the Dodgers to offer him on waivers again, but after no one claimed him, his contract became Rochester property. The Red Wings worked out a deal with the Sacramento Solons, and Almada officially came on option to the PCL club on May 15. He didn’t do well, batting .232 in 306 at-bats with just a pair of homers.

The next year, Almada played as a pro in his native Mexico for the only time. He served as player-manager for Unión Laguna (Torreón), going .343-0-18 in 26 games. However, he gave up the post and quit playing on May 16. Among other things, Almada had difficulty controlling hard-hitting — and hard-drinking — third baseman Roy “El Indio” Arkeketa, an Oklahoman from the Ponca tribe. Headhunting by opposing pitchers may also have helped drive him from the league, suggested his friend and teammate, pitcher-outfielder Manolo Fortes. Mexican author Dr. Jaime Cervantes Pérez interviewed the Cuban, then aged 90, in 2004.

Fortes recalled that the black players in the Mexican League hated Melo because he had played in the major leagues. In addition, Fortes described Almada as “un hombre alto blanco” — or “high white,” not only depicting the man but also implying resentment of his station in society. The beanballs began in Monterrey and spread from there; Almada asked the front office to step down, and Fortes was informed that he was the new manager.

Almada then headed back north of the border once again. Even during his time with the Red Sox, the handsome young man had gotten some work in Hollywood. Brother Louis had a position with Warner Bros., and Mel was cast in several movies, mostly Mexican releases for Warners and Fox. In a December 8, 1935 press release from the American League, he explained, “They give me a small speaking part occasionally.”

After organized baseball, he still picked up a bat once in a while; a March 23, 1942 snippet in the L. A. Times noted that he drove across the lone run in 1-0 win for the Arcadia Merchants over the Kenna Dome Wildcats. Semipro ball was never going to cover expenses, though. He worked in the produce business for some time, but — still being young — served in the U. S. Army during World War II. He joined the Army Medical Corps in 1944, training at Camp Barkeley in Texas. During 1945, Almada played for the Fort Sam Houston Rangers ball team in the San Antonio Service League. He batted .303 and also pitched and won five games for the Rangers.

Some years after the war, Almada spent two-plus winters as manager of the Navojoa Mayos, a Sonora-based entry in the Mexican Pacific Coast League. According to the Enciclopedia del Béisbol Mexicano, Melo was in charge for the 1953-54 and 1955-56 seasons, plus part of 1956-57.

In 1973, he was one of 11 notable figures named by a special committee for the opening induction of the Salón de la Fama in Monterrey, the Mexican Baseball Hall of Fame. In the early 1980s, Almada lived in Tucson. He told Arizona Daily Star writer Keith Rosenblum that he’d never experienced discrimination in baseball — but he qualified that by adding, “Humiliation? Yes. Every so often, we’d be out for a drink and suddenly someone would say, ‘Hey, you goddamned Mexican…what makes you think you can act like an American?” [August 2, 1981]

Almada had four children: Miguel, born in Mexico, and Eduardo, Lydia, and Cecilia. Eddie Almada is a bilingual baseball broadcaster for the Liga Mexicana del Pacífico and a columnist with his own web page at www.pasandolabola.com. He’s done television work for the Diamondbacks and for TELEVISA, and he works as a consultant for some teams as well. He’s proud to exclaim, “Baseball is my life!”

Mel Almada died of a heart ailment on August 13, 1988 in Caborca, Sonora. Brother Lou survived him until 2005. Mel is still remembered in Mexico; even today its Pacific League awards the Baldomero Almada trophy to its rookie of the year.

Acknowledements

Thanks to Peter Mancuso and Rob Neyer for providing articles from Baseball, and to Rory Costello for quite a few hits in the late innings, uncovering additional information during his peer review.

Sources

Email communications with Eddie Almada, March 2009.

Further genealogy and family information:
Pérez Quirós de Urrea, Petra and Roxana Hutchinson de Pérez-Quirós. “Pérez-Quirós Family” (http://www.geocities.com/genbuff2002/Page9.html).

Carlos Bauer’s talk with Louie Almada can be found at: http://minorleagueresearcher.blogspot.com/2005_09_01_archive.html

Jaime Cervantes’ interview with Manolo Fortes can be found at:http://www.jaimecervantes.netfirms.com/EntrevistaManoloFortes%20II.htm

Garcia, Gilberto. “Beisboleros: Latin Americans and Baseball in the Northwest, 1914-1937.” Columbia magazine, Fall 2002.

Professional Baseball Player Database V6.0

Treto Cisneros, Pedro, editor, Enciclopedia del Béisbol Mexicano. (Mexico City, Mexico: Revistas Deportivas, S.A. de C.V., 1998)

Bedingfield, Gary: Baseball in Wartime (http://www.baseballinwartime.com/player_biographies/almada_mel.htm)

Photo Credit

Boston Red Sox

As a player, Amaro was known more for fielding than hitting. In 940 big-league games, he batted .234 with a slugging percentage of just .292, including eight home runs. Four of those homers came during the 1964 season, in which he also won a Gold Glove for his play at shortstop – even though he was sharing the position in Philadelphia with Bobby Wine.

Rubén Amaro Mora was one of the rare big-leaguers whose parents both played pro baseball – in fact, that distinction may be unique. Santos Amaro (1908-2001) played 14 winter seasons in Cuba from 1936-37 to 1949-50.1 He was in Mexico during the summers from the late 1920s through 1955.2 He was also a manager in both his native land and his adopted home and eventually became a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame in each nation.3 Santos Amaro was known as El Canguro – “The Kangaroo” – for his size and leaping ability. In Mexico, Rubén Amaro was sometimes called “Cangurito.” He too became a member of the Mexican Baseball Hall of Fame in 1986. Rubén and Santos became the first father-son duo to be so honored.

Santos had come to Mexico with a traveling Cuban ballclub as early as 1928. In 1929, he met a young woman named Josefina Mora (1910-2007), a member of the Vera Cruz Women’s Professional Baseball Club.4 They got married and had two sons. Mario was born in 1931 in Cuba. Rubén was born in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico on January 6, 1936.5

Santos Amaro was of Portuguese and Moorish descent – the resemblance between him and Rubén was marked. Though his facial features did not fit the “African” stereotype, his coffee-colored skin meant that Santos encountered racism while playing with a barnstorming team in the United States in 1932. By one account, he did not wish to return.6 “But in 1935, he went on an eighty-game, fourteen-state tour of the United States with. . .La Junta de Nuevo Laredo.”7 Santos was not allowed to play much while in Texas. The prejudice he faced in the U.S. apparently killed his desire to play in the Negro Leagues. Yet Afro-Cubans faced bias even at home – Mexico was a more welcoming environment. Several black Cuban players married Mexican women; one was Pedro Orta, whose son Jorge became a major-leaguer from 1972 to 1987.8

As Rubén told author Stuart Gustafson many years later, his parents were a study in contrasts. Santos was tall (1.92 meters, or roughly 6-feet-3½). Josefina was petite (5’1”) and fair (her grandparents on both sides were Spanish). Rubén and Mario wound up in between at 5-feet-10½. “Doña Pepa” was the one with whom the boys practiced their baseball skills, because Santos stressed education above all.9

The Amaro family traveled between Mexico and Cuba until settling permanently in Mexico in 1951. Rubén’s godfather was another great Cuban player, Hall of Famer Martín Dihigo. El Inmortal was a teammate of Santos Amaro’s in Mexico (and a fellow member of the Masons). While the boys were in Havana, their baseball playmates included two future big-league pitchers: the Pascual brothers, Carlos and Camilo. Mario Amaro was also a skillful player but focused instead on medicine. He remained in Cuba for some time after 1951 to continue his schooling.

Rubén – whose favorite player growing up was Roberto Ávila, the Mexican star of the Cleveland Indians – became a star for Mexico in national and international amateur competition. He took part in the Amateur World Series in Caracas, Venezuela in 1953. In March 1954, he helped his homeland win a silver medal at the Central American and Caribbean Games in Mexico City.10

Before the 1954 season, the St. Louis Cardinals signed Amaro as an amateur free agent. The scout was Tufie Hashem, who in 1949 had become general manager of the minor-league club in Mexicali, Baja California. “In 1954, when the Cardinals’ organization extended a working agreement to Mexicali, Hashem came up with his first find, Ruben Amaro.”11 Amaro also noted the involvement of Mexicali’s player-manager, Art Lilly.

“The Cardinals signed me not for my glove,” said Amaro, “but for my bat. I was about the same size as Bobby Ávila, and we both had pretty good power. I was originally an outfielder. I did not start playing shortstop until 1953, after our regular shortstop for the Mexican team broke his leg.”

Amaro began his pro career with Mexicali, which was then in the Arizona-Texas League (Class C). He played in only 93 games, though – “the manager for Bisbee took me out with a rolling slide and broke my fibula.” That summer, Amaro also got a brief taste of action with Veracruz in the Mexican League – where his father was player-manager. Rubén went 2 for 5 in four games but never returned to that league in future.12

Amaro rejoined Mexicali for the 1955 season, and his first cousin Mario Amaro Romay was one of his teammates. Rubén hit 18 homers – he never even approached double digits in any other season – while batting .309. His 1959 Topps baseball card observed, “In the first couple of years in pro ball, he had the tendency to overrun grounders due to his eagerness.” Over time, though, Amaro became known for his smooth, gliding movement in the field.

Amaro played winter ball in Mexico off and on during his career. After his first pro summer, he joined Hermosillo in La Liga de la Costa del Pacífico, but was traded to Mazatlán – “Hermosillo had too many shortstops,” he said. He returned to Mazatlán for three more seasons but rejected offers to play for the Veracruz Sharks in the 1958-59 season.13 Higher education was the reason: he studied business and accounting at La Academía Comercial Veracruz for three years.14 “The director of the school was a very strict and wonderful woman named Juanita Folgueras,” Amaro recalled. “The school is also known by her name. It was a four-year school, but I did not finish. I promised my father that I would, and I still may!”

Amaro spent the summers of 1956 and 1957 with Houston (Double A). Over half a century later, he recalled that he was ready to quit because of the racial and ethnic taunts of some Texas League fans – “the vituperation,” in his own words. Jim Crow laws were also humiliating (in fact, Shreveport didn’t even let black players take the field in 1957, under a Louisiana state law then in effect that banned interracial sports). But he stuck with it after Santos Amaro calmly reminded his son that he had originally let him leave school on the condition that he do whatever it took to reach the majors.15

For better and for worse, two former big-leaguers had a major impact on Amaro’s development in 1956. The first was Billy Jurges, who was a special infield instructor at the Cardinals’ advance camp that February.16 “He told me two things that stayed with me forever,” Amaro recalled. “One was that in the first three days of camp, I had to know all my pitchers by first and last names.” The bigger picture was to know the hurlers’ tendencies and be positioned accordingly. Gene Mauch, who later managed Amaro with the Phillies, viewed Rubén as one of the best shortstops he ever saw in this regard. “The other was that I had to know I was going to get the batter out at first.” In other words, he had to catalogue all the batters and how well they ran too.

During that advance camp, The Sporting News said of Amaro, “[He] has shown exceptional fielding skill at shortstop. He glides around the infield with speed and deftness. If he can hit he’ll be on some major league club before long.”17 That’s where the other influence came to bear – Houston manager Harry Walker. Throughout his long career as a skipper, “Harry the Hat” was known for his inveterate remolding of batters’ swings in his own spray-hitting style. It helped some players, but Amaro was not one of them. “Those two years in Houston changed me as a player,” he said. “I became a tremendous shortstop, but after working with Harry, I couldn’t hit a ball 250 feet.”

Still, Rubén moved up to Triple-A Rochester in 1958. Although he was hitting just .200 in the first few months of the season, the big club called him up to St. Louis in late June. “Eddie Kasko was not only down below .200 at bat but had slipped in the field.”18 Amaro became just the 12th player born in Mexico to reach the majors.

When the rookie set foot on the field at Busch Stadium for the first time on June 28, it became extra special – thanks to his teammate, the great Stan Musial. As author Milton Jamail wrote in 2001, “Ask Rubén Amaro Sr. for the highlight of his long career and he does not hesitate a second.”19 He had been issued uniform pants that were two sizes too big, and Musial asked the clubhouse man to find a proper pair. As George Vecsey added in his 2011 biography of Musial, “Stan the Man” also graciously made the rookie feel at home with memories of playing against Santos Amaro while barnstorming in Cuba years before.20

Over the rest of the ’58 season, Amaro appeared in 40 games for the Cardinals, hitting .224 in 76 at-bats. That December, St. Louis traded him to Philadelphia for Chuck Essegian. “We had just finished our tour of Japan,” said Amaro. “I think they traded me as soon as I got off the plane.” Roy Hamey, general manager of the Phillies, wanted to light a fire under his shortstop, Chico Fernández.21 Amaro spent the entire 1959 season at Triple-A Buffalo; meanwhile the Phillies used Joe Koppe ahead of Fernández at short.

In June 1960, however, Koppe got hurt and Philadelphia couldn’t swing a trade for another shortstop. So they called up Amaro and made him the regular.22 Upon joining the Phillies, Rubén became just the third native of Mexico to play for the club.23 He formed a double-play combo with Tony Taylor, the Cuban second baseman obtained in trade that May. Soon thereafter, Philadelphia beat writer Allen Lewis wrote in The Sporting News, “The addition of shortstop Ruben Amaro tightened the infield considerably. The Mexican was drawing raves from the Connie Mack Stadium fans for the finest shortstop play they had seen by a Phillies player in many years.”24

Amaro remained the primary shortstop for the Phillies in 1961, setting a big-league career high in games played (135). It was also his most productive season in terms of offense, featuring his best on-base percentage (.351) and OPS (.700). That April, Gene Mauch said, “There’s no shortstop in the league playing better ball defensively than Amaro. Ernie Banks might have better hands, but he isn’t a better shortstop.”25

On December 9, 1961, Amaro married Judith Herman. They had met at the gourmet cheese shop that Judy’s mother ran in Philadelphia’s Reading Terminal Market.26 In 2008, Judy also said, “My sister Marlene taught English to Pancho Herrera and Tony Taylor. Ruben would drive them to our house for the lessons.”27

Rubén and Judy had two sons, both of whom became baseball players. David was drafted in the 24th round by the Chicago Cubs in 1984. He played that summer in short-season Class A ball and eight games in the Mexican League in 1985. David’s sons Robert and Andrew were both drafted by the Phillies out of high school but chose college instead; Andrew played Class A ball for the Phillies in 2015.28 Rubén Jr. played in the major leagues from 1991 through 1998 and then moved into the front office of the Phillies. He became the club’s general manager in 2008 and remained in that position through September 2015. In an unusual move, he then joined the coaching staff of the Boston Red Sox.

In January 1962, the Associated Press wrote, “Amaro, a brilliant fielder, is the keystone of the Phillies infield.” Gene Mauch said, “Amaro must have been the most improved player in the majors last year. He moved in a couple of steps at short and became a star. He also became a tough hitter.”29

That May, Amaro (who had previously been in the Mexican Army) was recalled to service in the U.S. Army. The Phillies called up Bobby Wine, who had played four games for them in 1960, and made him the interim starter. Wine continued to play a lot after Amaro returned in late July. He performed well enough for the Phillies to consider trading Amaro during the offseason.30 Instead, Mauch juggled them for three years more.

Amaro returned to winter ball in Mexico for the 1962-63 season. He started with Jalapa of the Veracruz League, which was managed by his father. He also got his first taste of managing. “There was an all-star game between the young players and the veterans, and I got to lead the young guys.” But when the governor of Veracruz state withdrew financial support for the Jalapa franchise, it folded, and the league’s other three teams followed suit.31 Amaro thereupon joined the Yaquis of Ciudad Obregón in La Liga Invernal de Sonora.

Back with the Phillies in 1963, Amaro got off to a cold start with the bat, and his fielding was still not quite up to his brilliant standard of 1961. Therefore, Mauch gave Wine another shot.32 Wine hit well for a few weeks, and though he tailed off severely at the plate after that, he continued to get more shortstop duty than Amaro overall. During the four seasons that Wine and Amaro were teammates, from 1962 through 1965, they split the shortstop duties as follows:

Rubén Amaro and Bobby Wine: Selected Averages, 1962-65

Source: Baseball-Reference.com

It was an interesting pattern – not a true platoon in that both men were righthanded batters who didn’t contribute much with the stick. Both were excellent defenders who positioned themselves well, though Wine was known more for his stronger arm and Amaro for his greater range and quick release. Both also filled in at third base; Amaro also played a significant amount at first base, including seven starts during the 1964 season.

Going into spring training in 1964, Mauch called Wine the first-stringer and Amaro the backup.33 The following month, though, he was more ambivalent. He said, “They can both play in the field and, although they are different types, they are both among the best there is with the glove. We can’t lose anything there whichever one is the regular.” The skipper thought, however, that Wine had more upside with the bat.34

As it developed, Wine played 52% of the innings at short, Amaro 42%, and the scraps went to Cookie Rojas. In 1989, as part of his retrospective series on the ’64 Phillies, Stan Hochman of the Philadelphia Daily News offered a witty view of how the shortstop tandem was used that year. “When it was over, manager Gene Mauch had wrung eight homers and 68 RBI out of his shortstop(s), shuffling Amaro and Wine in and out of the lineup based on biorhythms only he detected, based on the opposing pitcher, the day of the week, the phases of the moon.”35

There was more to it than hunches, though. In late May, Mauch cited the need to give both Wine and Tony Taylor some rest. He said, “There’s more mental pressure on the second baseman and shortstop than on any other regular except the catcher. Taylor and Wine have played almost every inning since spring training.” Allen Lewis added, “Ruben Amaro, who can play any infield position expertly, has done everything Mauch asked of him and done it well.”36

Wine started 70 of the first 97 games at short, but then fell below the Mendoza Line, and Mauch turned more to Amaro as the summer wore on. Late in the season, Lewis wrote that Amaro was back in his top form of 1961 in the field and was hitting respectably too. Rubén himself credited being in a good rhythm with regular play. Oddly enough, he said that a spring wrist injury helped his swing.37

Amaro also made a unique contribution to how the history of the 1964 Philadelphia Phillies was recorded with the series of letters he wrote to his father and mother at their home in Veracruz. Those letters possessed a special spirit, but are lost to history because Doña Pepa threw them out while cleaning house in 1971. Amaro ordered $1,800 worth of World Series tickets for his family before the Phillies collapsed down the stretch. He never did get to a World Series as a player, though he was present as first-base coach when the Phillies finally triumphed in 1980. “We won and it was fabulous, extraordinary – but nothing ever is going to make up for our loss in 1964.” He drew a parallel with another team he served as coach, the 1984 Chicago Cubs, who won the first two games of the NL Championship Series that year but couldn’t close it out. “We had a banner year, but it was devastating at the end when we lost three games to San Diego and couldn’t go to the Series.” The good Catholic summed it up this way: “When the saints turn their back, there is simply no way you are going to win.”

