Mexican team finds home in Texas
Heated debate over border issues blurred in Laredo
LAREDO, Texas — The national anthems of the United States and Mexico were played over the stadium speakers as the flags of both countries fluttered in the hot summer wind. Fans chatted away in English and Spanish. Burgers and popcorn were as prevalent as carne asada tacos and apple slices covered in tamarind sauce.
It was time for the Tecolotes de los Dos Laredos, the Owls of the Two Laredos, one of the oldest teams in Mexican baseball, to take the field here at Uni-Trade Stadium on the Texas side of the border. Except this was not an away game. The border can be a blur here, a perspective sometimes not understood from afar in the heated discussions of the day about walls and migrants and international trade agreements. So this season, in a mix of symbolism and business savvy, the Tecolotes played half their home games away from their home in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, just across the Rio Grande.
It felt normal, even expected. Already, fans and players and team employees lived on one side of the border or the other, crossing back and forth using visas and special permits common in border towns. And a previous iteration of this Mexican baseball team once played regularly here.
But that was 14 years ago, and times have changed. The logistics of playing on both sides of the border have become dizzying, as crossing times grow because of heightened scrutiny of documents and vehicles. Nuevo Laredo, too, has grown violent in the drug
war, making the kinds of trips that used to be taken for granted less frequent and more tense.
One Tecolotes game scheduled to be played there this summer was moved here, to Laredo, Texas, after both teams’ players worried about a 90-minute shootout that had taken place there.
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.”
Cross-border dream
The cross-border 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, 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 U.S. Department of Transportation.
On average, 39,000 people a day cross the border here by foot, car and bus. About 95 percent of Laredo’s population of 260,000 is Hispanic.
“Growing up, it was like one community,” said Horacio De Leon, Laredo’s city manager, who was born and raised in Laredo to parents from Nuevo Laredo. “We go see a family member on one side and go to school here.”
It helped that a forerunner of today’s Tecolotes played somewhat regularly on both sides of the border from 1985 to 2004 and that both cities had an empty, available stadium; in Laredo, a now-defunct independent league team left the Uni-Trade ballpark last year. The Tecolotes struck a five-year deal to play there.
Of its 114-game regular-season schedule, the Tecolotes played 30 home games at UniTrade 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 last week.
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 Mansur wanted his team to play here.
Although local officials and residents said the violence in Nuevo Laredo had lessened recently, the State Department earlier this year placed five Mexican states, including Tamaulipas, where Nuevo Laredo is, on its do-not-travel list, on a par with countries such as Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq. Bringing baseball back, Rivas thought, could counter this.
“With the Tecolotes, people start talking about Nuevo Laredo and sports from here — positive things, not just negative things,” Rivas, the mayor, said. “We have a stereotype and stigma of violence and insecurity. And little by little — I mean, little by little — we’re reversing it. But Tamaulipas is still dangerous.”
Reminders of the danger of Nuevo Laredo are everywhere, and its reputation led some players to request trades off the team, while others refused to show up after being traded to the Tecolotes.
“As much as we explain that you’re going to live in Laredo and we’re going to pick you up and drop you off after the game, it has been a problem for us,” said the Tecolotes’ general manager, Grimaldo Martínez.
For security reasons, most of the Tecolotes’ players lived in Laredo, in an extendedstay hotel, during the season, which was possible because many are U.S.-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.”
Game that means more
Watching from the concourse at UniTrade Stadium, Cesar Infante, 38, said that he moved from Nuevo Laredo to Laredo at 15, learned English, went to school, became a U.S. citizen and found a job in information technology. Because of the insecurity, he returns sparingly, only to visit his mother.
“For those people that don’t go back to Nuevo Laredo, this team is a part of home,” he said. “My parents didn’t have the money to take me to Tecos games in Nuevo Laredo as a kid, but now I can bring my kids. For me, it’s very exciting. This team unites us. Families enjoying the same sport together on each side.”
Although tickets were cheaper in Nuevo Laredo, the average paid attendance in Laredo was nearly double, at over 4,000. Fans twirled noisemakers, but those, plus drums and megaphones, were more prevalent in Nuevo Laredo. The attractions in Laredo included postgame fireworks and a playground set up beyond the outfield.
An in-game 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 when leaving the city, did this to encourage attendance from Mexico.
Playing in two countries resonated deeply with outfielder Amaury Cazaña, 40. He escaped his native Cuba on a boat 13 years ago. He ended up in Miami, was drafted by the St. Louis Cardinals in 2006, but never reached the major leagues. He became a naturalized Mexican this year through his wife, who is Mexican.
“It’s hard to live when limits are put on you,” he said. “So when you have the opportunity to move freely across a border, you feel accomplished. It’s comforting knowing you can go from one country to the next. A lot of people wish they could do the same.”