HERMOSILLO, Mexico – Something was missing as the Tucson Baseball Team hit in the cage on the field two hours before Thursday night’s home opener against the Naranjeros de Hermosillo.
“Musica! Musica!” a player yelled up in the general direction of the booth where the DJ sits.
But, nothing came out of the speakers.
Bobby Bradley, the former Cleveland Guardian who has been playing most of his baseball in Mexico since 2023, kept blasting balls deep into the outfield, while teammates shagged them in the outfield and the infielders took ground balls.
Again, a yell of, “Musica!” Again, no music.
Yet another round of demands for musical accompaniment, and finally, the ubiquitous-in-Latin-American-ballparks strains of Don Omar and Lucenzo’s “Danza Kuduro” began to pour out of the loudspeakers. At most ballparks, the home team’s staff would have the music pumping by the time the local squad went on the field for batting practice, especially for the first game in a new city.
But for the Tucson Baseball Team, this was no normal home opener. The team, which plays in the Liga ARCO Mexicana del Pacifico, moved from Navojoa, Sonora, Mexico to Tucson, Arizona, during the past offseason. For the first time, Mexico’s winter professional baseball league has a team in the United States.
It seemed like a good idea: a team struggling to draw in the LAMP’s smallest market moving to a city with a metro population of over 1 million just north of the border with a mostly-vacant stadium that hosted Triple-A baseball, but within easy traveling distance of the league’s nine teams located in northwestern Mexico.
But the move has not been without a major hiccup. After holding training camp and playing a significant portion of the preseason in Arizona, the Team, which has yet to adopt a nickname, has been forced to play all their games on the road in Mexico while they wait for visas to be issued by the United States government for the players and staff who do not have residency or citizenship.
“We don’t have a date right now. We’re handling the [visa] process as it should be,” Esteban Haro, the Tucson Baseball Team’s sports manager, a position roughly equivalent to an MLB general manager, said in Spanish, asked when the team might get the visas issued. “Hopefully, it’ll take us two or three weeks at the most, so we can have a home in Tucson and not be on this journey of playing as the home team while away.”
Thus, Thursday night’s home opener was played at Hermosillo’s Estadio Fernando Valenzuela, where they played their season opener the night before, a 6-1 loss to Hermosillo, rather than at Tucson’s Kino Veterans Memorial Stadium.
“They essentially just told us straight up kind of what was going on, that there was a little miscommunication as to how everything needs to be handled,” said relief pitcher Garrett Alexander, a native of Spring, Texas, who’s playing winter ball for the first time. “But we’re also reassured that they’re going to take care of everything they need to take care of and that they’re going to do everything by the book and make sure everything is set to go to be back there shortly.”
Asked if the team had given them an inkling of how long the season opening road trip would last, Alexander said, “They didn’t really give us a hard, hard date. We just know that we’ll be here on the road for a little bit, but it should be pretty soon.”
It’s not an ideal situation, having a road trip that is expected to last, well, indefinitely, but the players are taking it in stride. With the U.S. government shut down, staffing reductions at the Department of State will likely prolong the delay in issuing the P-1A work visas necessary for the 23 Mexican players who are not U.S. citizens or permanent residents, as well as visas for the coaches and staff.
“Right now, it’s obviously about adapting to the situation, and I think the guys are very willing, and I think that’s the most important thing: the players’ willingness to adapt to the situation we’re going through, and that’s what’s going to make things easier for us,” Haro said.
At least one player, right fielder Gaige Howard, had some experience with long road trips at the beginning of a season. Howard played his first season of college baseball in 2017 at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, where the Owls played their first 16 games of the season in 13 days in Fort Pierce, Florida.
It wasn’t, he said, “exactly like this, where we don’t know the exact situation, when we’ll be back and when we’ll be in Tucson at the same time.”
It didn’t feel exactly like a home opener, either. Wednesday night’s season opener, which was the home opener for the Naranjeros, drew 16,377 to Estadio Fernando Valenzuela, while Thursday’s night’s “home opener” for the Tucson Baseball Team drew considerably fewer, just 3,469, and those that did come appeared nearly uniformly Hermosillo fans.
Of course, several things likely factored into this: Hermosillo is 244 miles and an international border from Tucson, and Thursday isn’t a great day for a four-hour drive each way to see a baseball game if you have to work on Friday morning.
Secondly, since it’s a Tucson home game, Hermosillo’s season ticket holders have to buy tickets. Tickets in the main grandstand range from MX$210, or about US$11.50, to MX$870, about US$45, for the sections behind the plate. According to data from the Mexican government, the average salary in Hermosillo is about MX$7,000 a month, making tickets to four more games a bit pricey to the average fan. Asked for information on how, exactly, gate receipts from home games played on the road were being split between Tucson and their hosts, officials from both the Naranjeros de Hermosillo and the Tucson Baseball Team declined to comment.
Meanwhile, season ticket holders in Tucson are being refunded for every home game that is played on the road, which only adds to the economic strain on the business that is the Tucson Baseball Team. Revenues in minor league sports are primarily driven by ticket sales and sponsorship sales, while the primary expenses are salaries, equipment, insurance and travel.