After the sad ending to the season, Amaro received some consolation in the form of the National League Gold Glove award for shortstops. In those days, the players cast the ballots, and out of 251 total, Amaro got 59, edging Leo Cárdenas of Cincinnati, teammate Wine (the 1963 winner), and veteran Roy McMillan of the New York Mets. The Sporting News said, “The award was long overdue for Amaro.”38

There was renewed talk after the ’64 season that the Phillies might look to deal either Wine or Amaro to another team.39 That did not come to pass for another year, though. On November 29, 1965, Philadelphia traded Amaro to the New York Yankees for utility infielder Phil Linz. The Yankees thought Linz would not develop into a regular shortstop; the Phillies viewed him as a bench reinforcement who might become something more. Yankees manager Ralph Houk said, “We know Amaro isn’t much of a bet to win the batting title, but we know he is truly a first-class infielder.”40

“I did not play much winter ball after getting married,” Amaro said. “I worked for ADD Air Freight International and later for Freihofer’s bakery.” But because Amaro had not played much for Philadelphia in 1965, he wanted to return to Ciudad Obregón. Economics prevented it, however; “Mexican rules dictate[d] that a major league player must be paid at the same rate as in the United States. ‘My team couldn’t possibly pay me by league rules,’ Amaro explained. ‘The team’s entire budget for the season was 72,000 pesos, or approximately $6,000.’”41

Amaro was the main candidate to step into the shoes of a Yankee hero, Tony Kubek, who had retired in January 1966. Although he became the first Mexican to play in the majors for the Yankees, he got into just 14 games with New York that year. He injured his knee in the fifth game of the season, colliding with left fielder Tom Tresh on a blooper off the bat of Brooks Robinson. He underwent surgery and did not return until September. The Bronx Bombers finished in last place in the American League that year, one of the worst seasons in the proud franchise’s history.

Bobby Murcer (originally a shortstop for the Yankees) went into the Army for a two-year hitch in 1967. Amaro returned to play 130 games, overcoming the long layoff and some lingering mental concerns to earn some consideration as Comeback Player of the Year.42 Houk gave him a career high 470 plate appearances. In 1968, however, New York moved Tom Tresh to shortstop and Amaro became a seldom-used reserve. He came to the plate just 50 times in 47 games, getting just five hits.

Perhaps the most interesting news concerning him that year came off the field. The 1968 Summer Olympics were held in Mexico City, and Amaro took a principled stand, supporting a potential boycott of the Games if South Africa (then under apartheid) were allowed to participate. He came under fire in his homeland’s press but did not change his position.43 The International Olympic Committee eventually decided to continue its ban of South Africa, and the boycotts did not take place.

In November 1968, the California Angels purchased Amaro’s contract from the Yankees for $25,000. They wanted a capable veteran backup for Jim Fregosi, who had tired after the All-Star break.44 That winter, in need of action, Amaro got back to Ciudad Obregón.

During the 1969 season, Jim Bouton (a teammate with the Yankees from 1966-68) praised Amaro as he wrote his baseball diary, Ball Four. “He’s the kind of guy, well, there’s a dignity to him and everyone likes and respects him.” Again, however, Rubén’s playing time was scanty – just 36 plate appearances in 41 games. Yet he helped the ballclub in other ways – notably as mentor to a countryman, young Aurelio Rodríguez. In fact, Amaro and Rodríguez’s father had been on the same Mexican amateur team in 1953.45

A few weeks after the 1969 season ended, the Angels released Amaro. They offered him a job managing in their minor-league system, but he still wanted to be on the field. Thus he played winter ball again, this time with the Culiacán Tomateros.46 The following spring, he signed with the San Diego Padres. “If I made good, I wanted $25,000, but they didn’t agree. So I called Gene Mauch,” who was then managing the Montreal Expos. “Gene said if I made his team, I would earn whatever I made with the Angels.”

Amaro was an insurance policy at shortstop; the incumbent – none other than Bobby Wine – had an elbow problem that concerned the Expos.47 “He also had a neck problem,” Amaro added. Rubén wasn’t able to stick, though. “That winter, I fell on my shoulder in a rundown with Aurelio Rodríguez. I got to spring training and I couldn’t throw. The minute I left camp, I was okay.”

There was no job opening as a player-coach for the Expos at Triple-A.48 An opportunity arose in his homeland, but things turned out differently. “I had a two-year contract to manage the Mexico City Reds,” Amaro recalled. “I had a brand-new Ford station wagon, and it had temporary tags. I didn’t want to get to the border with those, so I went to Harrisburg to get plates. I started driving down and a highway patrolman stopped me. I wondered what I had done, and he told me that I had an urgent call from Mr. Paul Owens.” The Phillies’ farm director wanted Amaro to return to the organization. “So I drove to Eugene, Oregon instead of my country.”

Amaro played in 106 games in 1970 for Philadelphia’s top farm club. That July, he became a player-coach.49 He spent one last winter as a player in Mexico, again with Culiacán. During his final summer as a pro, 1971, he got into 17 games for Eugene and 11 with the Double-A affiliate, the Reading Phillies.

In 1970, Gene Mauch had called Amaro an excellent managing prospect, saying, “He’s got it up here” while tapping his forehead.50 “The owner in Eugene wanted me to be manager,” Amaro said. “They had guys like Greg Luzinski [1971] and Mike Schmidt [1972]. I might have become a major-league manager. But it was too early for me,” he added, referring to his ethnicity.

Rubén became a full-time manager for the first time in the winter of 1971-72 with Culiacán. He was celebrating the team’s victory in the first half of the season at the ranch of owner Juan Manuel Ley when he mounted a horse and the animal threw Amaro over its head.51 “I shattered and dislocated my ankle, and that was the end of my playing career.”

Since then, Amaro compiled the following résumé:

“When I first worked for the Phillies in 1972,” Amaro recalled, “there were only four people in the [farm director’s] office: Paul Owens, Dallas Green, I, and Bill Gargano, plus a couple of secretaries.” Amaro took great pride in having contributed to the renewed success of the franchise. In his view, the very high percentage of players who went to winter ball together was a major factor, helping with fundamentals and team cohesion.

“I never wanted to leave the Phillies – never,” Amaro continued. “The times I left, they were the biggest boo-boos of my life. Not so much the first time, though, because I joined Dallas Green with the Cubs and he built something, which I don’t think he gets enough credit for.”

Amaro never did get a chance to manage in the majors, although he was mentioned as a candidate to succeed Green with the Phillies after the 1981 season. He also got an interview with Philadelphia as late as 2000, following the firing of Terry Francona. “I was not only Latin, but my family was also a bit dark,” Amaro said in 2011. “My time came too early.”52 He also hoped to become assistant to his son when Rubén Jr. became GM, but internal politics prevented that – the Phillies instituted a rule against family connections.

Amaro and his first wife, Judy, got divorced in the 1980s. Rubén had a daughter named Alayna from a relationship with Mary Beth Allio. In 1988, he got married again, to Lilia Machado, a member of the family that owns Águilas del Zulia, Amaro’s Venezuelan club. Their two sons, Luis Alfredo and Rubén Andrés, also became ballplayers. Luis played short-season Class A ball for the Phillies in 2011.

After a battle with cancer, Rubén Amaro Mora died in Miami on March 31, 2017. His passing came just nine days after the death of his longtime colleague Dallas Green. When the news of Amaro’s death broke, there was a remarkable outpouring of affection for the man, emphasizing his personal warmth and grace. It echoed an observation from six years before about his standing in the game. During spring training 2011, Amaro visited the camp of the New York Mets, representing the Baseball Assistance Team (he had been a director for several years). Sportswriter Marty Noble observed, “Wherever he was, lines formed. Scouts, writers, club officials actually queued up to say hello and show reverence, appreciation and respect for the soft-spoken 75-year-old. He never was a star. . . But he is one of the game’s great gentlemen.”53

This biography is an expanded version of the one included in the book “The Year of the Blue Snow: The 1964 Philadelphia Phillies” (SABR, 2013), edited by Mel Marmer and Bill Nowlin. It includes some of the material from two sidebar articles, “What to Do with Two Gold Glove Shortstops?” and “The Amaro Chronicles”.

Sources

Grateful acknowledgment to Rubén Amaro Sr. for his memories. All Amaro quotes are from telephone interviews on October 18 and November 20, 2012, unless otherwise indicated. Thanks also to Steve Grande, Media Relations, Houston Astros, and to Dick Schofield Sr. for confirming information about the Cardinals’ advance camps.

Fellow researchers

Continued thanks to Alfonso Araujo in Mexico for various details of Rubén Amaro’s career in winter ball.

Books

Pedro Treto Cisneros, editor, Enciclopedia del Béisbol Mexicano, Mexico City: Revistas Deportivas, S.A. de C.V.: 11th edition, 2011.

The Sporting News Baseball Register, 1965 edition.

Internet resources

www.baseball-reference.com

www.retrosheet.org

www.checkoutmycards.com

Manuel de Jesús Sortillón Valenzuela, online history of La Liga de la Costa del Pacífico, www.historiadehermosillo.com/BASEBALL/Menuff.htm

Notes

“Everybody knows who Avila was in Mexico,” said former Los Angeles Dodgers great Fernando Valenzuela. “He was an inspiration, of course, for Mexican ballplayers to follow to the States and play in the major leagues. He did a good job. Everybody knows and recognizes what he did.”2

With the 1954 Indians, Avila played the best baseball of his 11-year major-league career.3 He led the American League in hitting (.341) and received The Sporting News American League player of the year award. His extraordinary 1954 performance made him the first Mexican-born player in history to lead the American League in batting.4

Roberto Francisco (Gonzales) Avila was born on April 2, 1924, in Veracruz, Mexico.5 He had four sisters and three older brothers. His father, a lawyer, wanted Bobby to also become a barrister. While at a preparatory school in Veracruz, Bobby excelled in many sports, including baseball, soccer, and basketball. When he was 14 a professional soccer team, Espana Club of Veracruz, offered him an opportunity to play left wing. For about $70 a month and with his father’s approval, Bobby joined the club and traveled throughout Mexico as a professional soccer player.6

Avila decided the following year to concentrate his athletic efforts on baseball and signed with the semipro Cordoba club. At the time baseball in Mexico suffered from a lack of good instructors and coaches. Fortunately for Bobby, an older brother, Pedro, played baseball, and taught him the game. Although he started as one of Cordoba’s pitchers, he switched to second base in order to get more playing time.

In 1943 the Mexican League offered Avila a contract to play for the Puebla club. He and his father remained at loggerheads over his future. He partly addressed his father’s concerns by agreeing to also enroll at the University of Mexico to study engineering. Avila signed with Puebla for 700 pesos a month.

In 1946 Avila emerged as one of the league’s top hitters, finishing with a .340 average. He also played Cuban baseball and performed well. Major-league scouts noticed and several made offers to him. Reportedly, the Brooklyn Dodgers even brought him to their spring-training camp to evaluate him.

Avila later said that most of the offers were in the $6,000-to-$10,000 area. Rather than jump at the offers, he decided to stay put. The following year Avila led the league in hitting, with a .347 average. The Indians’ Cy Slapnicka, who scouted and signed many great baseball stars over his career, extensively evaluated the 5-foot-11, 170-pound Avila. He recommended that the Indians offer Avila a $17,500 bonus to sign. With the full support of his once skeptical father, Bobby signed.7

Cleveland assigned Avila to its Baltimore affiliate in the Triple-A International League. In 1948 he played in 56 games for the Orioles and hit .220.8 At first his unfamiliarity with English significantly hampered his transition to American baseball. His first minor-league manager, Tommy Thomas, described Bobby as a “stranger in a strange land.”9

Avila went from Mexican stardom to American anonymity. He struggled both socially and professionally. His self-confidence plummeted. “[It] was very hard for me at first,” he said later. “Any Latin ballplayer who comes here must fight the language.” 10 To make matters worse, Avila also suffered a hernia, which had to be corrected with offseason surgery.11

Avila began with Cleveland in 1949 and roomed with pitcher Mike Garcia, US-born but of Mexican heritage. Garcia remembered, “At first, Bobby didn’t speak a lick of English. All he would do was point and say, ‘Como se llama eso?’ meaning ‘What’s that?’ ” On the major-league roster only because of major-league requirements related to his signing bonus, Avila used his time on the bench in 1949 to learn the English language and American customs.12 He appeared in 31 games, only one as a starter, had only 15 plate appearances, and finished with a .214 average.13

In 1950 Joe Gordon, the Indians’ hard-hitting and slick-fielding second baseman, suffered an injury and Avila made the most of his unexpected opportunity.14 Appearing in 80 games and getting 201 at-bats, he ended the year with a .299 average.15 Gordon was released after the season and Avila became Cleveland’s regular second baseman in 1951, playing in 141 games and hitting .304. 16 He had the best batting day of his career on June 20, 1951, hitting a single, a double, and three home runs (one inside the park) against five different Boston Red Sox pitchers.17

In a seemingly minor move, the Indians in 1952 obtained veteran utility infielder Hank Majeski from the Chicago White Sox. Cleveland assigned Majeski to room with Avila. The two quickly became good friends. “He (is) like a big brother to me,” Avila said. “He helps me more than anybody. He makes you think you can do it. Sure you have to have the ability, but he help(s) me all (of) the time.” 18 Avila responded positively to this new environment by hitting.300, scoring 102 runs, leading the league in triples (11), and making his first appearance in an All-Star Game.19 With his All-Star appearance, he became the first Mexican-born player to be picked for the honor. 20

Although Avila increasingly felt comfortable playing in Cleveland, he maintained his strong ties with his friends and family in Mexico. On his major-league salary, he supported his mother, his wife and two children, and his widowed sister and her son. In addition to his direct dependents, Bobby often received requests for financial help from other friends. According to Majeski, “In every town we go to people gather around him and he’s always picking up the tab. After every payday, you ought to see the number of money drafts he sends to Mexico.”21

Avila was now an international (US, Cuba, Mexico) baseball star. In Mexico and Cuba, he went by the popular nickname Beto, short for Roberto. “Beto” adorned all of his autographed baseball pictures and even his bats. Beto never caught on in the US, so he went with the nickname Bobby. He ended up with two sets of bats in Cleveland: his Bobby bats and his Beto bats.22

Avila suffered a slight drop in his hitting production in 1953. In 141 games he finished with his lowest batting average (.286) in four years.23 On the field, though, Avila led all American League Second Basemen with a fielding average of .986.24 Building on the footwork skills he used in soccer, he became very adept at turning the double play. He also used his soccer training to perfect the art of sliding into a base while simultaneously attempting to kick the baseball out of the fielder’s glove. This angered some opposing players, who threatened retaliation.25

Within the framework of the Indians’ spectacular 1954 season, Avila surged to the best year in his 11-year major-league career. He led the league in hitting with a batting average of .341, and was the only Indian regular to hit over .300. (Al Rosen hit exactly .300.)

Avila’s 1954 batting title has been the subject of some controversy, particularly among Boston Red Sox fans. During 1954 spring training, the legendary Ted Williams broke his collarbone diving for a ball and missed 37 games. In addition, opposing pitchers walked him 136 times. The missed games and walks combined to give Williams 386 official at-bats. Although he finished with a .345 average, to be eligible for a batting championship at the time, a player had to have 400 at-bats.26

However, Avila also had both a significant injury and a possible suspension to address. After his unusually good start with the bat, he suffered a broken thumb on June 2. He remembered, “Hank Bauer slid into second and broke my thumb.” At the time of his injury, Avila’s average was .392.27

Avila played five games after his injury before deciding to get his increasingly sore right thumb X-rayed. The film revealed a chip fracture near the joint. The doctor put a splint on the injury and told him not to play for at least a week. He also told Avila “not to shake hands” for a while.28

When Avila resumed playing, he found he couldn’t swing the bat as well as he had earlier. Over the next two months, his average dropped to .313. As the thumb got better, his average climbed and he finished at .341. Noting that confidence at the plate is a key factor in good hitting, Avila said that if he had not had the injury he could have hit for an even higher average. 29

In addition to his injury, on June 4 Avila made contact with home-plate umpire Bill Grieve while arguing a third-strike call. Umpire/player contact incidents required a ten-day suspension. Upon his review, however, Baseball Commissioner Ford Frick decided that the incident was minor and could have actually been accidental. Instead of a suspension, the commissioner gave Avila a warning and fined him $100.30

Avila also hit a career-high 15 home runs in 1954. Although that may seem modest, The Sporting News noted that 13 of the 15 either tied or won games in the late innings. 31 Avila played in his second All-Star game, which that year was played in Cleveland. He went 3-for-3 and drove in two runs in the American League’s 11-9 victory. 32 Avila also led the league in sacrifice hits (19) and scored a career-high 112 runs.33

Yogi Berra was voted the Most Valuable Player in the American League that year, but Avila received several postseason awards. The Sporting News selected him as its AL Player of the Year and Major League All-Star second baseman. The Cleveland Baseball Writers named him their Man of the Year.34

When the Indians won the pennant, Avila faced the daunting task of satisfying a huge number of World Series ticket requests from Mexico. The Sporting News reported that he even got a call from the president of Mexico, who wanted tickets for himself and all of his cabinet members.35

Avila hit only .133 (2-for-15) as the Indians were swept by the New York Giants in the World Series. The Sporting News said the poor hitting of Avila and teammate Lary Doby made them the “top patsies” of the Series.36 Reflecting on the Giants’ sweep of the heavily favored Indians, Avila said, “You know how it is in baseball. Most of the breaks went for them and they beat us.”37

In 1954 Avila, with the permission of General Manager Greenberg, became a part-owner of the Mexico City Reds of the Veracruz Winter League. After the World Series he received a hero’s welcome when he returned to Mexico to begin his player/owner duties.

Mexican officials met Avila in Nuevo Laredo at the U.S.-Mexican border and gave him a motorcycle escort all the way to Mexico City (900 miles).38 As the Reds were not doing well, Avila also took over as their manager.39

In 1955 Avila’s batting average dropped to .272, nearly 70 points below 1954. Several factors combined to produce these disappointing results. Before the season Avila held out for a salary increase from $20,000 (including bonus) to $32,000. On March 25 he became the last Indian holdout to sign. He ended up with $27,500 and additional bonus opportunities of $2,000. The heavily publicized holdout embarrassed the Indians, particularly Greenberg.40

The Indians’ trade of his roommate, mentor, and close friend Hank Majeski to Baltimore in early July had a negative effect on Avila’s hitting. Although the trade made sense for the Indians, Avila had always praised Majeski for helping him keep his hitting focus.41

Injuries also played a role in Avila’s slump. He suffered a sprained right toe early and missed several games.42 In mid-July he had a corneal cyst surgically removed from his right eye. The surgery was publicly characterized as minor. However, it wasn’t until mid-September that Avila acknowledged he felt comfortable at the plate again.43 44 Although his batting average tumbled, he was again selected to play on the AL All-Star squad. For the second year in a row, he led the league in sacrifice hits (18).45

When the season ended Avila returned to Mexico to play. This time his team won the Veracruz League pennant. Early in the winter season he signed teammates Early Wynn and Bob Lemon and White Sox outfielder Jim Rivera. Wynn and Lemon made only a few appearances, but Rivera played a full season.46

Avila again held out in the spring of 1956. He agreed via phone to a base salary of around $25,500 and reported three days after the Indians started their spring training. Greenberg took his frustrations with Bobby’s negotiating tactics public.47 Avila’s batting average again dropped sharply, from .272 to .224. The Indians requested that he try eyeglasses when hitting. He wore glasses the last week of the 1956 season but the results were inconclusive. He and the Indians agreed that he would have an eye exam during the winter.

The Indians began the 1957 season with a new manager, Kerby Farrell. Because of his poor 1956 hitting, Avila played no winter ball in Mexico. To the Indians’ surprise, he showed up at spring training without glasses. He said his doctor’s eye examination revealed he did not have any problems.

