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By Jonathan Clark This story was originally published in the Mexico edition of The Miami Herald on Sept. 7, 2005. During the regular season, Puebla and Saltillo slugged their way to first and second place in team batting average, on-base percentage and runs scored. They were also first and fourth in the 16-team league, respectively, in home runs and slugging percentage. When it comes to strategy, the Tigres and Saraperos are all about overwhelming offense. But in their labor practices, the two teams follow quite different approaches. The Tigres, by design, field a roster comprised entirely of Mexican players. That's part of a policy of "Mexicanization" that the organization implemented last winter to promote the development of domestic talent during the Tigres' 50th anniversary campaign. The Saraperos, on the other hand, have stocked their team with the maximum number of foreign players allowed by the league - six - in their effort to bring Saltillo its first Mexican Baseball League title in 35 years of existence. The team features three Americans, two Dominicans and one Cuban national in addition to an American manager. Talk of this Mexican-versus-foreigner rivalry has dominated the run-up to the series and has been one of the hottest issues in Mexican professional sports during the past year. The debate illustrates the deep ambivalence still felt here over the presence of foreigner workers and firms in Mexico - a nation that only began to open its economy to foreign competition when it joined the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs, or GATT, in 1986. The argument that Mexico should protect its athletes echoes similar arguments about protecting Mexican manufacturing jobs against competition from Asia, or shielding the nation's culinary tradition from the likes of McDonald's and Burger King. Last winter, at approximately the same time that the Tigres and Mexico City Diablos Rojos (the two teams are considered the Yankees and Dodgers of Mexican baseball) were announcing their plans for Mexicanization, the nation's first division soccer league decided it would allow teams to increase their allotment of foreign players from four to five for the upcoming 2005 season. However, lawmakers in the leftist-dominated Mexico City Assembly denounced the move and threatened an emergency change to the local Public Events Law to prohibit soccer clubs with five foreigners from playing in the capital. "We must protect our national soccer players and not allow that other interests put Mexican players at a disadvantage," city lawmaker Alberto Trejo said at the time. The league eventually backed away from the change. For its part, the Mexican Baseball League has long relied on foreign players to bolster its ranks. The league began in the 1920s by recruiting top stars from the U.S. Negro Leagues, including Hall of Famers Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson. During the 1940s, the league competed directly with U.S. Major League Baseball for talent, at one point signing away 18 major leaguers for the 1946 season. Since then, players from the United States, Cuba, Venezuela and the Dominican Republic have featured prominently among the league's top stars, spawning some resentment from their locally born teammates. "I think that a lot of times, the fans look at the foreign players as the stars as the Mexican players as their support," Tigres pitcher Pablo Ortega said. "But what we have shown is that we have the same capability to do the job as a foreigner, and we feel really good about that." The team's success so far in 2005 - the Tigres finished the regular season with the league's best record before advancing to the finals - has Ortega talking about precedents. "This is something new that we tried this year, but with the success we've had, it may become a common practice in the league," he said. In fact, at a weekend press conference, Saraperos team owner Juan Manuel Ley suggested that the Saltillo team might also try to "Mexicanize" its roster. And players say that they are already hearing rumors that the Mexican Baseball League will halve the league-wide cap on foreigners from six to three for the 2006 season. Saraperos manager Derek Bryant, a Kentucky native with 27 years of experience playing and managing in Mexico, said that such talk adds to the pressure to win. "If the Tigres were to win the championship, it would definitely send a message to other organizations that they may be able to do with less foreign ballplayers," Bryant said. "So in that sense, it makes it important for us to get this victory in order to protect the foreign players' jobs." Bryant said that economic factors may make an all-Mexican roster especially appealing to Mexican clubs, since foreign stars often command large contracts. Fans of the Saraperos, however, suggest that for them, winning supercedes any economic or nationalistic interests. "I respect what the Tigres have done with a roster of all Mexicans," said Jorge Castro, a Saltillo fan. "But they have the resources to do that kind of thing - they have been around for many years and have developed a strong system to develop Mexican players. But for us in Saltillo, our imported players have allowed our team to compete at a higher level. So if going to all Mexicans would make the Saraperos less competitive, I'm against it." Note: On Sept. 9, 2005, the Tigres defeated the Saraperos 4-3 to win the Mexican Baseball League championship 4 games to 2. That winter, the league announced that it was reducing its cap on foreign players from six to four for the 2006 season. |