With a sweep of the Tigres de Quintana Roo on the road in Cancun, the Diablos Rojos del Mexico are off to a 5-1 start in defense of their 2024 Liga Mexicana de Beisbol title.
The series, which is a renewal of the “Guerra Civil” (civil war) that began in 1955 when the Tigres were founded in Mexico City, remains a significant rivalry despite the Tigres leaving Mexico City in 2002 and then leaving the central Mexico city of Puebla for Cancun in 2007.
In Mexico City, the two teams shared Parque de Seguro Social from 1955 to 2000, when that ballpark was demolished to make way for a shopping mall. After sharing Foro Sol, an inadequate venue temporarily set up for baseball, the Tigres left town for Puebla.
Diablos Rojos manager Lorenzo Bundy told World Baseball Network how Parque de Seguro Social would be packed for the “Guerra Civil” series during his time with the Diablos in the 1980s, with half the 25,000-seat stadium wearing red and the other half wearing navy blue.
With the three-game sweep, the Tigres are off to a 1-5 start — not what the organization needed after a 25-64 record last year, which saw them finish last in the Zona Sur. Quintana Roo hasn’t finished above .500 since 2019, when they posted a 62-57 mark.
Not having found success on the field recently, the Tigres have been rumored to be on the move again. BeisbolPuro reported in December that the team had difficulty obtaining a new lease at Estadio Beto Avila, their home in Cancun, and the team, which is owned by the family of the late pitcher Fernando Valenzuela, is looking to move.
A report by PlanoDeportivo.com, a site covering Mexican sports, indicated that Fernando Valenzuela Jr. has met with officials in the city of San Luis Potosi a few weeks ago. The city of almost 900,000 has been without a team since 2006, when the franchise moved to Chihuahua for the 2007 season.
Emilio Bonifacio Injured – Emilio Bonifacio, who turned 40 on Wednesday, has been put on the 15-day injured list by the Toros de Tijuana.
Bonifacio signed with Tijuana over the summer, and is playing his first summer season since 2020, when he last appeared in Major League Baseball, playing three games for the Washington Nationals. He’s played for LIDOM’s Tigres del Licey each of the last seven winters and played in each of the last three Caribbean Series for the Dominican Republic, twice with Licey and in 2025 as a reinforcement for the Leones del Escogido.
So far, Bonifacio is hitless in five at-bats over two games with Tijuana, and left the Toros’ second game of the year after one at-bat.
Photo: Leonardo Reginatto bats for Quintana Roo in a 6-4 loss to the Diablos Rojos del Mexico on Wednesday. (Photo Courtesy of Diablos Rojos del Mexico)