By the end of May Avila’s batting average stood at .211. Greenberg told him to see the Indians’ eye doctor, told him he was nearsighted and needed glasses. The first time he wore his new glasses Avila got three hits. Although he steadfastly refused to wear glasses on the field, he wore them while batting. He finished the year with a .268 batting average.48

In 1958 Frank “Trader” Lane succeeded Hank Greenberg as the Indians’ general manager, with Bobby Bragan as the manager. Lane said second base was one of the infield positions where the Indians needed to start a rebuilding effort. 49 Throughout the season, Lane frequently used Avila’s name when he spoke publicly about possible trades. Within this fluid framework, Avila ended up playing 82 games at second base and 33 games at third base. He ended the season with a .253 batting average and a .349 on-base percentage.50

After the season Lane traded Avila to the Baltimore Orioles for pitcher Russ Heman and $30,000. After playing in 20 games for the Orioles in 1959, he was sent to the Red Sox for the waiver price in mid-May. Avila played in 22 games for Boston and was put on waivers again. The Milwaukee Braves selected him to replace their ailing second baseman, Red Schoendienst. Bobby played in 51 games for the Braves, who were in a tight pennant race, which they lost to the Los Angeles Dodgers in a one-game playoff after the close of the regular season. For his three teams Avila played in 93 games and ended with a .227 season average and an OBP of .314.51

After the 1959 season Avila was the player-manager of the Jalapa team in Mexico. Recovering from a slow start, it lost the pennant on the last day of the season in a controversial game.52 53

The 1959 season was Avila’s last in the major leagues. At the start of 1960, the Braves optioned the 35-year-old Avila to their farm team in Louisville, which in turn optioned him to the Mexico City Tigers of the Mexican League.54 The Tigers won the pennant as Avila hit .333 and scored a record 125 runs.55 It was his last season as a player. During his 11 seasons in the major leagues, he played in 1,300 games, had 4,620 at-bats, produced 1,296 hits and registered a batting average of .281 and an on-base percentage of.359.56

In October 1960 Avila was named the president of the former Veracruz League, which in his honor was named the Roberto Avila League.57 In 1971 he was elected to the Mexican baseball hall of fame as a player.58 Two Mexican League Stadiums were named after him: Estadio Beto Avila (capacity 7,782) in Cancun and Parque Beto Avila (capacity 9,000) in Veracruz.59

In 1980 Avila began a new career, as a Mexican lawmaker. He was elected the mayor of Veracruz and then to the Mexican Congress, where he served two three-year terms. He also remained active as a businessman and busy grandparent. He had four children and ten grandchildren.60 On October 26, 2004, Avila died in his hometown Veracruz of complications from diabetes and lung disease. He was 80 years old.61

Avila may have summed up his baseball career best: “I loved the game. And I was real honest about my job. Nobody could ever say they saw Bobby Avila drunk or playing around. I was honest about my career and I gave it everything I had.”62

This biography is included in the book Pitching to the Pennant: The 1954 Cleveland Indians (University of Nebraska Press, 2014), edited by Joseph Wancho. For more information, or to purchase the book from University of Nebraska Press, click here.

Notes

Vinicio “Vinny” (Soria) Castilla, born on July 4, 1967, in Oaxaca, Mexico, was a right-handed-hitting shortstop and third baseman who played for the Atlanta Braves, Colorado Rockies, Tampa Bay Devil Rays, Houston Astros, Washington Nationals, and San Diego Padres over his 16-year major-league career. He is primarily known for his time with the Rockies. The 6-foot-1, 175-pound infielder was a two-time All-Star and three-time Silver Slugger recipient.

Typically, athletes in Mexico are drawn to playing soccer rather than baseball, but Castilla cited his father’s experience playing amateur baseball in Mexico as a driving force influencing him and his brother to choose baseball over soccer as their desired sport.2 In fact, most schools in the region did not even field baseball teams, and for boys like the Castillas who desired to play baseball, they would have to seek out leagues outside the school system.3

Growing up in Oaxaca, Castilla attended high school at Carlos Gracita Institute, and once he completed his education there, he attended Benito Suarez University, also in Oaxaca. Castilla was the first, and as of 2018 the only major-league baseball player to attend the university.4 (In fact, he and Geronimo Gil are the only Oaxacans to make it to the major leagues.5)

In 1987 the 19-year-old Castilla began playing for the Saltillo Saraperos in the Mexican League. He played in the Mexican League for three seasons, 2½ with Saltillo and half of the 1988 season with the Monclova Acereros. After his 1989 season with Saltillo, the Atlanta Braves purchased his contract from the Saraperos for $20,000, of which Castilla got $17,000. The Dodgers, Reds, and Pirates had also showed interest in Castilla. At the time, he was a skinny shortstop with a wild swing and an uncanny ability to hit a fastball. He was projected by most scouts to be no more than a utility infielder rather than the slugging third baseman most fans remember from the 1990s and 2000s. Castilla took the criticism in stride and sought to prove the naysayers wrong. “No one gave me a chance,” he said. “When they told me I was nothing but a utility player, I said, ‘Fine, I’ll be the best utility player in the league.'”6

The Braves assigned Castilla to the Class-A Sumter (South Carolina) Braves for the 1990 season. In 93 South Atlantic League games he showed decent power, with 9 home runs and with 14 doubles. Castilla’s defensive acumen was still developing and he made 23 errors. (He and seven teammates made the major leagues (Ryan Klesko, Tyler Houston, Melvin Nieves, Tony Tarasco, Eddie Perez, Ed Giovanola, Mark Wohlers), all with the Braves in the early to mid-1990s. Late in the season Castilla was promoted to the Greenville Braves (Double-A Southern Association), where his power tailed off a bit, but his errors subsided a bit as well.

On a personal level, the 1990 season was tough for Castilla. He was in a foreign country, away from his family, riding a bus from town to town, with the realization that this would be his life for the foreseeable future, even if he progressed quickly through the minors. Castilla had his doubts about pursuing his baseball dream and contemplated quitting and returning to Mexico. He was getting paid $800 a month in the United States versus the $2,000 a month he had made in Mexico. Castilla did not speak English well enough to order a burger from McDonald’s, and he could not find any decent Mexican food in Sumter.7 Then a letter from his father reminded him of his abilities and that the Braves had signed him based on his abilities. “I thought, ‘This is my dream. If I go back, it will never happen,’” Castilla said.8 He decided to stick it out and despite some struggles, he was able to sustain a successful major-league career.

Castilla began the 1991 season back in Greenville, where his offensive production was up from his previous season in Greenville, and his defensive production remained steady. He was not the highest-ranked prospect in Greenville, this honor going to Ryan Klesko, but Castilla did get promoted to the Triple-A Richmond Braves, while Klesko finished the season in Greenville. The The 23 pitchers who toiled for the squad all made it to the major leagues. Castilla’s defense remained constant on defensive and he declined a bit on offense, but not enough to deter the Braves from calling him up at the end to season to receive his first taste of major-league action.

Castilla made his major-league debut on September 1, 1991, when he came into a home game at shortstop against the Philadelphia Phillies in the bottom of the ninth. His first at-bat came three days later in Montreal when he popped out to second in the ninth inning. Castilla’s first start and first hit, a line-drive single, came against the Houston Astros on October 6, 1991, the last game of the regular season for the Braves.

Castilla opened the 1992 season back in Richmond, where he played until another late-season call-up. His home-run production fell off from 14 to 7 in nearly twice as many at-bats. Castilla’s defense regressed; he made 31 errors. During his call-up he played third base as well as shortsop.

During the expansion draft after the season, the Braves left Castilla unprotected, and he was selected by the new Colorado Rockies. Years later he was philosophical about having been “cast aside” by the Braves: “It was a new opportunity. There weren’t many chances for me to play in Atlanta.”9

Castilla debuted for the Rockies at his natural position of shortstop in 1993, playing in 104 games while splitting time with Freddie Benavides. Reflecting on his career with the Rockies, he said many years later, “This team picked me in the expansion draft in 1992 and gave me my first real, honest opportunity to play at this level. I played for other organizations, but the purple stripes have always felt better on my body.”10 But in his first season, Castilla still had not developed into the power hitter many Rockies fans remember him to be, and finished with just nine home runs and .686 OPS. (He did hit a career-best seven triples.)

That year was one of transformation for Castilla off the field as well. While purchasing a cell phone, he was enticed to sign a contract with the promise of a date with the salesperson’s sister, Samantha Owen. Despite some reservations about dating a baseball player (“I said, ‘He’s a baseball player? I don’t think so.’ I had heard stories”) the pair eventually did go out on a date, which led to more dates, and they were married the following year.11

Castilla opened the 1994 season as the recently signed free agent Walt Weiss’s backup at shortstop, hoping to build upon his previous season and earn more playing time. He played sporadically during the first month of the season, and was sent down to the Triple-A Colorado Springs Sky Sox, where he received consistent playing time and much-needed at-bats. Castilla returned to the Rockies in a utility role, seeing playing time at all four infield positions. In his return to the majors, Castilla flourished, and he batted.331/.357/.500 in the strike-shortened season.

When the 1995 season began, Castilla became the starting third baseman, replacing the departed Charlie Hayes.12 The transition to third base did not intimidate Castilla; he felt that his time at shortstop would only help his ability to play third base. “If you can play shortstop, you can play any position in the infield,” Castilla said later about his transition.13 Castilla flourished at third base and became a charter member of the Blake Street Bombers, the quintet of sluggers also including Ellis Burks, Dante Bichette, Larry Walker, and Andres Galarraga.14

The 1995 season was one to remember for Castilla and the Rockies. They earned the first-ever National League wild card after winning 77 games in the truncated season, finishing second in the National League West. Castilla earned his first of two All-Star Game selections, and first of three Silver Slugger Awards. The Rockies finished first in the National League in runs, hits, triples, home runs, batting average, and slugging, helped by Castilla’s breakout season at the plate. He finished the season with an impressive slash line of .309/.347/.564, and 32 home runs, 34 doubles, and 90 RBIs. The Rockies lost to the Braves, three games to one, in the Division Series. Castilla performed well, batting .467 with three home runs and six RBIs. Castilla later cited the Rockies clinching a playoff berth in 1995 as his favorite baseball moment.15

Castilla was quick to thank Art Howe, the Rockies’ hitting coach in 1995, for his emergence at the plate. “He really taught me a lot,” Castilla said. “Before, I tried to pull everything; I’d hit either a home run to left or a weak ground ball to short. Art taught me to go the other way, and I learned how to hit for power to the opposite field.”16

The 1995 season was the start of something special for the Rockies, and Castilla was a vital part of the impressive era of offense-minded baseball. “Man, I love the name Blake Street Bombers, it just sounds so good,” he reflected during the celebrations of the 25th anniversary of the Rockies franchise. “That name stuck with the fans and the organization. I’m so proud that I was a part of it. What a great experience.”17

After his strong 1995 season, Castilla continued his ascension to the top ranks of major-league third basemen. His 1996 and 1997 seasons were nearly identical,.304/.343/.548 in 1996 and .304/.356/.547 in 1997, with 40 home runs and 113 RBIs in each season. Despite those numbers, Castilla did not make an All-Star team either year, but he did take home his second Silver Slugger Award in 1997. Castilla’s rise as a power hitter, whether fueled by the thin air of Denver or not, surprised talent evaluators in Atlanta. Chuck Lamar, assistant general manager of the Bravesin the early to mid-1990s, said, “No one in the organization predicted [Castilla] would ever hit more than 15 home runs.”18 The uninspiring scouting reports for Castilla were not reserved for the Braves organization. One of his future managers, Clint Hurdle, predicted while managing the Triple-A Norfolk Tides, “Nothing special. … Might make it as a utility player.”19

Castilla and his Samantha’s first son, Vinicio Jr., was born on March 12, 1996.20

The 1998 season was Castilla’s best as a professional. It was the only one in which he played in all 162 games, and he had career highs in hits (206), runs (108), home runs (46), RBIs (144), batting average (.319), on-base percentage (.362), and slugging percentage (.589), as well as his second All-Star Game appearance and his third Silver Slugger Award. Even with his impressive stats in 1998, the results for the Rockies were beginning to decline. The team didn’t fare as well, and despite a string of great offensive seasons by Castilla and other Rockies, the 1995 Division Series was the team’s only postseason appearance during Castilla’s nine-year tenure with the Rockies.

The Rockies and San Diego Padres opened the 1999 league in Monterrey, Mexico, the first time an opener had been played outside the United States. Back in front of his countrymen, Castilla shined by going 4-for-5 and helping the Rockies win, 8-2. After the game, he said, ”I tried my last two at-bats to hit a home run. It didn’t happen, but I’m happy for the win.”21

That season was solid in many ways for Castilla, but it did not compare to the results he had enjoyed from 1995 to 1998. His numbers declined in almost every meaningful statistical category, and the team lost more games than in the previous year. After the season, Castilla was traded by the Rockies to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays for Rolando Arrojo and Aaron Ledesma. After a lackluster performance in 2000, he was released on May 10, 2001. He was still a desired commodity. The Cubs and Astros both pursued his services, and Castilla chose the Astros, who planned to play him on a regular basis. “The Cubs didn’t want me as an everyday player,” Castilla said. Castilla performed well for the Astros, clubbing 23 home runs and driving in 82 runs for the NL Central champions. Castilla enjoyed his second trip to the playoffs, but this trip again ended in defeat by the Braves in the NLDS. On a happier note, he and Samantha welcomed their second son, Dalton Samuel, on November 22.22

Castilla was a free agent after the season and signed a two-year, $8 million contract to return to the Braves. On paper, this union did not make sense as the Braves already employed a perennial All-Star playing third base in Chipper Jones, but Jones willingly moved to left field to strengthen the team. Jones said, “We’ve gone out and gotten a top-notch third baseman and I’ll move.” The idea was that the value Castilla provided was in line with a top-tier outfielder at a fraction of the cost.23 And if Castilla had performed anywhere close to the way he had for the Rockies, or even for the Astros the previous season, the signing would have been beneficial for the Braves. Instead, Castilla managed only 12 home runs in a dismal 2002 season as well as his worst career slash line,.232/.268/.348. Castilla rebounded slightly in 2003, hitting 22 home runs and seeing improvements in virtually every offensive category.

But Castilla did have the chance to play in the postseason both seasons in Atlanta. Again, his team was unable to advance past the NLDS either time, and never again reached the postseason.

The 2004 season saw a reunion with the Rockies. It was preceded by the birth of Castilla’s third son, Cristian, on February 20.24 His return to the Rockies apparently rejuvenated him, and along with 35 home runs, he had a league-leading 131 RBIs, even though the team’s results were not that great. (They went 68-94.) It was as if Castilla was in the midst of his Blake Street Bombers Rockies teams once again. The offensive resurgence showed that Castilla still had some ability to hit a baseball, and earned him one more contract before he retired.

Castilla left the Rockies after the 2004 season, signing a free-agent contract with the Montreal Expos, who became the Washington Nationals a few weeks after he signed a two-year, $6.2 million contract. Castilla was the starting third baseman for the Nationals in 2005, but his production declined drastically from his 2004 renaissance. He finished the season with just 12 home runs and 66 RBIs. After the season, the Nationals traded Castilla to the San Diego Padres for Brian Lawrence and cash. The Padres released Castilla in July 2006, and the Rockies signed him for one last hurrah with the team. In his 15 games to close out the season, Castilla had only four hits. He was released after the season.

The 2006 season was not all disappointment for Castilla. He was elected the captain of Team Mexico in the inaugural World Baseball Classic in 2006. Team Mexico finished sixth in the tournament with a record of 3-3, and won Pool B by virtue of beating the United States head to head. Castilla cited his experience in the 2006 WBC as his impetus to stay involved with baseball as a manger and/or executive after retirement.25

Castilla announced his retirement in February 2007 after playing first base for Mexico in the Caribbean Series at Carolina, Puerto Rico. He retired as a hero to many players and fans in Mexico. “Vinny is a hero, there’s no doubt about it,” Mexican League manager Lorenzo Bundy said. “There’s not going to be anybody that comes close to what he’s done offensively.”26 Castilla retired as the all-time leader among Mexican-born players in career home runs, RBIs, extra-base hits, and total bases.27 Castilla joined the Rockies’ front office as a special assistant to GM Dan O’Dowd, a position he still held as of 2018 despite a 2014 change in general managers.28

In addition to his front-office duties, Castilla also managed the Mexican national team in the 2007 Pan American Games, held in Brazil. O’Dowd said managing would be “another great experience for him. And it’s good for us, too, to expose him to that and for him to see players from around the world a little bit. He’ll do some scouting for us and I think that only benefits us.”29 Castilla also served as player-manager of the Hermosillo Naranjeros of the Mexican Pacific League from 2006 through 2010, and in 2008, it was announced that Castilla would be the manager for Team Mexico in the 2009 World Baseball Classic. “I like it. …  I like it a lot,” he said. “I love the game. It’s my life …  it’s my passion. I want to be involved somehow with the game. I like managing. It’s tough  …  it’s not easy, but I enjoy it.”30

In 2014, Castilla, along with Moises Alou, Bert Campaneris, Omar Moreno, and Ozzie Virgil Sr. was inducted into the Latino Hall of Fame.31 In 2016, he was one of six athletes, and the only major-league baseball player, inducted into the Colorado Sports Hall of Fame.32

Castilla’s longevity with the Rockies has been viewed as an asset for the team, both by the players and the front office. He drew on his successful career in the majors, specifically his time in Colorado and playing at the high altitude of Coors Field, and his Latin heritage to relate to and encourage players. Singing his praises, All-Star third baseman Nolan Arenado said, “Vinny brings energy every day and he brings happiness, if you want to put it that way. When you are down, he’s always there for you. He always brings positive energy to the ballpark. I’ve never seen Vinny down or bummed out. I mean, he’s great at trash talking, but it’s all in fun. He’s awesome.”33

Castilla also began to give back to the community as an advocate for organ donation34 and education.35

Last revised: March 1, 2018

This biography originally appeared in “Major League Baseball A Mile High: The First Quarter Century of the Colorado Rockies” (SABR, 2018), edited by Bill Nowlin and Paul T. Parker.

Notes

1 “Vinny Castilla,” IMDB.com. https://imdb.com/name/nm1758753/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm.

2 Owen Perkins, “Q and A With Vinny Castilla,” Rockies.com, September 16, 2006. https://colorado.rockies.mlb.com/news/print.jsp?ymd=20060916&content_id=1666489&vkey=news_col&fext=.jsp&c_id=col’

3 Matt Krupnick, “A Baseball Academy in a Talent-Poor Part of Mexico,” New York Times, May 23, 2013.

4 According to baseball-refence.com.

5 Krupnick.

6 Gerry Callahan, “Vinny, Vidi, Vici He Doesn’t Get the Ink of a McGwire or a Griffey, But in Only Four Seasons Vinny Castilla of Colorado Has Gone From Utilityman to the Man,” Sports Illustrated, May 11, 1998.

7  Ibid.

8 Chris Bolin, “Vinny Castilla, Mark Jackson Discuss Their Pasts at Friends of Baseball’s Breakfast of Champions,” Greeley (Colorado) Tribune, January 28, 2018.

9 Irv Moss, “Vinny Castilla’s Ability to Hit Fastball Helped Him Into Colorado Sports Hall of Fame,” Denver Post, April 22, 2016.

10 Patrick Saunders, “Vinny Castilla’s High-Octane Energy Still Driving Rockies After 25 years,” Denver Post, May 13, 2017.

11 Mike Klis, “Trade Talk Impacts Wife, Too,” Denver Post, August 1, 1999.

12 Tony Almeyda, “Braves Rewind: Whatever Happened to …Vinny Castilla?” TalkingChop.com, April 18, 2016. https://talkingchop.com/2016/4/18/11447772/braves-rewind-whatever-happened-to-vinny-castilla

13 Moss.

14 Patrick Saunders, “Blake Street Bombers Left Unforgettable Impression in Rockies’ First 25 years,” Denver Post, July 22, 2017.

15 Patrick Saunders, “2016 Inductees,” Colorado Sports Hall of Fame, April 19, 2016. https://coloradosports.org/index.php/2016-04-19-23-18-38/item/330-vinny-castilla

16 Callahan.

17 “Blake Street Bombers Left Unforgettable Impression.”

