It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.
The Tucson Baseball Team was supposed to play the 2025-26 season at Kino Veterans Memorial Stadium in Tucson, Arizona, bringing winter baseball to the continental United States for the first time.
Alas, it didn’t work out that way. Days before their season was to begin with a single game on the road against the Naranjeros de Hermosillo before a four-game homestand in Tucson against those same Naranjeros, the Baseball Team was forced to play on the road until the United States government approved visas for players and staff so the team could play home games in the U.S. What started out as a temporary situation ended up being permanent, at least for the 2025-26 season, as the visas for players and staff were never issued, and the team ended up playing the entire season on the road.
“It was a very difficult situation. A situation that wasn’t planned. I think it was a difficult situation for the team,” veteran catcher Alexis Wilson told World Baseball Network in Spanish during the 2026 Caribbean Series, where he was playing as a reinforcement for the Charros de Jalisco. “Obviously, we wanted to represent Tucson in the best way possible. We couldn’t be there because of things that weren’t in our hands. But, well, we were left with a playoff game. And, well, let’s hope everything works out so we can return to Tucson.”
They may not ever play a game in Tucson, however, as multiple reports in recent weeks indicate that team president Victor Cuevas and the Liga ARCO Mexicana del Pacifico is considering several cities to be the new home of the Baseball Team. Among the cities being considered are La Paz, in Baja California del Sur; Juarez, Chihuahua, across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas; and San Luis Rio Colorado, Baja California, located east of Mexicali along the U.S. border.
Juarez was reported to be under consideration by the LAMP by Todo Beisbol Chihuahua in mid-February, noting in Spanish in a Facebook post, “With a metropolitan population of more than 1.6 million inhabitants, Juarez constitutes one of the largest urban markets in northern Mexico, which guarantees a broad potential base of fans, ticket consumption, merchandising and media audience. This adds to its status as a binational metropolitan area with El Paso, Texas, which constitutes a joint region of more than two million inhabitants with a shared cultural identity and a strong baseball tradition, creating a cross-border sports market capable of generating income in pesos and dollars.”
A day later, though, Cruz Perez Cuellar, the mayor of Juarez, said he was focused on his duties as the head of the municipality, not getting a LAMP franchise for Juarez, which would seem to throw cold water on the idea of the Tucson Baseball Team calling Juarez home in 2025-26.
Another report from Mexico-based outlet Al Bat pointed to San Luis Rio Colorado and La Paz as possibilities, though both would be the smallest city in the lea.
Located a little more than an hour east of Mexicali along the border with the U.S., San Luis Rio Colorado has a 7,000-seat ballpark that is home to a team in Mexico’s Liga Norte de Mexico. Should the Baseball Team relocate to San Luis, it would at least partially provide some relief to the league’s travel budget, as teams could fly to Mexicali and then bus to San Luis, getting six road games out of a round trip by plane. A drawback to San Luis is its relatively small population, which numbers less than 200,000, making it similar in size to Navojoa, Sonora – the city the Mayos de Navojoa abandoned for Tucson following the 2024-25 season.
La Paz, located across the Gulf of California from the rest of the LAMP’s member cities, has a ballpark and has hosted LAMP preseason games several times in the past few years at the 4,200-seat Estadio Arturo C. Nahl, which is nearly 60 years old. The city has a population of around 250,000, and its location would likely raise travel costs for the other nine teams in the league, as the closest LAMP city accessible by ground travel is Mexicali — a short 16-hour bus ride away.
Photo: Kino Veterans Memorial Stadium in Tucson, Arizona, was to be the new home of the Mayos de Navojoa franchise for the 2025-26 season, but visa problems resulted in the team playing the entire season on the road. Now, the team’s owners and the Liga ARCO Mexicana del Pacifico are searching for a new home. (Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images)
