Two Nations, One Team: A Border Erased by Baseball
played there this summer was moved to Texas after both teams’ players worried about a 90-minute shootout that had taken place on the Mexican side.
Still, both cities found the arrangement for the Tecolotes to play in Texas mutually beneficial and something that came to mean much more, a reminder of simpler times and the bonds, however tested, that remain strong.
“Though politics and diplomacy are tense and difficult elsewhere, we have to do what we can here,” Mayor Enrique Rivas of Nuevo Laredo said. “We live in a reality here different than Washington or Mexico City thinks. Baseball came here to unite what politics perhaps hasn’t been able to do.”
The team, believed to be the only one in baseball playing home games in two countries, is the brainchild of José Antonio Mansur, a Mexican businessman who owns the Tecolotes, part of the Liga Mexicana de Béisbol, or the Mexican Baseball League.
Over the winter, Mr. Mansur moved the team to Nuevo Laredo from Veracruz and pushed to play games in Laredo. He brought back the name Owls of the Two Laredos, which a previous version of the team used years ago. It was a marketing move rooted in the obvious: These two cities are inextricably intertwined.
More than $208 billion in trade passed through Laredo last year, making it one of the busiest land ports in the United States, according to the United States Department of Transportation. On average, 39,000 people a day cross the border by foot, car and bus. About 95 percent of Laredo’s population of 260,000 is Hispanic.
The Tecolotes came up with a new logo that represented the team’s binational nature: Number 2 wrapped around an L, with elements from both countries’ flags. The Tecolotes’ slogan is “Dos Naciones, Un Equipo,” or “Two Nations, One Team.”
“We’re sitting in a territory that once was Mexican,” Mr. Mansur, 72, said in his office before a game in Laredo. “And all the people that lived here haven’t lost their roots.”
A forerunner of today’s Tecolotes played on both sides of the border from 1985 to 2004 and both cities had an empty, available stadium; in Laredo, a now- defunct independent league team left the Uni-Trade ballpark last year.
Of its 114- game regular- season schedule, the Tecolotes played 30 home games at Uni-Trade Stadium and 27 on the Mexican side, at Estadio Nuevo Laredo — plus playoff games hosted on both sides of the border, before the Tecolotes lost on September 16.
Attendance at the Laredo games was higher than in Nuevo Laredo; the violence and distant location of the stadium in Nuevo Laredo made it harder to attract fans, team officials said. There is also more disposable income and sponsorship money in Texas — a key reason Mr. Mansur wanted his team to play here.
Although local officials and residents said the violence in Nuevo Laredo had lessened, the United States State Department earlier this year placed five Mexican states, including Tamaulipas, where Nuevo Laredo is, on its do-not-travel list, on par with countries such as Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq.
Players and officials said the team has not been a target of gangs. But, for security reasons, most of the Tecolotes’ players lived in Laredo, in an extended- stay hotel, during the season, which was possible because many are United States-born players of Mexican descent.
Before games in Laredo, the players who lived in Nuevo Laredo met at the border crossing bridge downtown, walked into the United States, then hopped in a team van to the stadium. After games in Nuevo Laredo, team vans dropped players off at the crossing. It was much faster by foot.
“We cross so much that we recognize nine of every 10 border agents,” said Kelvis Flete, the Tecolotes’ assistant general manager. “They even used to ask us if we won that night.”
Although tickets were cheaper in Nuevo Laredo, the average paid attendance in Laredo was nearly double, at over 4,000. An announcement reminded fans visiting from Mexico that their $ 3.50 border crossing fee by car would be waived with a Tecolotes ticket stub. Laredo, which collects the border toll, did this to encourage attendance from Mexico.
Many players understood what they meant to the fans on both sides. Their travel inconveniences were trivial compared with those of the many people who crossed the border daily with much less.
“Issues between the countries are among the politicians and leaders. We’re just the athletes who play on both sides, but we’re showing people can enjoy life and live in peace,” said infielder Alejandro Rivero, 30.
Mayor Pete Saenz, 66, of Laredo, Texas, and Mr. Rivas, 46, his counterpart, enjoy a close bond; they lobbied together in Washington last year on regional issues and invited each other to the Tecolotes’ two home openers this year.
“This is the way we operate here,” Mr. Saenz, a Democrat, said. “We understand that there are two countries, but we’re neighborly and helpful, and it’s very much part of our culture. Even though I’m very much a U. S. citizen and patriotic as well — and they are very patriotic as Mexicans — that doesn’t divide us.”