18 Jonathan Weeks, Latino Stars in Major League Baseball: From Bobby Abreu to Carlos Zambrano (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017), 228.

19 Callahan.

20 IMDB.com.

21 Associated Press, “Bichette and Castilla Spark Rockies in Opener in Mexico,” New York Times, April 5, 1999.

22 IMDB.com.

23 Morris News Service, “Chipper to move to left field,” Augusta Chronicle, December 10, 2001.

24 IMDB.com.

25 Perkins.

26 CBC Sports, “Vinny Castilla Retires, Joins Rockies Front Office,” https://cbc.ca/sports/baseball/vinny-castilla-retires-joins-rockies-front-office-1.690370, February 7, 2007.

27 IMDB.com

28 CBC Sports.

29 Associated Press, “Vinny Castilla to Manage Mexican National Team,” ESPN.com, February 28, 2007. https://espn.com/mlb/news/story?id=2783482

30 Bill Mitchell, “Castilla Mentors Mexican Prospects: Former 3B Managing in Winter Ball,” Baseball America, December 16, 2008.

31 Thomas Harding, “Rox Will Be Represented by Castilla In HOF Classic: Former Player Set for First Trip to Cooperstown for Memorial Day Weekend Event,” MLB.com, May 23, 2014. https://mlb.com/news/former-rockies-player-vinny-castilla-to-represent-club-in-hall-of-fame-classic/c-76501512.

32 Saunders, “2016 Inductees.”

33 “Vinny Castilla’s High-Octane Energy.”

34 Brandon Rivera, “An Interview With Vinny Castilla,” La Voz, April 29, 2015.

35 “Game Plan for Success,” https://educatorsforhighstandards.org/game-plan-for-success/.

“Paquín” — Spanish for “Frankie” — played 26 summers in the Mexican League. He added an even more amazing 30 seasons in the Mexican winter league, La Liga Mexicana del Pacífico (LMP). All told, including two seasons at Class A in Mexico, he was behind the plate for roughly 4,000 games. That is far more than anyone else in pro baseball history. Even Japanese ironman Katsuyo Nomura falls well short of Estrada’s endurance as a catcher. What’s more, Paquín stated that he never had an injury or any surgery while playing.[1] The grueling conditions in Mexican ball — plus serving for over a decade as a player-manager — elevate the feat to yet another plane.

Estrada also became the most successful manager in his nation’s history. During 30-plus years as a skipper, he earned 10 summer and winter titles. He won respect for his leadership and acumen. He also brought honor to Mexico in the Caribbean Series, winning two more titles, and the World Baseball Classic.

Francisco Estrada Soto was born in Navojoa in the state of Sonora on February 12, 1948. His father was Francisco Estrada Martínez; it is likely that this man was called “Paco” and so his son became “Paquín.” Over time, in accord with Estrada’s stature in Mexico, he won the title El Paquín.

Francisco was the third of Paula Soto Ley’s eight children. He was preceded by Estela and Fidel; after him came Egren, Luz Elda, Evelio, Elvia, and Héctor. Durability ran in the family; Héctor, 20 years younger than Paquín, was a catcher for 22 seasons in the Mexican League (1986-2007). He also became a manager, starting in 2005.

As a 2006 feature for MLB.com described, Paquín played sandlot ball from an early age. “It was a fun thing to do,” he said, remembering his early attraction to baseball. “It was a gathering of your buddies and ‘Let’s just go out and play some ball.’ You just pick up a broom and a ball and you can start playing.”

That same article recounted how the 12-year-old Estrada lived two blocks from the local stadium, old Parque Revolución, where the Navojoa Mayos played their games. Already he knew the batters and their tendencies, and so when balls were hit out onto the street, he was able to recover more of them than any of his friends. He earned five pesos apiece from the club, which bought back every possible scarce pelota.[2]

In 1964, aged 16, Paquín turned pro. Outside Parque Revolución, a friend of his father’s urged a scout for the Diablos Rojos of Mexico City named Ramón “Chita” García to give the youth a chance. Without a proper uniform, he still did well in his tryout. At first, however, Francisco Sr. forbade his son to sign. Then the manager of the Red Devils, Tomás “El Sargento” Herrera, intervened. This time Paquín’s father, who was a great fan of Herrera’s, allowed his son to go.[3]

Estrada went to the Diablos’ farm club, San Luis Potosí in the Mexican Center League. Nervous because he had never been away from his home region, he won one of 29 spots on the roster from a crowd of 135 hopefuls, including 12 other catchers.[4] He spent two seasons with the Reds, playing outfield as well as catcher in ’64 (.215-5-21 in 73 games). Paquín then began his winter-league career at home in Navojoa, where Tomás Herrera was also manager, as the third-string catcher. Back in San Luis Potosí in ’65, he remained strictly a receiver (.253-10-64 in 128 games).

Estrada then stepped up to join the Diablos Rojos, where he spent five summers (1966-70). The Red Devils were Mexican League champions in 1968, but Paquín’s best individual season was 1970. He hit 18 homers, drove in 85, and hit .303. He even legged out 11 triples.

As early as 1968, Paquín rubbed elbows with U.S. major leaguers. That spring, he reported to the Yankees training camp in Fort Lauderdale, as the Red Devils wanted him to observe.[5] He truly began his U.S. pro career in 1971, following a deal on November 30, 1970. Tidewater, the Mets’ Triple-A farm team, obtained him from Mexico City in a swap for Cuban catcher Orlando McFarlane and cash.[6] The New York scout involved was most likely Nino Escalera, who covered Latin America for the team from 1966 to 1981. Among other players he signed from the region was another Mexican catcher, Alex Treviño.

Spring training 1971 found Estrada, along with 16 other Spanish-speaking Mets prospects, learning English in a Berlitz language course. This came at the suggestion of Whitey Herzog, then the Mets’ director of player development. The young men focused on baseball phrases and key social needs. Minor league director Joe McDonald said of Estrada: “The only rap against him, according to scouts we talked to, was his lack of ability to communicate. And being a catcher, that’s very important. Still, he’s a good-looking kid and everybody’s always looking for a catcher. He just might make it. We feel that if we’re going to try him out, we’ve got to do everything in our power to give him a real chance.”[7]

Noted columnist Red Smith also wrote about the Berlitz program. Smith said that according to the Mets, it was this “communication problem” that had hindered Francisco while he was with the Yankees.[8] Indeed, Estrada allegedly reported to the Mets camp a week late because he’d gotten lost; Dominican infielder Ted Martínez rescued him in a Miami airport.[9]

Tidewater assigned Paquín to Double-A Memphis in late April. He wound up playing 51 games for the Blues (.252-7-28) and 58 for the Tides (.260-6-21). The Mets rewarded him with a late-season callup, though, as he recalled wryly, manager Gil Hodges was battling to hang onto third place.[10] Therefore his only big-league action took place at Shea Stadium on September 14.

Estrada remembered getting up at 6 A.M. that day, arriving at LaGuardia Airport, and not knowing what to do. Fortunately the driver of the cab he hailed was Cuban, and the man told him the ballpark was nearby.[11] Nolan Ryan didn’t have it that day and the Mets had given up 12 runs by the time the game was four innings old. Estrada entered the laugher in the top of the sixth inning, becoming the first Mexican catcher in the majors. He allowed a passed ball, but no further damage ensued. In the seventh, facing Bill Stoneman, he hit a line-drive single over the shortstop’s head. He ended the game with a groundout and thus finished with a lifetime batting average of .500.

On December 10 the Mets made one of their most infamous trades. They sent Ryan and promising outfielder Leroy Stanton along with Estrada and pitcher Don Rose to the California Angels. Seeking to plug their perennial hole at third base, they got Jim Fregosi (and no one else) in return.

Francisco began the 1972 season with Salt Lake City, the Angels’ Triple-A club. On May 29 he was traded to the Baltimore Orioles for pitcher Tom Dukes. He finished the year with Triple-A Rochester. Then, on October 27, the Orioles sent him to the Chicago Cubs as they reacquired catcher Elrod Hendricks, a favorite of Earl Weaver’s.

Estrada’s experience with the Cubs organization consisted of two games at Triple-A Wichita and 67 at Double-A Midland in 1973. He was released at the end of the season and returned to Mexico, where he had been playing winter ball all along.

During the summers Paquín played seven seasons in Puebla (1974-80, including another league title in 1979) and three with the Campeche Piratas (1981-83). In 1983, his first summer as manager, he led the Pirates to a championship. After splitting the 1984 season between León (where he did not manage) and Toluca, he returned to Campeche for four more years. He followed with three more in León, winning another title in 1990, and three in Minatitlán. As a player-manager, he appeared in anywhere from 23 to 88 games a season.

Upon retirement after the 1994 season, his summer career totals in Mexico were 84 homers, 923 RBIs, and a .275 average (on 2,089 hits) in a remarkable 2,415 games. The Mexican Baseball Hall of Fame inducted him as a player in 2000.

Estrada then continued as a non-playing manager in the summers. He went back to Puebla for 1995 and spent 1996-97 with the Quintana Roo Langosteros (Lobstermen). The club was renamed for its home city, Cancún, in 1998. Following the 1999 season he piloted the Yucatán Leones for three years. Remaining on the Yucatán peninsula, he went back to Campeche, but after four seasons — including another championship in 2004 — the Pirates parted ways with “El Gordo de Oro” (Golden Fats) in February 2007.[12]

Although the Monterrey Sultanes wanted to hire Paquín,[13] he managed the Chihuahua Dorados instead in 2007. That October he faced open-heart surgery for a bypass and to correct a valve problem. The operation was successful, much to the relief of his wife Luz Arcelia “Nena” de Estrada (maiden name Correa; married on September 20, 1972) and his daughters Karissa and Karelina.[14] He returned to Chihuahua in 2008 and got his 1,500^th win in the Mexican League that April. Estrada became only the second manager after José “Zacatillo” Guerrero to reach that mark.

In the winters Estrada played 1,538 games across 30 seasons (1964-65 through 1993-94) with Navojoa, Ciudad Obregón, Mazatlán, Culiacán, and Mexicali. He batted .244 with 1,269 hits, 74 homers, and 514 RBIs. He began his managing career with the Tomateros of Culiacán in the winter of 1982-83. He had three tenures there totaling 13-plus seasons: 1982-88, 1995-98, and from 2001 until he was fired in December 2006 after a so-so start. In between were stretches in Navojoa (1988-91), Mexicali (1992-93 and 1998-99), and Obregón (1993-95).[15]

In January 2008, the Hermosillo Naranjeros named Paquín their manager for the 2008-09 season. What also made the choice surprising is that Hermosillo and Culiacán are arch-rivals in the winter league. The Naranjeros replaced him with Vinicio “Vinny” Castilla in November 2008, though, after the club got off to a 12-14 start.

Estrada regarded his best seasons as those in the winter league, given the results. Culiacán won titles six times under his direction: 1982-83, 1984-85, 1995-1996, 1996-1997, 2001-02, and 2003-04. He added another with Mexicali in 1998-99. No other manager in league history has more than four.[16]

The winter league champions go on to represent Mexico in the Caribbean Series. Paquín played as a reinforcement on the 1986 Series champs, Mexicali; his single in the last game decided the tournament. In 1996 and 2002, the Tomateros won with him as skipper. All were upsets, considering the competition is the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela. The 1996 squad featured just two big-leaguers, Esteban Loaiza and Benji Gil. Author Peter Bjarkman noted, “The Mexicans were obviously simply much hungrier, and they played far over their heads for the overjoyed Estrada. . .‘The ugly ducklings are the belle of the ball,’ he crowed.”[17] The 2002 edition was led by tournament MVP Adán Amezcua, a minor-leaguer.

Mexico was a spoiler in the 2006 World Baseball Classic. The green, white, and red team knocked out the United States in the second round with a 2-1 win on March 16. Oliver Pérez pitched three scoreless innings, Jorge Cantú got his second RBI off Roger Clemens in the 5^th, and the bullpen hung on from there. Even though his team had no hope of advancing, Estrada said, “We came here to win, and that is how we performed this evening.”[18]

Vinny Castilla took over the Mexican team in the 2009 WBC. Estrada was back in Chihuahua to lead the Dorados for the 2009 season, although another slow start cost him this job too in April. In the winter of 2009-10, he returned once more to the place where he felt most at home: Culiacán. He succeeded Nick Leyva as manager early that season. In November 2011, by which time Estrada was serving as a coach, the Tomateros retired his number 25.

Despite the loss of his wife to cancer in March 2012, Estrada remained active in baseball. In 2016, he managed Olmecas de Tabasco and Saraperos de Saltillo for parts of the season. The following year, he managed León but once more was removed after a slow start. 

December 2018 brought the news that Estrada had joined the coaching staff of Jalisco in the LMP. The Charros were managed by his daughter Karissa’s husband, Roberto “Chapo” Vizcarra (who’d played 23 summers in Mexico from 1986 through 2008).

In November 2019, Estrada was hospitalized after suffering a heart attack. In December he underwent surgery and was subsequently placed in a medically induced coma. On December 9, Paquín Estrada’s long and winding journey through Mexican baseball reached the end of the road. The news prompted an outpouring of respect.

Thanks to Karissa Estrada de Vizcarra, Jesús Alberto Rubio.

Last updated February 5 and December 9, 2019.

Sources

Araujo, Alfonso

Culiacán Tomateros website: http://www.tomateros.com.mx

Hermosillo Naranjeros website: http://www.naranjeros.com.mx

Minor League Baseball Stars, Volume III (SABR, 1992)

Professional Baseball Player Database V6.0

SABR Minor Leagues Database

Treto Cisneros, Pedro, editor, Enciclopedia del Béisbol Mexicano. Mexico City, Mexico: Revistas Deportivas, S.A. de C.V., 1998.

He rose out of the citrus fields of Southern California to become the first Mexican-born pitcher and the third Mexican-born player in the major leagues.  From picking citrus in the fields he went to picking players from the fields and became one of the greatest baseball scouts in major-league history.  Jesse Flores overcame hometown discrimination to almost singlehandedly build ballclubs for the Minnesota Twins.  He was inducted into the Mexican Baseball Hall of Fame in 1987.  In 1985 Flores was selected as the West Coast Scout of the Year.  He spent 50 years in professional baseball.

Jesus “Jesse” or “Jess” Flores Sandoval came from humble roots. He was born on November 2, 1914, in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, the son of Juan Flores and Fortina Sandoval.  Juan cleaned stables and then became a fruit picker.  He brought his family to the Orange County area of Southern California about 1923, settling in Campo Rojo (Red Camp) in La Habra, a workers’ camp made up mainly of people of Mexican heritage.  Most were orange and lemon pickers; a packing house that employed many of the wives was located nearby.  The 1930 census lists Jesse and his sisters, Inez and Mary, as fruit pickers and laborers.  Jesse was just 15 years old, taking on a man’s job.   

Jesse attended Washington Junior High (the author’s alma mater). As many young men of the time did, he dropped out after the eighth grade to work, picking citrus.  Citrus companies set up baseball leagues to keep the workers happy. The ballplayers (peloteros) played on fields across the street from the packing house, near the train depot.  Those ballfields are now part of Portola City Park, where Little League teams play.  In 1994 the fields were renamed in Jesse’s honor: the Jesse Flores Sports Complex at Portola Park.

Flores played for the Los Juveniles team as a third baseman and relief pitcher.  In 1938 the Chicago Cubs held a tryout camp at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles, most likely led by Truck Hannah, manager of the Los Angeles Angels and sometime scout for the Cubs.  Jesse went to the tryout as a third baseman, but there were too many of them there, so he tried out as a right-handed pitcher, throwing a screwball, curveball, and fastball.

Flores made enough of an impression with the Cubs that they signed him, and he went to play in Bisbee, Arizona, for $80 a month.  There he led the Class D Arizona-Texas League in wins, with a 24-6 record, earned run average (2.38), and winning percentage.  He was promoted to Los Angeles in the Pacific Coast League in 1939. He held out for a $225-a-month contract before going 9-9 on the mound with a 3.54 ERA. He returned to Los Angeles in 1940, compiling a 7-5 win-loss record and a 4.43 ERA.  On September 14 of that season Flores threw one of the best games of his career.  He took a no-hitter into the ninth inning, but Marvin Gudat singled with two outs.

Flores was best known for throwing the screwball.  A Cleveland newspaper quoted him as saying, “I hit a batter square in the head.  He got up and walked down to first base.  I figured then my fastball wasn’t fast enough.  That’s how I started throwing the screwball.”

On January 19, 1941, Jesse and Consuelo M. Gomez were married in his hometown of La Habra.  They raised four children – daughters Armida and Isabelle and sons Jesse Jr. and Steve.  Both sons played minor-league baseball and then became scouts like their father before them.

The 1941 season saw Flores again with Los Angeles. He had a 12-15 record and improved his ERA to 3.23. In September Flores and outfielder-third baseman Peanuts Lowrey were sold to the Cubs by the Angels for cash and three players. They were to finish the season with the Angels and report to the Cubs for spring training.

Flores made his major-league debut on April 16, 1942, coming out of the bullpen, allowing four hits and getting the loss in an 11-6 win by the St. Louis Cardinals.  He pitched in four games with the Cubs, going 0-1 with a 3.38 ERA.  Deeming him not entirely ready for the big leagues, the Cubs sent him back to Los Angeles for the rest of the season.  With Los Angeles he went 14-5 with a 2.63 ERA.

Before he left Chicago, Flores made his mark in another way.  The Sporting News reported that Flores, Chico Hernandez, and Hi Bithorn recorded a Spanish-language broadcast to to be transmitted to South American countries by Cincinnati radio station WLW.  It was the height of World War II, and the US was seeking to seal the loyalty and friendship of Latin American nations. Flores, Hernandez, and Bithorn, all Hispanics, said in the broadcast that baseball added greatly to cementing the friendship between the US and the Latin-American nations.

That offseason Flores played in the California Winter League. In September the Cubs sold him to the Philadelphia Athletics.  Flores started the A’s 1943 home opener, giving up just two hits to the Boston Red Sox but losing 1-0.  He went on to appear in 31 games, winning 12 games and losing 14 for the last-place Athletics. After the season Flores played winter ball for the Long Beach Western Pipe and Steel Boilermakers.  He and many others came under investigation for violating a rule prohibiting major leaguers from playing exhibition games after 10 days from season’s end. 

In 1944 Flores pitched in 27 games, winning 9 and losing 11. Early in 1945 he visited Mexico for a vacation, and rumors flew that he would sign with a Mexican League team.  He denied the rumors. Another report said Flores had been recalled by his local draft board, but in 1945 he was again with Philadelphia, pitching 29 games with a record of 7-10. In 1946 he won nine games and lost seven. (On September 22 he surrendered Yogi Berra’s first major-league home run.) In 1947, his last season in Philadelphia, pitched 151 1/3 innings with a record of 4-13. In three of his five seasons with the Athletics, the team finished in last place.

After the 1947 season the Athletics sold Flores’ contract to San Diego of the Pacific Coast League. He had an 11-19 record for San Diego in 1948 with a 4.36 ERA. In 1949 he won 21 games and lost 10 with a 3.04 ERA.  He was the starting pitcher for the South team in the PCL’s all-star game.  His performance gave him another shot at the big leagues; the Cleveland Indians, who had a working agreement with the Padres, purchased his contract. He pitched in 28 games for the 1950 Indians, all but two out of the bullpen, and had a 3-3 record.

Flores spent 1951, 1952 and part of 1953 with Sacramento of the Pacific Coast League.  In April 1952 he missed a no-hitter when he gave up a hit with two outs in the ninth. Flores then pitched for Oakland and Portland, and retired as a player at the age of 40 after pitching for Modesto of the California League in 1955.           

