Aguilas de Mexicali to Compete in 2018 Mexican Baseball Fiesta

1st OF A 4 PART SERIES ON THE TEAMS COMPETING

Four teams from the Liga Mexicana del Pacifico (LMP) will be competing at this year's Mexican Baseball Fiesta in Tucson, along with the Arizona Wildcats baseball team and the young stars of the Kansas City Royals. This series of articles will focus on the teams from the LMP

First up are the Aguilas de Mexicali. With a population of 689,000, Mexicali, the capital city of Baja California, is located about 60 miles west of Yuma, Az and just a few miles south of Calexico, CA. The city has been a hotbed of baseball tradition since it's founding in 1976. The team has won the LMP Championship four times and competed in the Serie del Caribe each time, winning it all in 1986.

Interestingly, the team is owned by the State Government of Baja California. Although most Mexican teams are supported by the local governments, The Aguilas are owned lock, stock and barrel by the state government. The Aguilas play is Estadio B'Air, a 17,000 seat venue in downtown Mexicali. For the 2017-18 winter season, the Aguilas drew an average of 13,242 fans per night. Compare that to the Round Rock Express of the Pacific Coast League who had 8,809 fans show up each night.

There have been quite a few future major leaguers play winter ball in Mexico. Some of those who played for the Aguilas were, Mike Piazza, John Kruk, Fernando Valenzuela, Sergio Romo and Jeff Samardzija.

Luis Sojo, who played in the MLB for several seasons, will pilot the Aguilas for the 2018-19 season.

This year's team will have some "extranjeros", or foreigners, playing for them.

Retherford at the plate

CJ Retherford, born in Homestead, FL, attended Arizona State and has played for the Aguilas for 3 seasons, hitting 31 home runs, driving in 112 runs while batting .282.

Yuniesky Betancourt hit .261, accumulated 80 home runs and drove in 477 while playing for 4 teams in the MLB.

39 year old Chris Roberson appeared in 157 games for the Philadelphia Phillies and has played for 13 seasons in the Mexican leagues. Roberson has hit 146 home runs and driven in 668 runs while compiling a .280 average.

Roberson safe at home on a close play

The Aguilas are an explosive offensive team and should be fun to watch at this year's Mexican Baseball Fiesta.

You can buy tickets at www.mexicanbaseballfiesta.com

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