When the team goes on a road trip with 45 people, renting 25 hotel rooms a night and a team bus every day, as a staffer told me the Tucson Baseball Team is, it adds up quickly. Right now, the team is staying at the Hotel Araiza in downtown Hermosillo, a MX$1,300-a-night place about a 15-minute drive from the ballpark. They’re doing their best to make it feel like home.
“It’s something we can’t hide. It’s something very expensive for the organization, but we have such a commitment to the organization, to the people of Tucson, that we’re very committed to doing it in the best way possible so that when we return,” Haro said. “We’ll show the best show possible to the people and that people come to the park. So, as an organization, we’re very committed to assuming the cost.”
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Tucson Baseball Team bench coach Fred Ocasio and sports manager Esteban Haro talk on the rail of the third base dugout before a game at Estadio Fernando Valenzuela in Hermosillo, Mexico. (Photo: Leif Skodnick/World Baseball Network)
When the five-game, season-opening series against Hermosillo comes to an end on Sunday, the team will head off to Guasave, a six-and-a-half hour drive south down the coast of the Gulf of California, for a three-game set. Then it’s two-thirds of the way back to Hermosillo for a three-game series at Obregon that was originally scheduled for Tucson, before they head to Mexicali for three road games against the Aguilas, and then three games in Los Mochis against the Caneros, another home series likely to be played on the road.
“When it comes down to it, the game is the game, you know, you still got to come out and play the game,” said Tucson bench coach Fred Ocasio, a Bronx native who played in college at Oklahoma State and has managed for 16 seasons in the Colorado Rockies organization. “The stuff that’s happening outside of the game, that we can’t control. So why worry about that? And that’s the one thing, the message we’re telling the players, hey, control what we can control. And with the situation that is at hand right now, once we start the game, the game is this game. And no matter where you’re playing it, the game is the game.”
The game was the game Thursday night, and Tucson jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the top of the first, with Howard hitting an RBI double and then scoring when Bradley’s pop fly to left eluded Hermosillo left fielder TT Bowens and hit the turf. Tucson, which had the worst ERA in the league last season with a 4.22 mark in the last of their 75 seasons in Navojoa, used nine different pitchers in the game, none going more than two innings, and allowed Hermosillo to score five in the top of the third, when they sent nine batters to the plate and took the lead on a two-run single by former Major Leaguer Willie Calhoun. Another run in the top of the fifth on a double by Calhoun made it 6-2 Hermosillo.
But the presently homeless Tucson Baseball Team battled back, getting a run in the bottom of the fifth on an RBI single by Howard, and cut the lead to 6-4 in the seventh with an RBI single by Bradley that scored Jesus Fabela. Brayan Mendoza drew a walk, loading the bases with two outs, but Missael Rivera flew out to right to end the threat.
In the top of the ninth, with “Danza Kuduro” blaring again and runners on first and second, TT Bowens ripped a double to left center that scored Jasson Atondo and Harold Ramirez. Angel Ramirez followed with a double to send Bowens home and make it 9-4. And so it stayed.
When Tucson cleanup hitter Jose Carlos Urena popped out to short in the bottom of the ninth to end the game, the stadium floodlights flashed, the music began to pump, and the public address announcer intoned, “Un ganada por los Naranjeros” — a win for the Naranjeros — punctuating the awkwardness of the home opener on the road, a game that dropped Tucson’s record to 0-2.
On Friday night, the Tucson Baseball Team got their first regular season win since the franchise left Navojoa, topping the Naranjeros 5-1 for their first quasi-home win in front of 5,641 fans, with Howard, the hottest bat in the lineup, going 2-for-3 with a run scored and an RBI and making a spectacular diving catch in right field on former Major Leaguer Harold Ramirez’ fly ball to end the game. They’ll have two more games in Hermosillo and an off day on Monday before the series at Guasave begins on Tuesday.
“They’ve treated us really well here in Hermosillo, so definitely no complaints there,” Alexander said, noting the hotel was next door to the Sonora Grill, a local steakhouse popular with the players.
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The Tucson Baseball Team holds their pregame meeting on the field at Estadio Fernando Valenzuela in Hermosillo, Mexico. (Photo: Leif Skodnick/World Baseball Network)
You have to be both comfortable and confident to be a professional baseball player, regardless of where you are playing. Confident in your ability, your swing, your fastball, your changeup, your glove, your double-play pivot. Sometimes you have to be confident in things beyond your control, too.
“I played in the Frontier League, played in the Atlantic League, played in all over the country in college. So I’m used to long road trips,” Howard said before Thursday’s game. “This one, I think it’s just important for us to take it day by day and just focus on where we are. And at some point, I’m confident we’ll get back to Tucson.”
Top Photo: A crowd of 3,469 came to Estadio Fernando Valenzuela in Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico, for the Tucson Baseball Team’s home opener. The game was played in Hermosillo because the team’s visas to work in the United States are delayed. (Photo: Leif Skodnick/World Baseball Network)