Back home, Flores organized and played for a semipro team, the La Habra Tigers, while he worked as a postal clerk.  In 1960 he returned to professional baseball as a part-time scout for the Philadelphia Phillies, and in 1961 he joined the Minnesota Twins as a full-time scout, covering the area from Santa Barbara to the Mexican border and east to San Bernardino County.  Flores saw the author play a few times and proved his excellence as a scout by never offering  a contract.

Flores became a scouting legend in Southern California, signing many players for the Twins.  It seemed that everyone connected with baseball knew him, respected him, and admired him.  Stories were told around La Habra about Flores helping the less fortunate.  He was a humble man; even though I spoke with him a few times growing up and my father knew him well, I never knew he had played major-league baseball until well into my adulthood.  Jesse didn’t talk about his own exploits.

Flores remained with the Twins through 1989, then spent the last two seasons of his scouting career with the Pittsburgh Pirates (1990-91).  Jesse Jr. joined him as a Twins scout from 1971 to 1988.  Son Steve also became a scout.

Flores was in the hospital recovering from knee-replacement surgery when lung problems were discovered.  He died on December 17, 1991, at St. Joseph Hospital in Orange.  At his funeral, a eulogy was given by one of the players he had signed, Bert Blyleven, who was later voted into the Hall of Fame. Flores was survived by his two sons, two daughters, and 11 grandchildren. His wife had died before him.

A Jesse Flores Memorial Game is played in Southern California every year to honor Flores and showcase high-school prospects.

Players signed by Flores include  Paul Abbott, Ruben Amaro, Erik Bennett, Bert Blyleven, Lyman Bostock, Bud Bulling, Bill Campbell, Larry Casian, Danny Clay, Jerry Cram, Jim Crowell, Roland DeLaMaza, Rick Dempsey, Mike Dyer, Dave Edwards, Luis Gomez, Dan Graham, Chip Hale, Tom Hall, Bobby Hughes, Jim Hughes, Steve Jones, Mike Misuraca, Marcus Moore, Jim Nettles, Alan Newman, Willie Norwood, Jesse Orosco, Derek Parks, Mark Portugal, Pete Redfern, Rob Ryan, Doug Simons, Gary Ward, Mark Wiley, Rob Wilfong, Gary Wilson, and Al Woods.  He also recommended that the Twins draft Jim Merritt out of the Dodgers system.

Photo credit

National Baseball Hall of Fame Library

Sources

Society for American Baseball Research Scouts committee records:  Who Signed Who database and Scouts Roster database.

http:www.salondelafama.com.mx

The Sporting News: various issues

Orange  Coast Magazine, November 1991

Orange County Weekly, April 5, 2007

Albuquerque Journal, Dallas Morning News, Long Beach Independent Press Telegram, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Tribune, Modesto Bee and News Herald, Nevada State Journal, Oakland Tribune, Ogden Standard Examiner, Orange County Register, Oxnard Press Courier, Reno Evening Gazette, Tucson Daily Citizen, Walla Walla Union Bulletin

Things change. That’s a truism that, in its pithy wisdom, fails to reveal that perceptions of the past — even the recent past — can vary so widely from those of contemporary observers.

Ask any Tigers fan today who the team’s biggest pitching stars were in that glorious summer of 1984. The first two answers will surely be Jack Morris and Willie Hernandez. Many also will remember Dan Petry, and maybe even a couple will mention Milt Wilcox. Those few who remember Aurelio Lopez, stalwart reliever and mainstay of the 1984 championship club’s bullpen, will usually accompany their recollection with a smile while blurting out Lopez’s nickname, Señor Smoke.

For cultural reasons, Señor Smoke connotes something very different north of the U.S.-Mexico border than south of it. Among Tigers fans of a certain age scattered throughout the States, Señor Smoke is a sobriquet for a Latino relief pitcher who threw hard and pitched well. However, while affectionately used, it is not a term of the highest respect like Hammerin’ Hank (applied to the dominant slugger Hank Greenberg) or Prince Hal (applied to two-time American League Most Valuable Player Hal Newhouser).

Of course, both Greenberg and Newhouser were truly great players who became Hall of Famers, while Lopez was not. But Aurelio Lopez was substantially better than most US fans now remember, and the hard-throwing hurler remains a legend in his native land. Lopez was so much more than just another hard-throwing relief pitcher with a terrific nickname.

Beat writer Tom Gage has covered the Tigers for the Detroit News for the past quarter-century. Back when The Sporting News was still called the Bible of Baseball, Gage wrote the Detroit season-in-review essays for its authoritative annual Guide.

In the 1984 edition of The Sporting News Guide, Gage wrote the following in his essay reviewing the 1983 season entitled “Tigers Shed ‘Mediocre’ Label”: “Aurelio Lopez was one of the league’s more dominant relief pitchers with 16 saves and seven victories through August 1 before slumping in the final two months.”

A year later, in the 1985 Guide, Gage’s review of the 1984 championship season was labeled, “Tigers Enjoy a Dream Season.” Here is what he wrote about Lopez: “[P]itching had a lot to do with Detroit’s success. The Tigers led all American League clubs with a 3.49 earned-run average and 51 saves. The bullpen duo of Hernandez and Aurelio Lopez was, perhaps, the most consistently effective segment of that pitching staff.”

Between them, Hernandez and Lopez were 19-4 with 46 saves and a 2.43 ERA. Hernandez alone (1.92 ERA) had 32 saves in 33 save situations as he broke the team record for pitching appearances with 80.

Voluble Detroit manager Sparky Anderson nailed it in fewer words. “I can tell you the difference between Detroit and Toronto in two words,” Anderson said just before the Tigers clinched the American League East title. “Hernandez and Lopez.”

Without taking anything away from Hernandez and his great season, these remarks show just how important Lopez was to the 1984 world champion Tigers.

Aurelio Lopez is one of the greatest — and certainly the most underrated — relief pitchers in the history of the Detroit Tigers. Despite its standing as one of the American League’s charter franchises, the Tigers don’t exactly have a history of strong relievers. Take a look at the most basic measure, career saves. After the top five (statistics through 2009), you’re in pretty undistinguished territory.

*All stats from years with Detroit Tigers

The aforementioned raw save totals don’t really tell the story. Jones benefited from being a closer in the Dennis Eckersley–Mariano Rivera mode; he generally was called upon to pitch the final inning and typically entered the game with no runners on base. In his seven-plus seasons in Detroit, Jones averaged almost exactly an inning per appearance while racking up his 235 saves despite allowing almost 1.5 baserunners per nine innings. Jones led the league in saves only once and was picked as an All-Star only once. He appeared on a Cy Young Award ballot only one time in his career — the same as Lopez. (Jones got three mentions in 2000; Lopez received on in 1979.)

In the postseason, Lopez went 2-0 in October for the Tigers, pitching six scoreless innings, allowing five hits and two walks while striking out six. Jones pitched seven innings in seven games in the postseason for Detroit, allowing seven hits and one walk, and hitting one batter. He fanned four and was charged with one unearned run from a fielding error he committed.

When comparing Lopez to Jones, the distinguishing mark of Jones’ career is mainly longevity. He was rarely brilliant and would probably have been a disaster if asked to carry the kind of workload that Lopez shouldered — whereas Lopez would probably have excelled in the cosseted milieu of the contemporary closer.

Mike Henneman took over from Guillermo Hernandez as the Tigers’ closer in 1988, bridging the heydays of the Bruce Sutter–Goose Gossage era with the Dennis Eckersley-Mariano Rivera era. Henneman hurled 669? innings in 491 games in his nine seasons in Detroit. While consistent, the right-hander was rarely brilliant, never leading the league in any pitching category of note, receiving only one American League All-Star nod, no Cy Young recognition, and only a solitary third-place vote for Rookie of the Year. Henneman was at his best in his first five seasons in the majors, when he won 49 and lost only 21 while averaging more than 1? innings per appearance and posting an ERA+ of 139. (ERA+ is a comparison of the pitcher’s ERA to the league ERA, adjusted for ballpark; 100 is average.) In the post-season for the Tigers Henneman won one game after blowing the save opportunity in three appearances in the 1987 ALCS, allowing six hits and six runs in five frames.

Hiller’s career was something like Hernandez’s in that it featured a brilliant peak of two consecutive seasons, with a couple of other good years. Pete Palmer, in the ESPN Baseball Encyclopedia, adjusts his ratings for closers to reflect the extra value of their innings. Despite his gaudy save totals, Jones managed only 4.9 Pitcher Wins while with Detroit, while Lopez totaled 7.7. Hernandez posted 9.3, Henneman (reflecting his longevity) 12.3, and Hiller 21.0. That rating better reflects Lopez’s place in Detroit bullpen history.

Aurelio Alejandro Lopez y Rios was born on September 21, 1948, in the village of Tecamachalco in Puebla state, Mexico. On May 16, 1971, Lopez married Maria Celia Corral de Lopez. The couple had two children, Aurelio in 1972 and Kachia Guadalupe in 1976.

Many Tigers fans still remember Lopez fondly. The Detroit rock band Electric Six named its second album Señor Smoke in his honor. The album was released in 2005 in the United Kingdom by Rushmore Records, a division of Warner Records. Metropolis Records released the album a year later in the United States.

Lopez made his professional debut at the age of 18 in the minor-league Mexican Southeast League in 1967. The young pitcher showed a distinct lack of control but also a lot of talent, catching the eye of scout Ramon “Chita” Garcia of the Mexico City Diablos Rojos (Red Devils). Signed by Garcia, Lopez pitched for Las Choapas, a newly organized farm club of the Red Devils in the Mexican Southeast League, a minor league rated as Class A by Organized Baseball.

One year later, at 19, Lopez was pitching for the powerful Red Devils in the Mexican League; he was used mostly as a starter in his first four seasons. The prestigious Mexican League was at that time, and remains today, the pinnacle of pro baseball in that country. Starting in 1967, the Mexican League was rated by Organized Baseball as a Triple-A league.

The callow young pitcher was farmed out in 1969 by Mexico City to Minatitlan of the Mexican Southeast League, where the Las Choapas club had relocated. There he appeared in 16 games before returning to the parent club for good. While with the junior Diablos Rojos, Lopez hurled a perfect game against Ciudad del Carmen, winning 1-0.

In 1973, Lopez’s manager, Wilfredo Calvino, converted the young righty into a full-time relief pitcher. It was a prescient move on Calvino’s part, and from 1974 to ’77, Lopez worked exclusively out of the bullpen (aside from two starts). Lopez led the loop in appearances and saves for four consecutive seasons (1974 through 1977), and his name is scattered today throughout the Mexican League single-season and career pitching leaders.

In 1975, Lopez set a Mexican League record by pitching in 71 games. Two years later, he broke his own record by appearing in 73 games. His 30 saves in 1977 shattered the previous Mexican League record of 24 (set in 1973); Lopez’s save record stood for 14 years. He also set a record in ’77 with 19 wins in relief.

Overall, Lopez pitched for 10 seasons in Mexico, all with Red Devils, who won four championships in that span, while losing in the championship series in three other years. The strong-armed right-hander compiled a 97-83 record with a 3.18 ERA in 472 games (108 starts). He also notched at least 99 saves (saves were not recorded in Mexico before 1973). In his final year in the Mexican League, Lopez went 19-8 with a 2.01 ERA and 30 saves in 73 games, winning the loop’s 1977 Jugador Mas Valioso (MVP) Award.

Never one to shirk extra work, Lopez also pitched in the Mexican Pacific League, a winter league, winning the loop’s Most Valuable Player awards for the 1973-74 and 1976-77 seasons when he was with Mazatlan and Guasave, respectively.

After his death in 1992, Lopez was honored by being inducted into the Salon de la Fama del Beisbol Profesional de Mexico (Mexican Professional Baseball Hall of Fame) on June 19, 1993. Lopez’s biography on the Salon de la Fama Web site says that he was considered the fastest pitcher in the history of Mexican baseball. In his native country, Señor Smoke was also known as “El Lanzallama” — the flamethrower.

Lopez made his major-league debut in 1974 at the age of 25 after being purchased by Kansas City on August 29 from Mexico City. He appeared in eight games in the last five weeks of the season, allowing 21 hits and 10 walks in 16 innings while striking out only five hitters. Obviously, the young Mexican hurler wasn’t ready for the big leagues yet, and the Royals sold him back to the Mexico City club the following spring.

Four years later, after dominating in the Mexican League, a more experienced Lopez returned to the major leagues with St. Louis after being purchased by the Cardinals from Mexico City on October 26, 1977. St. Louis first farmed him out to Triple-A Springfield of the American Association, where Lopez appeared in 34 games in relief in 1978, posting a 6-6 record with a 3.55 ERA. More importantly, he fanned 81 hitters in 76 innings, showing the first inkling of the kind of explosive stuff he would soon bring to Detroit. Promoted to the Cardinals in mid-July, Lopez pitched decently for St. Louis for the rest of the season, appearing in 25 games while making four starts.

Detroit acquired Lopez as part of a four-player trade with St. Louis on December 4, 1978. The Tigers sent two young left-handed pitchers, Bob Sykes and Jack Murphy, to the Cardinals, receiving veteran outfielder Jerry Morales and Lopez in return. Lopez wasn’t exactly a throw-in, but at the time he was probably regarded as the least important of the four players in the swap.

Veteran Detroit baseball writer Jim Hawkins, in his analysis of the trade, described Lopez merely as a “hard-throwing right-handed reliever” who was “4-2 mainly in long relief with the Cardinals.” Yet Lopez had by far the best career after the trade of any of the quartet involved, starting in the middle of the 1979 season.

Morales was a complete bust in Motown and was sent packing after one season (.211 average,.624 OPS in 129 games) splitting time in right field with lefty swinger Champ Summers. With the Tigers, Sykes had posted a 6-6 record with a 3.94 ERA in 93? innings. After the trade, however, he struggled with the Cardinals, managing only a 12-13 record and a 5.08 ERA in 62 games in 1979-81 before closing out his career in the minors in 1982. Murphy spent two disappointing years in the Cards’ system and one year in the Montreal Expos’ organization before finishing his career in 1981, never having risen above Double-A.

Which leaves only the unheralded Lopez. The 1980 Detroit Tigers media guide said Lopez was the “surprise player of the year [1979] for the Tigers.” Further, it noted that Lopez was “rarely used until Sparky Anderson became manager.” Indeed, Lopez appeared in only 13 games during Les Moss’ 53 games in charge; all but one of those appearances came in Detroit losses. Even worse, Lopez was rusting away, having pitched only one inning in the last two weeks of Moss’ tenure and in Dick Tracewski’s brief interregnum.

Sparky Anderson, however, saw potential in Lopez, making the Mexican hurler the club’s closer in early July. The hard-throwing righty inherited the mantle of 36-year-old lefty change-up artist John Hiller, who was nearing the end of his fine career. In all, the Tigers’ new manager called on Lopez 48 times in his 106 games as skipper in 1979. Lopez responded beautifully to the greater workload and greater responsibility, going 10-4 with 21 saves and a 1.87 ERA under Anderson while becoming Detroit’s closer of the future. To cap off his breakout year, Lopez was invited to tour Japan with an American League all-star squad during the 1979-80 offseason.

At that time, Lopez had an outstanding fastball plus a slider and a screwball, a repertoire he continued to employ till the end of his career. Like a lot of Latin pitchers, he varied his angle of delivery, sometimes dropping from three-quarters down to sidearm against right-handed hitters. His herky-jerky motion gave him good deception, and, in his prime, he could locate his fastball well or simply throw it by most hitters.

As he aged, however, Lopez – like many major leaguers in their 30s – put on too much weight, ultimately being listed as high as carrying 230 pounds on his 6-foot frame. (He was listed as weighing only 200 when he debuted in the majors.) While he continued to throw hard till the end of his career, scouts reported that his fastball lacked movement in the mid-1980s, which meant that good hitters could pound it a long way if they caught up to it – which they did frequently in his two worst years, 1982 and 1985, when he allowed 1.8 and 1.6 home runs per nine innings, respectively.

Many Latino pitchers of that era — as well as a few American pitchers — still employed the screwball, which faded into disuse in the 1990s. In Lopez’s case, he would use the scroogie on the outside part of the plate to left-handed hitters, with the elusive pitch diving down and away. Lopez used the slider in a similar way to frustrate right-handed hitters, though his blazing heater was always his No. 1 offering. As he struggled to stay in the majors the last two years, Lopez reportedly experimented with several other pitches, including a splitter that he learned from Tiger pitching coach Roger Craig.

From 1979 to 1984, the stalwart right-hander appeared in 304 games for the Tigers, compiling a superb 50-23, .685 record with a 3.22 ERA, 25 percent better than the league average. In 626? innings of work, he allowed only 527 hits while walking 220 hitters non-intentionally and fanning 466. He saved only 80 games (and blew 22 save opportunities for a 78.4 save percentage rate) during those six seasons, though he led the Detroit staff with 21 saves in both 1979 and 1980 and with 18 in 1983. Though 21 saves seems almost negligible by today’s standards for a closer, Lopez’s 21 saves tied for third in the American League in ’79 and placed seventh in 1980. In 1983 the Detroit closer’s 18 saves were good for eighth in the junior circuit; in ’84, he finished 10th.

In 1982 the usually durable reliever spent 38 days on the disabled list in Detroit, his only such term in the big leagues. Placed on the Detroit disabled list in spring training with a sore shoulder, he was activated in mid-May by the Tigers. After returning, he struggled until early July, when he was demoted to Triple-A to work out his problems with Evansville. He was 4-0 (1.76 ERA) with the Evansville Triplets and was recalled by Detroit in September, pitching well for the last month of the season.

The following year, Lopez was selected for the 1983 American League All-Star team while enjoying a stupendous first half of the season: 5-3 with a 1.83 ERA and 11 saves in 30 games. He held hitters to a .176 batting average, allowing only 39 hits in 64 innings while striking out 60. The Tigers’ closer did not appear in that Midsummer Classic, however, which the American League won 13-3 in a walk, breaking a streak of 11 consecutive National League victories. It turned out to be his only All-Star nod.

Then, of course, came that championship season of 1984. Despite faulty recollections and revisionist histories to the contrary, Lopez started the ’84 season as Detroit’s closer, the same role in which he had ended ’83. Manager Sparky Anderson wrote in his diary about the Tigers’ game against the future American League West champion Royals on May 9, when Lopez punched out four of the eight hitters he faced, allowing only a harmless walk: “I brought in Aurelio Lopez and I never saw him throw harder. … He struck out four and no one had a chance to hit off him. Lopey never seems to be scared. When he’s on top of his game, he’s better than Clay Carroll used to be for me. And Carroll was some kind of pitcher.”

Needless to say, Sparky wasn’t talking about Lopez as his No. 2 man. George Cantor, who covered the Tigers as a columnist in ’84, identified Hernandez’s breakthrough as occurring on May 4, but the record shows that Anderson didn’t assign Lopez solely to setup work until June.

While Lopez spent the balance of that victorious summer in Motown as the No. 2 pitcher in Sparky Anderson’s bullpen pecking order, it’s not as if he was getting cuffed around while Hernandez was cruising toward his postseason accolades. In June, July, and August, Lopez went 6-0 with five saves in 39 appearances, holding enemy batsmen to a .224 average while whiffing 55 in 79 innings and posting a 3.08 ERA. September, however, was not so good — a harbinger of things to come.

In September 1984 Lopez’s redoubtable right arm plainly wore out. In 12 games (17 innings), he allowed 21 hits and 10 earned runs while striking out only eight, saving two games but also being charged with his only loss of the season. He finished the year 10-1. The following season brought more of the same, as Lopez was hit hard for the rest of the year (.849 opponents’ OPS, 5.92 ERA) after pitching decently in April and May. By midseason 1985, Anderson no longer entrusted a save situation to Lopez; by September, the bullpen phone rang for Lopez only when Detroit was trailing; by the end of the year, the veteran reliever’s days wearing the jersey with the proud Old English D were over.

