Castilla Gives Mexican Fans Grand Opening

Baseball took a major league step toward becoming a truly North American game Sunday as San Diego Padres and Colorado Rockies played the first season opener outside the United States and Canada.

But the Padres did more than lose to the Rockies, 8-2. They also lost their claim to being Mexico’s favorite team as Rockies third baseman Vinny Castilla confirmed his status as Mexico’s reigning baseball superstar. Castilla went four for five and turned the crowd of 27,104 at Estadio Monterrey into committed Rockies fans.

Rocky Manager Jim Leyland generously described the crowd as, “Split--half for the Padres and half for the Rockies and all for Vinny Castilla.”

Padre right-hander Andy Ashby gave up six earned runs and lasted only one inning. That put the Padres into a hole they could never climb out of, especially against Rocky starter Darryl Kile’s wicked slow curves.

Rocky left fielder Dante Bichette also went four for five, including a solo home run, and drove in four runs. The Rockies collected 18 hits.

Nobody is talking seriously of a big league franchise any time soon in baseball-mad Monterrey, the industrial capital of northern Mexico located about 150 miles from the Texas border. But the boisterous, overflow crowd at Sunday’s game certainly boosted baseball in its struggle to challenge the overwhelming dominance of soccer in Mexico.

The Padres came here as veterans, having played the first regular-season games in Mexico in August 1996. Larry Lucchino, the Padres’ president and chief executive officer, began chasing “the ambitious goal of being the San Diego Padres of Mexico.”

“We want to be Mexico’s team,” Lucchino said. “Part of that comes from geography. We’re especially eager to develop in the border area around San Diego. But part of it comes from our disposition to become an active part of the internationalization of baseball.”

This time, though, the Padres’ pretensions of being home-town favorite ran into a formidable obstacle in the form of Castilla, who hails from Mexico’s poor southern state of Oaxaca. Castilla, who hit 40 home runs and drove in more than 100 runs in each of the last three seasons, understood the pressure.

“This is very important for Mexican baseball, for me and for all of baseball as it expands internationally,” Castilla said before the game. “I’m very excited to be part of this historic game, and I am very proud to play before my countrymen who have supported me throughout my career.”

Two hours before the 7 p.m. start, 50 cameras were pointed at Castilla as he did nothing more than stretch on the infield grass and then sit down in the dugout. Fans nearly crushed each other as they pressed for autographs from him along the first-base line. He then hit four of six batting practice pitches for home runs.

“They just have to put a major league team here in Monterrey. And we’ll support quality,” said Joaquin Leal, 38. “They should at least play one major league game a month here, and we’d fill the stadium.”

Leoncio Casanova, 63, traveled all night by bus from the Gulf Coast city of Tampico after his son got him a $40 ticket to see his first major league game. “This is a beautiful thing for me, this is something from another world,” he said, clutching a poster and program as souvenirs to show friends. “People are coming from all over Mexico to see this game.”

A fierce, hot wind blew straight in from the Sierra Madre mountains, which framed the 9-year-old stadium from beyond the center-field fence.

California Gov. Gray Davis was scheduled to join his Mexican counterpart, Fernando Canales of Monterrey’s Nuevo Leon state, in throwing out the first pitch. However, officials said Davis had canceled what would have been his second visit to Mexico since he took office.

Whereas baseball is the No. 1 sport in the Dominican Republic, Venezuela and several other Central and South American countries, “beisbol” has never dented soccer’s lead in Mexico.

The two major Mexican television networks, Televisa and Azteca, own several soccer teams and give the sport huge coverage. Baseball is not broadcast on national television. Fans have to catch the occasional game on ESPN2.

“When you bring major league baseball to Mexico like this, you wake up a lot of interest among the fans and the kids,” Castilla said. Standing aside his Mexican teammate, relief pitcher Roberto Ramirez, Castilla added: “A lot of kids look up to us and say, ‘we are Mexicans too and we can also be in the big leagues someday’ ”

Of the 750 major league players on opening-day rosters last year, about 23% were from Latin countries. But just 14 came from Mexico.

Jose Maiz, owner of the powerful Monterrey Sultanes team, said the worldwide coverage of Sunday’s season-opener makes it “the most historic event that has ever occurred in Mexican baseball.”

If baseball needs a young public, then Monterrey is doing the right things. The city has 53 Little Leagues, more than a third of the 150 in Mexico, Maiz noted. The Sultanes boosted attendance by 60% last year, drawing 10,000 to 12,000 a game, in part by admitting kids under 12 for free and giving discount passes to over-60 fans--many of whom bring their grandchildren.

A Monterrey team won the Little League World Series in 1997, matching a feat last achieved in Mexico’s baseball heyday in the 1950s.

Another factor boosting turnout, Maiz said, is the stadium’s new electronic scoreboard, bought last year from Atlanta’s Fulton-County Stadium.

Still, the young following doesn’t add up to the cash flow needed for a major league franchise. Maiz, who submitted a franchise bid in 1994, had to withdraw it after the peso crashed in a financial crisis later that year.

“Our economy still hasn’t returned to the numbers we had before that crisis,” Maiz said. “We’d have to look for investors among large Mexican corporations or American companies.”

Maiz said Monterrey also would need a new stadium seating 50,000--which would cost between $60 and $80 million. And seats now run from 80 cents to about $6 behind home plate. At those prices, even full houses all season wouldn’t produce enough revenue to cover one superstar’s salary. For the Padres-Rockies game, prices were $6 to $60--but the tickets sold out in a few hours.

Lucchino said the Padres’ Mexican “foreign policy” is “not a short-term project, it’s a long-term commitment.” Asked about the prospects for a big-league franchise here, he said, “a lot of people are looking at that possibility. I don’t think it’s imminent, but I do think it is inevitable.”

Before the game, Lucchino and his family attended Easter Mass at a neighborhood church, which he called “part of the cultural treat of coming to Mexico. Every time Major League Baseball comes down here, we narrow the distance between the two countries.”