MEXICALI, Mexico – At the most recent height of the rivalry between the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox, during the 2003 American League Championship Series, Boston pitcher Pedro Martinez threw behind a Yankee outfielder’s head.
The outfielder, Karim Garcia, had come over to the Bronx midseason when the Yankees bought his contract from Cleveland, and proceeded to hit .305/.342/.457 with a .799 OPS down the stretch as the Yankees made it to the ALCS for the fifth consecutive year.
It was a sarcastic rhetorical question Martinez asked in response to a reporter’s query as to whether he threw at Karim Garcia – “Who is Karim Garcia?” could easily be translated to “Why would I throw at a nobody?”
But Karim Garcia was far from a nobody then, when he was a 26-year-old outfielder on a Yankees team that went on to the World Series that year, and today, he and longtime Tomateros de Culiacan executive Alvaro ley were inducted into the Caribbean Series Hall of Fame at a ceremony at Mercado Cine Curto in downtown Mexicali.
“For me, it is a honor, a complete honor to be here in Mexico and to be recognized and to be here with the people,” Garcia said following the ceremony, fighting back tears.
Following his MLB career, Garcia was well traveled in professional baseball, playing in Japan with the Orix Buffaloes, South Korea with the Hanwha Eagles, and in his native Mexico with five different teams in the Liga Mexicana de Beisbol and three different teams in the Liga ARCO Mexicana del Pacifico, making six Caribbean Series appearances for Mexico in 2007, 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013, winning the title with the Yaquis de Obregon in 2011 and 2013. His best performance came in the 2011 Series in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, where he batted .300/.323/.500 with two homers and three RBIs, helping Obregon to their second Caribbean Series title. Garcia was a member of both of the Yaquis’ Caribbean Series title teams.
A long-time executive with the LAMP’s Tomateros de Culiacan, Alvaro Ley served as the club’s President of the Board of Directors. During his tenure as president, the Tomateros won six Liga ARCO Mexicana del Pacífico championships.
Most notably, he also helped MLB negotiate the 2001 Winter League Agreement between MLB, the four winter leagues of the CBPC, and the Caribbean Series, and was part of the organizing committee for the 2001 Caribbean Series at the former stadium of the Tomateros de Culiacán, Estadio Ángel Flores in Culiacán, Sinaloa, Mexico.
“Baseball is a wonderful opportunity to make long and lasting friendships, of coexistence that remains in the memory, and is kept as a most perishable treasure,” Ley said in Spanish. “The affections that are felt and received throughout our history. For all of this, and more, I can only say thank you very much, thank you very much.”
He joined his brother, Juan Manuel Ley López, in the Caribbean Series Hall of Fame, where they are the first two brothers to be enshrined. Manuel was the director of the Confederacion de Beisbol Profesional del Caribe for over 50 years.
Photo: Karim Garcia accepts his Caribbean Series Hall of Fame jersey, ring, and plaque from Juan Francisco Puello Herrera, president of the CBPC. (Photo: Leif Skodnick/World Baseball Network)
