¡Beisbol!

On a warm June night in 1969 Montreal, my sister, Dena, invited me to my first major league ball game at Jarry Park. The game pitted the upstart hometown Expos against the powerful Pittsburg Pirates, led by future Hall of Famers Willie Stargell, Roberto Clemente and Bill Mazerowski. For me, it was love at first pitch. From that night on, and until their demise in 2004, I followed Nos Amours religiously.

I no longer keep up with MLB as much anymore, but my love of the game has never diminished.

On late Saturday afternoon, Brenda and I made our way to Teodoro Mariscal Stadium to watch the Mazatlan Venados take on the Jalisco Charros in the second of a three game series. Yup, it’s late December and they’re still playing baseball here!

We arrived at the stadium at about 5:40, twenty minutes before game time and had time to check out what kind of snacks Mexicans eat at the old ball game. Hot dogs have been replaced with chunks of sausage smothered in a variety of sauces, a large cone of fries, smothered in more sauces, can be had for 95 pesos (about $7.00 CDN). The Mexicans seem to love everything smothered in sauces and,  of course with a squeeze or two of lime juice.  We watched a woman order what looked like a bag of taco chips. The bag was opened, poured into a big styrofoam cup, topped with several sauces,  covered with another styrofoam cup and shaken like a martini before being handed to the woman. Pizzas, tacos, peanuts, candy floss... everything can be ordered from the vendors roaming the stands if you're too lazy to go catch it from the stands. 

And of course, what would a ball game be without cerveza? There were several stands offering different brands of beer, from Michelob to the local Pacifico, but strangely, only one of them had customers, so many, in fact a line had formed. Like any good beer swilling sheep, I waited my turn in the queue and was rewarded with two bottles of Pacifico poured into a jumbo glass for the princely sum of 30 pesos ($2.10 CDN)! We don't know if this was a pre-game happy-hour special, but the same two beers in the stands during the game cost 60 pesos.

The stadium was originally built in 1962 and was. completely renovated in 2018 with an expanded capacity of 16,000. It is quite beautiful with comfortable seats and a natural turf playing field.

The Venados are part of the Pacific Mexixam League and, at the start of the game, were sitting in eighth place of a ten team division.
Their opponents were in second place.

There are only forty games in the season, which starts in mid-October and ends December 30.

On this night, the Venados' starting pitcher held the Charros to only two hits through five innings and was replaced with one out in the sixth when his control started fo fade and, I believe, he had reached his pitch count. The home team came out swinging, scoring two runs in the first, one run in each of the fifth and sixth and a final nail in the coffin in the bottom of the eighth. The Charros only managed to score once each in the sixth and seventh as the Venados used five relief pitchers to wrap up the win. Final score 5 -2.

The caliber of the baseball was very high and it brought back fond memories of a night in 1969 spent with my sister at Jarry Park.Read more