An aerial view of the new baseball stadium in the Santa Teresita neighborhood of Tepic, Nayarit, Mexico. (Google Earth)
The new baseball stadium, which is being built in Tepic, Nayarit, Mexico, will host group play games in the 2024 WBSC Premier12.
But the Fernandez brothers, who own the Café Bros Company, a coffee and bagel business with two locations in Zapopan, Jalisco, have their eyes on the Santa Teresita stadium as a potential site for an expansion team in the Liga ARCO Mexicana del Pacifico, according to a report from BeisbolPuro.
Ramon and Vincente Fernandez have put together a barnstorming team that has been playing exhibition games across Mexico. Their team, Café Bros Baseball, is set to play in the Liga Invernal de Nayarit this winter.
“Since it was announced that we would play in the Nayarit Winter League, we have received many invitations from municipalities to play there as locals, but our idea is to play in Tepic. If we don’t manage to do so, then we will think about the best venue for us, but there is no doubt that we will have a very competitive team,” Vicente Fernandez told BeisbolPuro.
Currently, the Liga ARCO Mexicana del Pacifico has nine teams stretching from Mexicali, Baja California del Norte, down to Guadalajara, Jalisco, on Mexico’s Pacific coast. The 10th franchise is located in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon.
A November report in La Jornada, a Mexican daily, indicated that the ballpark was 85% complete and was built to host a LAMP club.
“We are still in talks, and it is very likely that next season, next year, the representative team of Nayarit will be playing in the Mexican Pacific League,” Governor Miguel Ángel Navarro Quintero of the state of Nayarit told La Jornada. The governor added that there were two groups interested in putting a LAMP team in Tepic.
According to BeisbolPuro, Ramon and Vincente Fernandez met with LAMP president Carlos Manrique in May to discuss a potential expansion franchise that would play in the new Santa Teresita Stadium.
“The welcome was very good, very cordial. Mr. Manrique told us that we would be taken into account if the league was to be expanded and we are awaiting a response in the near future,” Vicente Fernández told BeisbolPuro.
