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From 1985 to 1994 there existed a significant but unheralded
experiment in professional baseball. For ten seasons, the Tecolotes
de los Dos Laredos (The Owls of the Two Laredos) were the only team
in professional sports to represent two nations. Playing in the
storied Mexican League (an AAA affiliate of major league baseball),
the "Tecos" had home parks on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border,
in Laredo, Texas and in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas. In true border
fashion, Mexican and American national anthems were played before
each game, and the Tecos were operated by interests in both cities.
"Baseball on the Border" is the story of the rise and unexpected
demise of this surprising team.
For Alan Klein, a cultural anthropologist specializing in sport,
"the border" is almost a nation of its own. Having formed teams of
players from both sides of the Rio Grande for almost a century,
organizers and followers of the "Border Birds" often join forces
but just as frequently squabble with each other in a chronic border
tension. Throughout the book, Klein includes firsthand observations
of the team and descriptions of its players. Readers will meet Dan
Firova, the Tecos' beleaguered manager, a border-region native who
nevertheless finds himself a target of the Mexican media. The "Ugly
American," Willie Waite, is a young pitcher whose stunning success
does nothing to diminish the disdain he has for his Mexican
teammates. Ernesto Barraza, "The Trickster," once threw a no-hitter
on only seventy-three pitches (on April Fool's Day, appropriately
enough), but occasionally shows up at the park missing part of his
uniform. And then there is Andres Mora, an aged slugger who,
despite three seasons in major league baseball and a life of
personal excesses, came within a few home runs of setting the
all-time Mexican League record.
This is just part of the roster of the Tecos and only a fraction
of the lineup of "Baseball on the Border." Anyone with an interest
in baseball will be enlightened and entertained by this informative
book.
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