In 1980, the Tigers’ media guide said that Lopez “prefers heavy work load to stay sharp.” And years later, Detroit pitching coach Roger Craig said that Lopez had really surprised him: “He told me that he could pitch three days in a row, and he’d be throwing harder on the third day than the first. I didn’t believe him till I saw it for myself.” The evidence strongly suggests that Lopez’s eagerness to pitch, when combined with the quick hooks of starting pitchers that manager Sparky Anderson was famous for, led to Lopez’s sudden decline.

 Because of the brilliant bullpen work of Lopez and Hernandez, the Tigers were the only club in the majors to win all 87 games that they led at the start of the ninth inning or later. (Note, however, that the American League average in that category was 95 percent.) The 1985 Elias Baseball Analyst called the Detroit relief duo “the most effective one-two relief combination in baseball.” As a perfect example of how quickly things change, one year later the 1986 edition of the Elias book placed much of the blame for the Tigers’ disappointing ’85 season on “the failure of Lopez to provide the same service … as a year earlier.”

Because of Detroit’s dominance in the 1984 postseason, Lopez was used sparingly. He appeared in only one game in the AL Championship Series, pitching three scoreless innings in Game Two and getting the win when the Tigers rallied in the 11th inning to defeat the Royals. In the World Series Lopez worked three scoreless innings overall, earning the win in the Game Five clincher when he fanned four Padres batters in 2? innings of relief. (He also appeared in the 1986 National League Championship Series with the Houston Astros, entering the climactic Game Six in the 14th inning and taking the loss after allowing two runs to the victorious Mets in the 16th.)

Detroit released Lopez after the 1985 season, when the 36-year-old veteran slumped to 3-7, 4.80 in 51 games while allowing almost a hit per inning – a sign of his declining stuff. He signed with Houston in midseason 1986, finishing his career with the Astros, who released the 38-year-old veteran in midseason 1987. Before the end, however, Lopez had one more moment in the sun, going 3-3 with seven saves and a 3.46 ERA in 45 games, helping the Astros win the National League West Division in ’86.

Lopez was one of the last of the old breed of closers — guys who would take the ball anytime starting in the seventh inning or later and expect to finish the game. To truly appreciate his effectiveness, one cannot simply look at his save totals; one must look also at his won-lost record, his earned run average, and the number of innings he pitched.

At the end of 1984 Lopez’s good name was included on four of the five lists of lifetime relief pitching leaders in Macmillan’s Baseball Encyclopedia, including placing second in Relief Winning Percentage with his career mark of .685.

Although his biography from the Mexican Baseball Hall of Fame says that Lopez was known as the Vulture of Tecamachalco, he was most definitely not a “vulture” by baseball standards during his Detroit days, even though he has erroneously been called so by some writers whose hindsight is not 20-20. Paul Dickson’s estimable dictionary of the national pastime defines vulture as a “relief pitcher, typically a middle relief pitcher, who receives credit for a win to which another pitcher was more entitled; e.g., a relief pitcher whose ineffective pitching prevents an earlier pitcher from receiving the win, as when the relief pitcher blows a lead, only to wind up winning when his teammates retake the lead.”

Take a look at Lopez’s 1984 stat line and game logs and find out exactly where he “vultured” wins from more deserving teammates. Lopez blew only two saves all year, one of which earned him a win and one a loss. Of his nine other wins, he entered with the game tied four times, allowing no runs in any of those games. Twice he relieved a struggling starter in the fifth inning when the high-scoring Tigers held the lead and was credited with the win – a situation in which the official scorer could have awarded the W to another relief pitcher if he believed someone else had pitched more effectively than Lopez. The final three times Lopez came into the game with Detroit trailing and was helped by the Tigers’ bats, but so what? In two of those games, he neither allowed an inherited run nor was scored upon himself. In the final instance, Lopez got the win after pitching a scoreless eighth inning against the Yankees before the Tigers took the lead in the bottom of the eighth. In the ninth Lopez was touched for two unearned runs, both scoring after Hernandez had relieved him.

There is no justification for calling Lopez a “vulture” in 1984. His gaudy won-lost record and relatively low number of saves is not a result of taking “advantage of the Tigers’ late-inning offense” (as one scribe phrased it in a 2009 retrospective on the 1984 season). If anything, it was the reverse: Detroit’s potent attack took advantage when Lopez shut down the opposition to win many games that the Tigers otherwise would have lost. Detroit scored an average of 0.60 runs per inning in the first three frames in 1984, then 0.57 runs per inning during the middle three frames of the game, and only 0.54 runs per inning in the seventh, eighth, and ninth, when Lopez would typically be on the hill.

A great example of how one should not apply today’s standards to 1984 is that Lopez had only three holds that season, tied with Carl Willis. The team leaders, with five, were  Doug Bair and Bill Scherrer! By way of contrast, the 2009 Tigers’ mound corps had five pitchers with more than five holds, with the team leader amassing 28 and the runner-up notching 15 holds. Why? Because the “hold” stat requires a pitcher to enter the game with a lead and not finish the game, and Lopez often was called upon in tie games or when the Tigers were behind. In fact, Lopez answered the bell more than half the time without a lead, whereas Hernandez took the mound almost two-thirds of the time with a Detroit lead.

After retiring from baseball following the 1987 season, Lopez returned to his native village in Mexico. He was elected as municipal president (mayor) of Tecamachalco three years later.

Lopez died in a car crash in Matehuala, San Luis Potosi, on September 22, 1992. He was 44 at the time of his death, which occurred, according to The Sporting News, after he was ejected from his “chauffeur-driven car and crushed when it rolled over him.” He was the first player from the 1984 world champions to expire.

Perhaps because of his unexpected demise, the late pitcher was immortalized in Mexico the following year, though it’s safe to say that Lopez was headed for the Salon de la Fama regardless.

Aurelio Lopez’s obituary in The Sporting News mistakenly states that “Lopez became a hero in his native land primarily because of the seven seasons he spent pitching for the Detroit Tigers.” That is demonstrably not true, as the evidence clearly shows. Despite that mistake, the final paragraph in the TSN obit rings true to Lopez’s character and to his life story.

“`It really wasn’t my idea,’” Lopez told the Detroit Free Press last year [about his election as mayor of Tecamachalco]. “`But the people asked me to do it, and I couldn’t say no. This is my home. You can never forget where you come from.’”

A fitting epitaph for a standup player and a hell of a pitcher in his prime – in two countries.

Sources

Publications

Anderson, Sparky, with Dan Ewald. Bless You Boys: Diary of the Detroit Tigers’ 1984 Season. Chicago: Contemporary Books, Inc. 1984.

Anderson, William M. The Detroit Tigers: A Pictorial Celebration of the Greatest Players and Moments in Tigers’ History. Updated edition. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. 1999.

Balzer, Howard M. Official 1979 Baseball Register. St. Louis: The Sporting News Publishing Company. 1979.

Campbell, Dave, Harmon Killebrew, Brooks Robinson, and Duke Snider. The Scouting Report: 1985. New York: Harper & Row Publishers. 1985.

Campbell, Dave, Harmon Killebrew, Brooks Robinson, and Duke Snider. The Scouting Report: 1986. New York: Harper & Row Publishers. 1986.

Campbell, Dave, Denny Matthews, Brooks Robinson, and Duke Snider. The Scouting Report: 1984. New York: Harper & Row Publishers. 1984.

Cantor, George. Wire to Wire: Inside the 1984 Detroit Tigers Championship Season. Chicago: Triumph Books. 2004.

Cisneros, Pedro Treto. Enciclopedia del Beisbol Mexicano. Mexico: Eighth edition. Revistas Deportivas, S.A. de C.V. 2005.

Coleman, Jerry, Ernie Harwell, Ralph Kiner, Tim McCarver, Ned Martin, and Brooks Robinson. The Scouting Report: 1983. New York: Harper & Row Publishers. 1983.

Detroit Tigers. Detroit Tigers Press/TV/Radio Guide, 1978 ed. Detroit: Detroit Tigers. 1978.

Detroit Tigers. Detroit Tigers Press/TV/Radio Guide, 1979 ed. Detroit: Detroit Tigers. 1979.

Detroit Tigers. Detroit Tigers Press/TV/Radio Guide, 1980 ed. Detroit: Detroit Tigers. 1980.

Detroit Tigers. Detroit Tigers Press/TV/Radio Guide, 1981 ed. Detroit: Detroit Tigers. 1981.

Detroit Tigers. Detroit Tigers Press/TV/Radio Guide, 1982 ed. Detroit: Detroit Tigers. 1982.

Detroit Tigers. Detroit Tigers Press/TV/Radio Guide, 1983 ed. Detroit: Detroit Tigers. 1983.

Detroit Tigers. Detroit Tigers Press/TV/Radio Guide, 1984 ed. Detroit: Detroit Tigers. 1984.

Detroit Tigers. Detroit Tigers Press/TV/Radio Guide, 1985 ed. Detroit: Detroit Tigers. 1985.

Dickson, Paul. The Dickson Baseball Dictionary, third ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. 2009.

Dierker, Larry, Jim Kaat, Harmon Killebrew, and Jim Rooker. The Scouting Report: 1987. New York: Perennial Library. 1987.

Gillette, Gary, and Pete Palmer. The ESPN Baseball Encyclopedia, fifth ed. New York: Sterling Publishing Co., Inc. 2008.

Hoppel, Joe. Official Baseball Guide, 1984 ed. St. Louis: The Sporting News Publishing Company. 1984.

James, Bill, and Rob Neyer. The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers. New York: Fireside Books. 2004.

Marcin, Joe, and Larry Wigge, Carl Clark, and Larry Vickrey. Official Baseball Guide for 1978. St. Louis: The Sporting News Publishing Company. 1978.

Pietrusza, David, Matthew Silverman, and Michael Gershman. Baseball: The Biographical Encyclopedia. Kingston, New York: Total/Sports Illustrated. 2000.

Reichler, Joseph L. The Baseball Encyclopedia, sixth ed. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company. 1985.

Reichler, Joseph L. The Baseball Trade Register. New York: Collier Books. 1984.

Siegel, Barry. Official Baseball Register, 1984 ed. St. Louis: The Sporting News Publishing Company. 1984.

Siegel, Barry. Official Baseball Register, 1985 ed. St. Louis: The Sporting News Publishing Company. 1985.

Siwoff, Seymour, Steve Hirdt, and Peter Hirdt. The 1985 Elias Baseball Analyst. New York: Collier Books. 1985.

Siwoff, Seymour, Steve Hirdt, and Peter Hirdt. The 1986 Elias Baseball Analyst. New York: Collier Books. 1986.

Sloan, Dave. Official Baseball Guide, 1985 ed. St. Louis: The Sporting News Publishing Company. 1985.

Sumner, Benjamin Barrett. Minor League Baseball Standings. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc. 2000.

Articles

Chass, Murray. “Morris Boosted Nearly a Million.” The Sporting News, p. 40, February 23, 1987. Accessed via www.PaperOfRecord.com.

Felber, Bill, and Gary Gillette. “The Changing Game.” In Thorn, John, and Pete Palmer, Total Baseball, seventh edition. Kingston, New York: Total Sports Publishing. 2001.

Gage, Tom. “Evans Named Tiger of the Year.” The Sporting News, p. 48, November 18, 1985. Accessed via www.PaperOfRecord.com.

Gage, Tom. “Hernandez Tigers New Bullpen Ace.” The Sporting News, pp. 23-24, April 2, 1984. Accessed via www.PaperOfRecord.com.

Gage, Tom. “Lopez’ Old Fastball Gives Tigers Relief.” The Sporting News, p. 20, July 11, 1983. Accessed via www.PaperOfRecord.com.

Gammons, Peter. “Hernandez Deal May Put Tigers on Top.” The Sporting News, p. 14, April 9, 1984. Accessed via www.PaperOfRecord.com.

Hawkins, Jim. “Tigers Count on More Tallies With Morales.” The Sporting News, p. 51, December 23, 1978. Accessed via www.PaperOfRecord.com.

Hawkins, Jim. “Tigers May Trip Over Own Mound.” The Sporting News, p. 28, March 3, 1979. Accessed via www.PaperOfRecord.com.

Henning, Lynn. “Tigers’ 35-5 start in 1984 still has power to amaze.” Detroit News, May 21, 2009. Accessed via www.detnews.com.

“N.L. West,” in The Sporting News, p. 16, June 9, 1986. Accessed via www.PaperOfRecord.com.

“Remembering Senor Smoke,” The Sporting News, p. 4, October 5, 1992. Accessed via www.PaperOfRecord.com.

Russo, Neal. “Redbirds Try to Right Ship With 3 Unproven Lefties.” The Sporting News, p. 45, December 23, 1978. Accessed via www.PaperOfRecord.com.

“We Will Miss…” The Sporting News, p. S-23, January 4, 1993. Accessed via www.PaperOfRecord.com.

Websites

http://www.BaseballIndex.org

http://www.Baseball-Almanac.com

http://www.Baseball-Reference.com

http://www.Baseball-Reference.com/bullpen

http://www.BlogCritics.org

http://Detroit.Tigers.MLB.com

http://SABRpedia.org (Society for American Baseball Research’s online encyclopedia)

http://www.SalondelaFama.com.mx (Mexican Baseball Hall of Fame)

http://www.Wikipedia.org

Interviews & Communications

Craig, Roger. Telephone interview by author.

Nelson, Rod. E-mail messages to author.

Shea, Stuart. E-mail messages to author.

Other Sources

24-7 Baseball Relief Pitcher reports, 1979-85 (unpublished).

24-7 Baseball/ESPN Baseball Encyclopedia Disabled List-Injury Register (unpublished).

— Dan Coughlin, April 24, 1979

How many baseball players, good — even great — baseball players have never played in a World Series? Moreover, how many players can say that they played for both of the teams competing in the World Series? Since the first modern World Series was played, in 1903, only one man can make these claims, Sid Monge. He will tell you that it was luck. He will even tell you about Father Time, or about the power of a positive attitude, but upon seeing a list of his accomplishments and learning of his championships at every level, two facts emerge. Sid Monge was not only a gifted athlete and pitcher, and a talented coach, but he was also a hard worker. As Cleveland Plain Dealer sportswriter Dan Coughlin noted in 1979, Monge was known as the man willing to pitch every day if that was what it took to get the job done.

Isidro “Sid” Pedroza Monge was born on April 11, 1951, in Agua Prieta in Sonora state in northwestern Mexico. He was the second oldest of six children born to Consuelo and Pedroza Cardenas. He described his childhood “as not your typical childhood,” adding: “It was adverse and unconventional. I don’t recommend it to anyone.” Monge’s parents divorced when he was 8 years old. Two sisters and a brother went to live with his mother, and two other sisters and Sid went to live with his father. Monge’s father, the head mechanic for a trucking fleet, went to the United States, and for the next 18 months, Monge was shuttled among aunts and uncles at the border until he could join his father in the Los Angeles area. As a 9-year-old, Monge found himself in a foreign country, learning a second language, and starting the fifth grade in Rancho Cucamonga, California. It was a tough start for anyone trying to make a life for himself, let alone someone who would grow up to be a successful major-league baseball player. Then came “Uncle Frank.” Frank Pedroza, an uncle on his mother’s side, was seven years older than Monge and gave him his first glove. “I looked up to him,” Sid said. “He loved baseball. If he had been an outlaw, I probably would have followed that. He gave me my first glove, a right-hander’s glove. I just wore it on the wrong hand.” Frank made a difference in Monge’s life. So did the chance to play baseball. “Baseball saved me,” Sid told Cleveland Press sportswriter Bob Sudyk in May 1979. “It helped me deal with life. It totally occupied me. I was too busy playing ball to feel sorry for myself or be tempted to break the law. I was poor all my life until I signed (a professional contract).”

Monge lived with his siblings, father and stepmother in Rancho Cucamonga until his last two years of high school. But more turbulence crept into his life. Recalling the time in 2010, he said, “I’m an outsider, I’m not related to her, so I was treated like a stepchild, God rest her soul, she was kind of on the mean side to me, that’s what led me to leave the house. I had had enough. I had to tell my dad that I just could not live with his new wife.” So, at 16 Monge moved out. He moved to Brawley, California, near the Mexican border, rented a room and began to support himself. Monge told Cleveland sports reporter Dan Coughlin in 1979, “I was always short of cash. I was in the poorhouse. I wouldn’t ask my father for anything. I was too proud. I’d earn it some way.” That desire and work ethic helped him through the next few years. Unlike his high-school teammates, Monge was working 40 hours a week to pay for rent and groceries, working on his grades, and playing sports. He was on the honor roll in his last two years of Brawley High School. He also was involved in every sport imaginable. When asked what he liked to do as a kid, he quickly replied, “Sports, sports, and more sports.” He played football, basketball, and baseball, and ran cross-country and track. During one season he played baseball and ran cross-country at the same time. He also outlined plans for his life. “My priority was school and preparing myself for my future. I was going to go to college and become a high-school teacher. I was going to double-major in Spanish and physical education. I had all of these ideas and plans already laid out. My dad always told me, ‘Make your mind and body work — don’t be a mechanic or work in the fields.’”

In June 1970, Monge graduated from high school, and on June 4, 1970, he was drafted as a pitcher by the California Angels in the 24th round of the amateur draft. He signed his first pro contract for $3,000. The Angels were interested in him because, according to Ray Herbat in The Sporting News in 1979, “An Angels scout saw Sid in a three-hit victory for the league championship in Imperial Valley and the California organization became interested in him.” He was sent to California’s Rookie League team in Idaho Falls, Idaho.

It was an anxious, exciting, and energetic time not only for Monge personally but also for the country. Other young men were getting drafted, not into major-league baseball, but into the military to fight in Vietnam. Monge’s manager in Idaho, Bob Clear, who saw potential in him, was also an officer in the National Guard, encouraged Monge to join the California National Guard. By doing so, Monge could fulfill his military commitment while at the same time staying in the United States and playing baseball. Always the hard worker, Monge found that baseball and being in the military weren’t enough to keep him busy. That summer he also took correspondence courses through California State University at Los Angeles. Monge completed his basic training at Fort Knox, Kentucky, and then moved back west. He learned to survive in the minor-league baseball system; he also learned how to drive a tank. For the next six years, Monge played baseball wherever he was and returned one weekend a month and two weeks during the summer to Brawley to train with the National Guard. Success followed Monge wherever he went. As happened with the Imperial Valley championship that got him noticed, Idaho Falls won the championship of the Pioneer League in his year with them.

After a 5-1 record at Idaho Falls, Monge was promoted to the Quad Cities team in Davenport, Iowa, of the Midwest League. Once again, his team won the championship, this time when he beat future Hall of Famer Goose Gossage, 3-2. Earlier in the season, on May 4, Monge pitched a no-hitter — the only one of his career — against the Cedar Rapids Cardinals, winning 6-0. He told The Sporting News, “This is my first no-hitter. I came close two or three times in high school, but never had one before.” Including the no-hitter, he threw five shutouts for the Midwest League champions that summer. The no-hitter almost never happened. A Cedar Rapids batter hit an apparent double, but an observant Quad Cities player, Terry Tuley, noticed from the dugout that the batter had missed first base and appealed to the umpire. The umpire upheld the appeal, ruled the batter out, and Monge’s no-hitter was saved.

