by Valentine Watson Roger

Though professional baseball has a smaller following than football in Mexico, thousands of fans storm “Eduardo Vasconcelos” (Oaxaca’s stadium) every home game. Large families often go the matches together as a night out, routing for their team and gorging on the requisite stadium snacks of pizza, nachos,beer, coke and popcorn (with chili sauce of course).

The Guerreros de Oaxaca, (nicknamed Los Belicos – the war-like ones) formed in 1996 when the national league expanded. Since then, they have won the title once (in 1998) and usually make it at least to the playoffs. want their  14 season to be a memorable one. Nicknamed El Tiburon (the shark),  Sport manager-Velasquez says that this year, nothing less than the title will do.

 “The Guerreros is a team with all of the elements needed to obtain our second championship” says Velasquez. “We are still young and over the last five  or six years we have shown that we are able to compete at the highest level and fight for the title!”
The Guerreros also have a new trainer this year, Ramon Esquer Navarro, who, after a -long career , has put his bat away in favor of taking charge of the Oaxacan team. “The Guerreros are one of the big teams in the Mexican league so it is vital we have a great season, for the fans and for ourselves. The pre-season games and training went very well and showed me enough to believe that this could be our year.
 
Tickets are normally priced between 25 and 70 pesos and matches are usually played every second week over a few days. Tickets are available on the day or for very important games a few days before at the stadium which is two minutes from the first class bus station. For more information on the team or upcoming games, check their website at: www.guerrerosdeoaxaca.com.