In 1972 Monge pitched for Shreveport of the Texas League, where he slumped. He finished the season with a 5-10 record. Even so, as one of the organization’s top southpaws, he was invited to spring training by the Angels. Of that summer, Monge told writer Ray Herbat in 1975, “I thought I did well and I figured even if I didn’t stick with the big club I would at least go to [the Triple-A minor-league team in] Salt Lake City. But then they sent me back to Double-A (Shreveport). I was very disappointed.” During the 1973 and 1974 seasons Monge pitched in El Paso of the Texas League, which had become the Angels’ Double-A affiliate. In 1973 he finished the season with a record of 7-11 and was still hoping for his chance to move up. “They said they had too many pitchers coming off the big club and they had to pitch in Triple-A. I was very depressed. I lost my first two starts and began to realize that I wasn’t concentrating on the mound.” That is when he met Sylvia Chavez. According to The Sporting News’ Herbat, Monge believed she helped his pitching: “I met Sylvia on a blind date. Her brother-in-law introduced us. Sylvia and I talked about baseball much, and she learned how to keep charts on my pitches. I began to concentrate again and wound up with a nine-game winning streak. I’m pitching more with my head now.” Monge married Sylvia in June 1974, pitched in the Texas League’s All-Star Game, and finished the season at 14-5. “I finally got my head together,” he said.

In 1975, he was finally given a chance in Triple-A with the Salt Lake City Gulls of the Pacific Coast League. He finished the season with a 14-9 record and a 4.63 ERA, and pitched in the playoffs. After the playoffs he was called up by the Angels.

On September 12, 1975, Monge made his major-league debut. He pitched in relief for the Angels against the Kansas City Royals. It was not a memorable debut. He threw four innings, gave up six hits and three runs, and struck out two batters. He did not figure in the decision. Yet Monge was with the big team to stay. The 1976 season was his first full year with the Angels, and although his role as a starter was not one of baseball legend, he was involved in some historic moments. On July 6 Monge gave up future Hall of Famer Frank Robinson’s final home run. On September 12 the first anniversary of his arrival in the big leagues, Monge threw a fastball to 53-year-old Minnie Minoso, who was making a one-game “comeback” with the Chicago White Sox. Minoso singled and became the oldest player to get a hit in the major leagues. Monge pitched 117 innings and ended the season with a 6-7 record and a 3.37 ERA in 32 games. Still, it was frustrating to find himself working only four games and pitching 12 innings for the Angels in the 1977 season’s first month. Thus, it was a relief when he was traded on May 11 to the Cleveland Indians. The Indians sent a pair of left-handed pitchers, Dave LaRoche and Dave Schuler, to the Angels for Monge, outfielder Bruce Bochte, and $250,000 cash.

For Monge the cold shores of Lake Erie were certainly a world away from sunny California and his warm Mexican homeland, but maybe it was just the change he needed, for his years with the Indians helped Monge develop as a major-league pitcher. Speaking of the trade, Monge said, “I’m pleased — real pleased — for a lot of reasons. Mr. [Phil] Seghi [Indians general manager] has promised me the opportunity to pitch and prove myself, and that’s all I ever wanted.”

Cleveland indeed proved to be good for the hard-working Monge. It offered his best memory in baseball as a player. On May 17, 1978, Monge pitched six scoreless innings in relief against the New York Yankees, giving up just one hit. He savored the experience: “It was almost a perfect game. Thurman Munson blooped a single. I remember that day. I didn’t sleep for days. Before 1977 it took me a few years to get established. That game turned my career around.” Following his first four games for Cleveland after the trade, his manager, Frank Robinson, said, “He throws harder than I thought.” Monge pitched in three of Cleveland’s first four games after his arrival and was glad to be working again. He told sportswriter Russell Schneider in a Sporting News article that June: “I believe in myself and I think I can help any team, as either a starter or reliever. I prefer to start, though I can relieve if that’s what they want because I’ve got the kind of arm that can pitch every day if necessary.” It was in fact Monge’s ability to keep on working that garnered him attention at the beginning of the 1979 season, his finest.

On April 24, 1979, Dan Coughlin, writing in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, described Monge as having “a good arm and a rubber arm. He can pitch almost every day. He thrives on work.” He wrote that Indians manager Jeff Torborg, the bullpen coach when Monge was acquired, said of Monge: “I’ve been in his corner since he got here. The more we used him, the better he got. Each time out he has more confidence.”

Monge had spent the winter of 1978 pitching in Culican, Mexico, for Tomatores de Culiacan. He appeared in 45 of the Tomatores’ 72 games, going 5-4 with 21 saves and a 1.05 ERA. The following April, thought his arm might be burned out. Monge told Coughlin about the ability of his arm to work day after day: “In one stretch [this winter] I pitched eight days in a row. I pitched three innings one day and the next day we had a morning-afternoon doubleheader. I pitched one inning in the morning game and two-thirds of an inning in the afternoon game. I wanted to see how much my arm could take. It was amazing. My arm bounced back very effectively every day, even though it was a very hectic schedule. I’m living proof that you can do it.”

Monge worked more innings in 1979 than in any other season in his career. It was his best year. He was named American League Pitcher of the Month for July. In 29 innings pitched during the month, Monge allowed only 17 hits and struck out 17. The Indians won 11 of the 12 games he pitched in. When Monge was asked if he had found a niche in relief instead of as a starter, he replied, “I enjoy pitching. Being the late man in the bullpen keeps you on your toes. It has changed my life in pitching because I’m concentrating on one particular thing — relief. And you know you’ll be back in there the next day. I’m ready each day and when I’m brought in, I’m ready for anything.” He was one of three relievers named to the 1979 American League All-Star Team (which also included Nolan Ryan and Tommy John) and the first Mexican-born pitcher to make a major-league All-Star Team. Monge posted career bests that season: a 12-10 record, 19 saves, 76 appearances, and 131 innings pitched. He won the Cleveland sportswriters’ Good Guy Award for his accessibility and sense of humor. Monge was arguably the best relief pitcher in baseball that summer.

Monge pitched two more seasons for the Indians but couldn’t duplicate his strong 1979 season. Life has a way of getting in the way of baseball sometimes. He and his wife, Sylvia, went through a messy divorce during the 1980 season. Monge told Cleveland Plain Dealer writer Burt Graeff, “The whole thing should be over within the next three weeks. The judge in Cleveland read newspaper accounts of how this had been affecting me and has tried to get it resolved as soon as possible. I guess he’s an Indians fan.” With his usual sunny disposition, Monge declared he was on the upswing and ready to get back to work. However, Monge’s numbers never fully recovered. He finished the 1980 season with a 3-5 record, 14 saves and a 3.53 ERA, and he ended 1981 with a 3-5 record and a 4.34 ERA. According to Terry Pluto of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, “Monge is an enigma. In 1979 he was elected to the All-Star Team. In the last two years, he has tossed 21 home-run pitches in 147 innings. That is one gopherball for every seven innings, which is a frighteningly poor ratio.” Because of his waning statistics, Monge was granted free agency on November 13, 1981, but two months later on January 21, 1982, the Indians re-signed him. Then, less than three weeks later, on February 16, he was dealt to the Philadelphia Phillies for outfielder Bake McBride.

Marvin Miller, executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association, challenged the legality of the trade. The Sporting News wrote, “Miller was unhappy over a report that the Indians insisted on Monge waiving a no-trade clause before becoming a free agent.” Miller accused the Indians and 10 other clubs of collusion. In The Sporting News on March 6, Bill Conlin wrote that Monge and McBride were both happy with their new teams and that Marvin Miller, “a man near the hot core of the malignant tumor of bilateral greed eating away at all pro sports, immediately hollered foul.” But Monge said, “I couldn’t be happier about this deal. I’m going to a class organization and a top contender. Add to that the fact that I’ll be reunited with my catcher, Bo Diaz [who had caught Monge in Cleveland]. The trade is a real plus for me.” In the end, the trade went through, and Monge started off the 1982 season as a member of the Phillies.

Perhaps a happier Monge meant more effective throwing from the bullpen. On August 30, 1982, Hal Bodley reported in The Sporting News that since that summer’s All-Star Game, “Monge has been the Phils’ most consistent southpaw reliever.” Once again, it was Monge’s need to work and work every day that seemed to make him stronger. “It has taken time for me to get used to the hitters in this league,” he said. “In the beginning it was tough. I was not getting enough work. For me to be effective, I have to pitch frequently.” He became a part of history again that season. On July 19 future Hall of Fame outfielder Tony Gwynn got his first hit, a double, off Monge. Sid finished the 1982 season in fine form again with a 7-1 record. The next season began equally well.

By the middle of May 1983, Monge had won three games, all in relief, without a loss. Then on May 22, he was traded to the San Diego Padres for outfielder Joe Lefebvre. For Monge it was a welcome change if for no other reason than that he was to be reunited with Dick Williams and Norm Sherry, two of his former coaches with the Angels. It was Sherry who had told Monge he could be a baseball player. “He made me believe I could be a major-league player. He made me a baseball player,” Monge said, further declaring, “I want to work. I’ll do anything but dishes and windows.” He was 7-3 with the Padres.

In June of 1984 Monge, with a 2-1 record for the Padres in 13 games pitched, was sold to the Tigers. With 100 regular-season games left, Monge found himself in Detroit with a team that was red-hot. In a 2008 interview, he said, “When you’re traded, you’re puzzled, but Sparky [Anderson, Detroit’s manager] told me he was going to try and get me into as many games as possible. They didn’t really need anybody like me. They were magnificent. It was like a family. They were deep in the bullpen and Willie [Hernandez] was having a good year.”

It was a good year for the Tigers, but they did need Monge, and he pitched in 32 games that year. His favorite moment from that memorable season, he said it occurred on July 21, the day he got his first victory for the Tigers. He won the game in relief of Glenn Abbott, pitching four innings and allowing the Texas Rangers just one unearned run. “I didn’t quite feel like a part of (the team) until the day I won my first game for them. Then I really felt like I had contributed to the season.” After all, it was unlike Monge to have success happening around him without his making a big contribution to achieve it. Even though that was the only game Monge won for the Tigers, in 19 appearances, it was a fabulous season, for him and the team. After the Tigers won the World Series, he exclaimed, “I was walking on a cloud! It seemed like I didn’t sleep for 16 days!”

After the celebrating was over, Monge was granted free agency for the final time on October 25, 11 days after the World Series ended. “At 36, 37 (he was actually only 33), my fastball was leaving me, so I decided to go into coaching,” he said. “Father Time tells you when it is time to go.” He had pitched his last game as a major-league pitcher on September 30, 1984. But despite Father Time, Monge was not quite through pitching; in 1985 he appeared in 45 games, 34 for Detroit’s Nashville farm club and 11 for the Hawaii Islanders, a Pittsburgh farm team in the Pacific Coast League.

Monge loved everything about baseball, and he found a natural home waiting for him as a pitching coach. He said, “I am a true throwback, an absolute baseball junkie.” He coached for the Rockford Expos (Midwest League) in 1990, the Fayetteville Generals (Carolina League, Tigers affiliate) in 1992, the Peoria Chiefs (Midwest League, Cardinals affiliate) in 2000, the Potomac Cannons (Carolina League, Cardinals) in 2001, the New Jersey Cardinals (New York-Penn League) in 2003-05, for the State College Spikes (New York-Penn League, Cardinals) in 2006, and the Johnson City Cardinals (Appalachian League) in 2007. In 2010 he was the pitching coach for the Sultanes de Monterrey in the Mexican League. Monge said he cannot help but notice that things have changed. Stardom and notoriety are greater than ever, but there is a price to pay in loss of personal privacy and security. “The glamour, the exposure, it’s quite a thing nowadays. You need 17 IDs to get into the clubhouse now. The money is out of control and players do not seem as dedicated to their careers in baseball as they used to be.”

Monge’s own dedication, hard work, championship pitching and personality were honored in June 2004 when he was one of four men inducted into the Salon de la Fama, the Mexican Baseball Hall of Fame. Being honored was especially important to Monge because during his playing days he was involved with 10 different teams in Mexico in winter ball. He played with five — Culiacan, Guaymas, Navojoa, Mexicali, and Mazatlan — and also coached for five — Mexicali, Obregon, Mazatlan, Monterrey, and Guasave. He was part of six Caribbean World Series title-winning teams, three coaching and three playing from 1972 to 1990.

Perhaps a more interesting testimony to Monge’s reputation not only as a player but for his personality is represented in the Sid Monge Fan Club, an active group that meets once a year at his various minor-league games. It is also a true testament to his generosity during his playing days. The club has an extensive Web site (http://www.geocities.com/sidmongefc/). Monge has four children. His oldest son, Michael, 30, graduated from San Diego State University, and in 2010 was the regional distribution center manager for Frazee Paint in San Diego. His daughter, Mandy, 25, graduated in 2010 from the University of Arizona. His 19-year-old son, John, was attending trade school in Boston in 2010, and his youngest son, Andy, 7, lived with him and his current wife, Lorena, in Mexico, and was learning how to throw a baseball.

Sources

Articles

“Angels’ Monge Granted Reprieve in No-Hitter.” The Sporting News, May 22, 1971. 43.

Bodley, Hal. “Addition of Monge Crowds Bullpen.” The Sporting News, March 6, 1982. 28.

Bodley, Hal “Monge Regains Bullpen Form.” The Sporting News, August 30, 1982. 41.

Coughlin, Dan. “Monge Bringing Belief to Indians.” Cleveland Plain Dealer, April 24, 1979. C1, C3.

Conlin, Bill. “Monge, McBride Happy; Miller Isn’t.” The Sporting News, March 6, 1982. 31.

Graeff, Burt. “The Real El Sid Finally Stands Up.” Cleveland Plain Dealer, no date listed. C1

Herbat, Ray. “Salt Lake’s Monge Enjoys Raindrops with Victories.” The Sporting News, May 10, 1979. 35.

Nold, Bob. “Monge Impressive by Any Measurement.” Akron Beacon Journal, June 3, 1979. D4.

Pluto, Terry. “Monge Signs with Tribe for $1 Million.” Cleveland Plain Dealer, January 21, 1982. D1.

Sanchez, Jesse “Talking Beisbol: HOF Mexico Style” Baseball Perspectives page, www.mlb.com. June 17, 2004.

Schneider, Russell. “Ex-Angels Take Quickly to Indian Blankets.” The Sporting News, June 4, 1977. 13.

“Sid Monge.” Baseball-Reference.com, 30 April 2008. http://www.baseball-reference.com/m/mongesi01.shtml.

“Sid Monge Fan Club.” June 15, 2008. http://www.geocities.com/sidmongefc/.

Sudyk, Bob. “Monge Travels Far on Hard Road As a Youth.” The Sporting News, May 12, 1979, p.7.

Utnick, Dave. “A Man for All Seasons.” Publication and date not given.

Other

Collins, Tracy. E-mail interview with Amanda Monge. August 5 and 12, 2008.

Collins, Tracy. Personal interviews with Sid Monge. June 19, 2008, and August 1, 2008.

Mora also hit 148 homers in Mexico’s winter league, La Liga Mexicana del Pacífico (LMP). Add in his 27 in the big leagues, 21 more in the U.S. minors, and at least 4 at lower levels in Mexico, and his known total reached 619 (excluding playoffs and All-Star games). He was also a manager and coach at home.

For details of Mora’s early life, we are indebted to a feature by the late Mexican sportswriter Gerardo Castro in the Monterrey newspaper El Regio. Published in February 2009, it was part of his long-running series on sports stars called Colosos del Siglo XX (Colossi of the 20th Century). A translation of several key paragraphs follows.

“Río Bravo is a small town of 2,000 inhabitants which is part of the municipality of Allende, in the state of Coahuila. Andrés Mora saw his first light in this village on May 25, 1955. Río Bravo is also the birthplace of the star outfielder Marcelo Juárez [elected to the Mexican Hall of Fame in 1998] and of umpire Efraín Ibarra, Mora’s first cousin.

“Andrés Mora belongs to a modest family formed by Alfonso Mora (deceased) and Andrea Ibarra. The Mora-Ibarras had 11 children. Andrés was born sixth; his older brothers are Fernando, Abelardo, Jesús, Tomás, and Guadalupe. Younger than Andrés are his sisters: Oralia, María Elisa, Concepción, María del Rosario, and Juanita.

“Like all the children of that baseball-loving region, Andrés began playing the king of sports from when he was very small, after attending the only local school, José Garza Montalvo. Right afterward he would get together with his friends and older brothers to play ball.

“When Andrés was 11 years old, he watched with sadness as fire consumed the textile factory where his father and big brothers worked. The family moved to the capital of the state, Saltillo; the owners of the factory decided to install the new plant in that city, and thus was founded the Río Bravo colony in the Coahuilan capital.

“The first uniform that Andrés Mora wore, when he was 14 years old, was for the Río Bravo colony’s team in La Liga de Primera Fuerza Especial de Saltillo [i.e., the city’s top municipal league]. He began really falling in love with baseball.

“His potent batting quickly brought him to pro ball. He was in his third year of studies at Nazario Ortiz Garza High School when he was invited to play in the Fall League of Monterrey with the team Indios Verdes del Seguro Social del Saltillo [Green Indians of Saltillo Social Security]. The squad included, among others, Marcelo Juárez and Mora’s brothers Abelardo and Jesús. The Fall League of Monterrey was semi-pro but gave very good players to Mexican ball. Brother Jesús later played for the Puebla Parrots of the Mexican League [as well as five other teams from 1968-79; Abelardo Mora played for Saltillo in the Mexican Center League in 1967 and 1968].

“Various people helped Mora advance in the pros, and he is openly grateful to Eleazar Galindo from the Saltillo Saraperos organization. Galindo signed him for the Sarape Makers and they sent him to the Center League in 1971 with the Acámbaro team. In that city Mora began to shine brightly, putting on a show with long cannon blasts. He played outfield and batted cleanup.”1

Records show that Andrés actually played with Zacatecas in the Center League in ’71, as well as Puerto Peñasco in the Northern League. He then moved up to the big club in Saltillo the next year, but appeared in only two games because of arm trouble.2

When he was still just 17 years old, Mora first attracted attention from scouts up north. Cuauhtémoc “Chito” Rodríguez, a longtime Mexican baseball executive, came to know Andrés well from their many years together in Nuevo Laredo and later Mexico City. In 2009, he recalled that Andrés was playing in La Liga Tabasqueña, a lower-level winter league based in the state of Tabasco that operated from 1970 to 1980. The Montreal Expos signed Mora on February 28, 1973. Although definitive proof is not available, the scout may well have been Roy “Red” Smith, the head of Montreal’s scouting effort in Latin America. According to infielder Juan Navarrete, another Mexican ballplayer who had signed with the Expos the previous year after playing for Saltillo, Smith frequented the area.3 However, Mora played just 8 games for West Palm Beach in the Florida State League. He was hitless in 21 at-bats, striking out 11 times.

Andrés first played in the LMP that winter, joining the Cañeros of Los Mochis. In 1974 – although the Expos released him in March – he started to mature as a ballplayer, becoming a regular with Saltillo. “I gained weight,” said the 180-pounder, “and started to hit with more power.”4 He skipped the winter of 1974-75, but then won his first of four home run crowns in the Mexican League in 1975.

This impressive showing prompted the Baltimore Orioles to sign the 20-year-old power hitter. The O’s purchased him from Saltillo on August 11, 1975. The scouts involved were Ray Poitevint, one of the trailblazers in finding international talent, and Jim Russo. Andrés followed up by taking the LMP home run title, his first of three.

Mora started off the 1976 season with Baltimore instead of Triple-A Rochester, largely because Reggie Jackson – in his one little-remembered season with the O’s – held out during April. The “bullish Mexican” made his debut on April 13, going 1 for 4 against Dock Ellis at Memorial Stadium. In a 2013 interview with the Mexican publication Excélsior, he called it “a marvelous day in my career.”5

Four days later, he hit his first big-league homer, a two-run shot as a pinch-hitter off Paul Lindblad in Oakland. Orioles catcher Elrod Hendricks, who played for years in both Mexico and Puerto Rico, helped Andrés with the postgame interview because the rookie spoke little if any English.6

Despite manager Earl Weaver’s fondness for platoons, Mora saw just as much action versus righties as lefties. One of those righties was Nolan Ryan, and Mora later guffawed about how he helped the fireballer reach 5,000 strikeouts. In his seventh game in the majors, Mora struck out in his first three at-bats against Ryan, on just nine pitches in total. “He threw you fastballs over 100 miles an hour and curves at 90, there was nothing to be done.”7 In the eighth inning that night, Mora did manage to lay down a successful sacrifice bunt against Ryan, whom he never faced again.

Mora started well, but then began a bad slump in June. It was a familiar story; as Weaver and coach Jim Frey noted, it was the rookie’s second time around the league. The pitchers were more careful and became more aware of getting Mora out with breaking balls, and then he started pressing. “The adjustment was tough,” said Frey.8 With a .215 average as of mid-August, Mora was optioned to Rochester as the Orioles brought back Mike Flanagan. He hit .328 with 6 homers in 18 games there, earning a September recall.

In spring training 1977, Baseball Digest noted that Mora was “moving up at a sensational pace. ‘The question isn’t if but when this kid will make it,’ a scout told us. ‘He has power to burn, a great stroke and should hit for average. One of the best prospects I’ve seen in a long time.’”9

Indeed, the 1977 season (.245-13-44) was the Mexican’s most successful in the majors. He began the year with Rochester, and “in the early part of the season the team rose and fell on the bat of Mora, who, if he wasn’t hitting, was a liability on the bases and in the field.” (Nonetheless, Andrés had actually served as an emergency second baseman for the Red Wings the previous August.)10

Baltimore summoned Mora in early June to replace Larry Harlow but could only offer him the same irregular playing time. Pat Kelly was the primary left fielder, and Lee May was still at first base, making Eddie Murray the main DH. An August article in The Sporting News noted that Andrés would rather be seeing full-time duty in Rochester.11 In mid-August, though, he did at least move into a platoon with Kelly. The first of his two two-homer days in the majors came in Baltimore on August 15, as he took Minnesota’s Dave Goltz and Gary Serum deep in a 13-9 loss. More than three decades later, he called it “an unforgettable day.”12

In September 1977, Mora married his fiancée – a woman named Dora (the rhyme got attention).13 She was from the Los Mochis area; the couple had two sons and a daughter. After this union dissolved, Mora married a woman from Nuevo Laredo, with whom he had another son. Other details are lacking, however, since Mora guarded his privacy.

Mora again started the year in Rochester in 1978, but the Orioles recalled him in mid-May. He appeared in 76 games with disappointing results (.218-8-14), although he tagged Ken Kravec of the White Sox for two homers on September 1.

In 1979, the Orioles optioned Mora to Rochester in their second-last round of cuts ahead of Opening Day. The Red Wings in turn sent him back to Saltillo.14 There he hit 23 homers, drove in 102 runs, and batted .344.

On December 3, 1979, the Cleveland Indians obtained Mora from the Baltimore organization via the major league draft.15 The Tribe potentially viewed him as their starting left fielder, but instead, “Super Joe” Charboneau emerged as 1980’s AL Rookie of the Year. After appearing in just nine games for Cleveland, Andrés was going to be sent down to Tacoma in early May, since the Indians had acquired Miguel Diloné from Chicago.

Instead, “he opted to return to Mexico. ‘I think if I stayed in Triple A I might have had another chance at Cleveland, but I was mad. I hit good but they still put me in AAA. I don’t really feel too bad [about it], because I did a lot more down here, and it’s my home.”16 In 2009, Ray Poitevint offered his view: “[Mora] had a world of talent and found that he could hit in the major leagues, but being homesick always kept him from sticking it out. It was never about talent, he could hit anyone.”17

Mora then entered his prime as a slugger. He won back-to-back summer home run titles in 1981 and 1982 (albeit with rather modest totals of 23 and 25) and also led the Mexican League in RBIs both years. Partway through the 1982 season, he joined the Tecolotes (Owls) of Nuevo Laredo, where he would spend the bulk of his remaining career as a player. Mora became a prominent figure in author Alan Klein’s book Baseball on the Border: A Tale of Two Laredos. In 1985, the Tecos began playing games in both Nuevo Laredo and its Texan sister city, Laredo – becoming the only bi-national pro team ever. For quite a few seasons they were known as Tecolotes de Dos Laredos.

Along with Alejandro Ortiz and Carlos Soto, Mora formed a triumvirate called, without much imagination, Los Tres Mosqueteros (The Three Musketeers).18 He reached a personal best with 41 homers in 1985, and he hit over .300 for eight straight seasons from 1983 to 1990. From 1984 to 1987, in fact, he put up a .366 average – though one must note that in 1986, the league was using a juiced-up brand of ball called the Comando.19

The old-school border fans were tough, though, as author Joe Nick Patoski discovered in 1986. “Take Pedro Chapa, an 86-year-old Texan who has been crossing the border since 1910. . .He nodded to Andrés Mora, who was taking a short lead off first base. ‘See him? They call him El Gran Caballero [The Big Man] when he hits. But you know what they call him when he’s on base? La Plancha, the Iron. He’s too slow.”20

Mora played for the Monterrey Industriales in 1989 and 1990. “He walked out over a contract dispute, fought with manager Zacatillo Guerrero, and was even traded away in 1989, sadly and ironically missing the Tecos’ only championship during his playing years.”21 He did return partway through the 1990 season.

In the early 1990s, a few years after Soto’s departure, another power threat emerged for the Tecolotes. Marco Antonio Romero fit right in; as Klein noted, “Mora, Ortiz, and Romero pride themselves on being latter-day versions of the legendary Cincinnati slugger Ted Kluszewski, who had to cut off his shirt sleeves to accommodate his massive arms. This mustachioed burly trio lives for power.”22

Authors Jim McKay, Michael Messner, and Don Sabo also portrayed the trio. “Their look was studied ‘macho’: multiple days’ growth of beard, cut-off sleeves on their uniforms, home run swings and trots around the bases designed to show off their power. They routinely pounded their plastic [protective] cups. . .and proclaimed to all within earshot Tenemos huevos! – We have balls.”23

Mora played his last of 18 winter seasons in 1991-92. Along with his 148 homers – fourth in LMP history as of 2015 – he had 593 RBIs, which ranked fifth. He also collected 1,015 hits for a .258 average. Mora had three tours of duty with Los Mochis, winning all three of his LMP home run titles in his first six-season stretch. (He tied for the lead in both 1978-79 and 1979-80.) In 1986, he had a 29-game hitting streak with the Cañeros, a league record that lasted until 2005. He also played with Guaymas, Mazatlán, Obregón, Tijuana, and Guasave. He got to play with only one champion, the 1987-88 Tijuana Potros. Therefore he was part of just one Caribbean Series, going 3 for 16 in Santo Domingo in 1988.24

After the 1993 season, Mora’s production dropped off markedly as his body showed wear and tear. In latter years, he had moved to designated hitter. Early in the summer of 1994, he told Alan Klein, “You know, I think I may retire after this year. I set a goal for myself of twenty home runs, but I feel like my bat has slowed down, and my legs hurt like hell.”25 He added, “It’s just that I don’t know what to do. Baseball has been my life. I’m lost without it. It’s very sad.”26

That November, Mora was named the Tecos’ new manager, although he still saw spot duty as a player through 1997. He retired after celebrating his 42nd birthday, with final Mexican League totals of 2,259 hits (.311 average) and 1,498 RBIs, to go with his 419 homers.

Managing in Mexico can often be an even hotter seat than it is in the U.S. – owners and front offices look for quick results. Loyalty (or patience) lasted longer than most for Mora, but while he was Mexican League manager of the year in 1995, he didn’t lead the Tecos to the playoffs after that. The team abruptly removed Andrés as manager in mid-year 1998,27 and he quickly joined Saltillo as batting coach.28 He returned to manage Dos Laredos for 1999, but then moved on to lead the Monclova Acereros in 2000. He was fired with 15 games left that year, though.29 He served as batting coach and interim manager for the Tecos in 2001, but left the team partway through the year.30

After that Mora also managed Veracruz, starting 2003 there before returning to lead Dos Laredos yet again that June. Near the end of 2004, he replaced Mario Mendoza at Angelopolis,31 after which he stepped down once more to the coaching ranks.32 In addition, Mora coached at various points during the winter, in both the LMP and the Veracruz Winter League, which was revived in 2005.

As of 2009, Andrés was in the city of Minatitlán, Veracruz. He reunited with his old friend, manager Alejandro Ortiz, as the bench coach for the winter ballclub (the Gavilanes). He then joined the coaching staff of the summer franchise (the Petroleros) He became manager yet again in June 2009, finishing the season for the Petroleros.

Mora became a member of the Mexican Baseball Hall of Fame on July 21, 2003. He called it the most emotional day of his life. It apparently was quite a sight to see this man, known for his fearsome appearance in the batter’s box, with tears running down his cheeks, calling his wife on stage to read his prepared remarks. They finished with the refrain of the popular Latin American folk song “Gracias a la Vida”.

“Today I can die in peace because at last there is recognition of the effort I made in baseball, a sport to which I owe everything, and I can only say, ‘Thanks to life, which has given me so much.’”33

While only in middle age, Mora’s health suffered irreversible damage. It stemmed from diabetes, which was not controlled well after its onset.34 Among the severe complications was diabetic neuropathy, a risk factor for falls. One such accident in 2007 required surgery on his left hip, and about half a year later, he broke his other leg in another fall. He came to need a wheelchair.

By virtue of his brief service with Cleveland in 1980, Mora was a vested member of the Major League Baseball Players Benefit Plan. In 2013, he noted that the pension would help tide him over in his old age.35 It’s not clear, however, to what extent he utilized his benefits, including health coverage.

In October 2014, again as a consequence of diabetes, Mora contracted a lung infection. It developed into pneumonia, causing him to be hospitalized.36 The Saltillo Saraperos announced a charity game to help defray his expenses.37 That game took place at Estadio Francisco I. Madero on November 22, 2014. Mora welcomed more than 30 former professional ballplayers – including Marcelo Juárez and ex-major-leaguers Alfonso Pulido, José Ceceña, and Enrique Romo – who made the trip to show their support.38

In May 2015, the government of the state of Coahuila unanimously approved a modest monthly pension for Mora of 7,000 pesos (then equal to approximately US $450).39 Just weeks later, however – on June 12, 2015, at 10:20 PM – Andrés Mora Ibarra died.40 Ongoing problems with pneumonia and diabetes were the cause.41 He was laid to rest in Saltillo’s Panteón de Santiago.42

Less than two years before he died, Andrés Mora said, “Many people said to me that if I had stayed at home those years that I was in the U.S., perhaps I might have reached 500 homers [in the Mexican League]. But I said to them, I didn’t lose, I won because I played in the best baseball in the world. I feel content with what I did in my career and satisfied with life. I can’t say that I was the best, but yes, I was one of the best.”43

Acknowledgments

This biography was originally published in November 2009 and updated in June 2015. Grateful acknowledgment to Gerardo Castro (who died in February 2011) for permission to translate his work and present it here. Thanks also to SABR members Eddie Almada and Alain Usereau, as well as Salo Otero, Chito Rodríguez, and Ray Poitevint.

Sources

Books

Pedro Treto Cisneros, editor, Enciclopedia del Béisbol Mexicano. Revistas Deportivas, S.A. de C.V., 1998.

Omar Canizales Soto and Christian Veliz Valencia, editors, Guía Oficial LMP, 2014-15.

Internet resources

Mexican Baseball Hall of Fame website, www.salondelafama.com.mx

Laredo Morning Times, http://madmax.lmtonline.com

Petroleros de Minatitlán website (www.petrolerosdeminatitlan.com), notably press release of January 19, 2008.

Newspaper articles

Jim Henneman, “Orioles See Slugger Shadow in Sleeper Mora”. Sporting News, February 7, 1976: 47.

Jim Henneman, “O’s Take a Longer Look at Young Slugger Mora”. Sporting News, May 8, 1976: 16.

Notes

Ortega’s path to the booth began in the late 1960s. He was born on June 5, 1963, and raised in the Colonia Juárez neighborhood of Tijuana. Like many other Mexican youths, he loved to play baseball, but said, “I was so bad. They sent me to right field, but I was always benched.”3 Ultimately, he would scamper up a tree and “broadcast” the action before him, imitating the stylings of Mario Thomas Zapiáin (known as “Don Mario”), the first Spanish-language voice of the Padres (starting when the team became a major-league franchise in 1969), and his sidekick, Gustavo López Moreno. He quickly earned a local reputation for his aptitude in describing athletic contests.

Ortega’s capabilities also came to the attention of one of his teachers, Juan Manuel Martínez- Pérez, who provided encouragement and even helped him get his first job: serving as master of ceremonies at local graduations (Eduardo was 12 at the time). In turn, this led to a plethora of narrating opportunities: boxing matches, bullfights, beer commercials, and serving as a disc jockey at a local radio station. He even attained another pinnacle of Mexican broadcasting: working as an announcer for lucha libre contests alongside Juan Manuel Martínez. Still, his dreams of broadcasting baseball were at the forefront of his mind. Ultimately, Ortega moved on to broadcast both winter (with the Tijuana Potros) and summer league contests (with the Torreón Algodoneros) in México.4

While his dulcet tones graced the airwaves throughout his teen years and early 20s, there was one person, his biggest fan, who could not hear any of it: his beloved mother, Amparo Díaz. Eduardo’s parents divorced when he was 3, and his mother, who had been deaf since she was 14, had to work diligently to support her family. The many jobs Eduardo held in his early career helped, and his mother grew to love baseball because of her son’s passion for the sport. In an interview with Curt Smith for the book A Talk in the Park, Ortega recalled how his mother reacted to his first appearance on the radio. “Your brothers tell me there was a beautiful voice on the radio. … Remember, while you may not be before me, I will always listen with my heart.”5 Amparo Díaz died during the offseason of 2011. “It gets me sentimental … because I took inspiration from her. … I wanted to make her proud,” Ortega said.6

The voice of Don Mario was not the only connection between Eduardo and the Padres. One of the most important memories of his youth took place in the mid-1970s when Ortega got the opportunity to attend a home game courtesy of another San Diego legend. He recalled the importance of the Dave Winfield Pavilion and how he appreciated all that the player did to assist disadvantaged youths on both sides of the border. When, in 1995, the broadcaster (then working the World Series for the CBS Americas Radio Network) had an opportunity to visit with the Hall of Famer, he thanked Winfield for using his wealth and the sport of baseball to reach out to the needy above and below the international divide. “I just wanted to tell you, on behalf of my family, thank you very much. You motivated me to pursue a life in baseball.”7 A friendship developed between the two, and when Winfield was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2001, he asked Ortega to be in attendance at Cooperstown.

After several years of success in Mexico, Ortega, through the efforts of Gustavo López Moreno, was offered his dream job in 1986: sitting in the booth next to the legendary Spanish-language voice of the Padres franchise. Fulfilling a childhood flight of the imagination, Ortega shared the microphone next to his idol for the final 11 years of Don Mario’s career, through 1997. Don Mario died in 2009.

Curt Smith, a noted historian of baseball broadcasting, argues that “Hispanic broadcasters call baseball in a lively way,” which he refers to as a “mi casa es su casa” style that involves great storytelling and a great deal of emotion.8 This is certainly true for Eduardo Ortega’s broadcasts. One of the stories Ortega related to Smith of such differences occurred during a spring-training game with the Brewers in Chandler, Arizona. The attendance at the contest was minuscule, and Ortega began to count up the balls and strikes in “our festive Latin style.” Not surprisingly, not everyone appreciated his narrative methodology. Several retirees seated in the stands in front of Ortega stared intently and asked, “Who the heck are you and what are you doing here?” “By game’s end, no one was sitting directly in front of us, moving to different sections to get away. I haven’t taken it personally,” Ortega recalled.9

Over the past 30-plus years, Eduardo Ortega has become the voz of the Padres for the local Latino community, as well as for fans in Mexico. Not only does he work for the franchise, he also, since 1993, has broadcast games in Spanish for ESPN Deportes radio and other entities. Among these have been World Series, All-Star Games, and World Baseball Classic contests. He is also active as a volunteer on both sides of international divide: raising funds for scholarships, leading toy drives, and being a presence in the wider communities and classrooms. His professionalism also led to his nomination for the most important recognition in baseball broadcasting, the Ford C. Frick Award. Although he did not receive this honor in 2013, no less of a legend than the late Dick Enberg (himself a Frick winner in 2015) proclaimed, “Oh, he’s going to be in the Hall of Fame one day. He’s that good.”10

Even more significant than his accomplishments with the Padres are Ortega’s efforts to connect the Latino community with the broader society of the United States; and baseball is a perfect mechanism with which to accomplish this. He is a consummate professional, and always argues that the presence of the Spanish-surnamed in our nation is a promising development. Not only are there more Latinos than ever on the field, but also by introducing these players to a national audience, broadcasters such as Ortega help to unite our nation’s different groups through our mutual love for the sport. Here, he follows in the grand tradition of his other idols: Canel, Ramírez, and Jarrín. Eduardo Ortega is a shining example of the power of baseball to unite individuals of various backgrounds through a passion for the “national pastime.”

Notes             

1 Samuel O. Regalado, “‘Dodgers Beisbol is on the Air: The Development and Impact of the Dodgers Spanish-Language Broadcasts,1958-1994,” California History, Vol 74, No. 3 (Fall 1995): 280-289. Quote on pages 283-284.

2 For a discussion on this trend, see Jorge Encinas, “How Latino Players Are Helping Major League Baseball Learn Spanish,” NPR.org, March 26, 2017, npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2017/03/26/519676864/how-major-league-baseball-came-to-officially-speak-spanish; Jerry Milani, “On the Airwaves and Online, Spanish Language Baseball Business Grows,” Portada, March 27, 2018, portada-online.com/2018/03/27/on-the-airwaves-and-online-spanish-language-baseball-business-grows/; and Mike Elk and Karina Moreno, “Baseball, Latino America’s Pastime, Faces New Challenges in Age of Trump,” The Guardian, March 29, 2018, theguardian.com/sport/2018/mar/29/baseball-latino-trump-mlb.

3 Bryce Miller, “Padres’ Eduardo Ortega Is a Spanish-Language Star,” San Diego Union Tribune, March 27, 2016, sandiegouniontribune.com/sports/padres/sdut-eduardo-ortega-baseballs-boy-in-a-tree-2016mar27-story.html

4 Author interview with Eduardo Ortega, April 26, 2018.

5 Curt Smith, A Talk in the Park: Nine Decades of Baseball Tales from the Broadcast Booth (Washington: Potomac Books, 2011), 230-231.

6 Miller. See also Matt Calkins, “The Padres’ Hall of Fame Nominee You Might Not Know,” San Diego Union Tribune, October 11, 2013, sandiegouniontribune.com/sports/padres/sdut-padres-eduardo-ortega-calkins-2013oct11-story.html.

7 A Talk in the Park, 226.

8 Author interview with Curt Smith on March 16, 2018.

9 A Talk in the Park, 227.

10 Miller. See also Alexandra Mendoza, “Eduardo Ortega: 30 Anos Como La Voz de los Padres,” San Diego Union Tribune, April 9, 2016, sandiegouniontribune.com/hoy-san-diego/sdhoy-eduardo-ortega-30-anos-como-voz-de-los-padres-2016apr09-story.html.

This biography appears in San Diego Padres: The First Half Century (SABR, 2019), edited by Tom Larwin and Bill Nowlin. To order your free e-book or get 50% off the paperback edition, click here.