Houston Bound

[BlitzkriegBob]

Originally Posted by ronald

The last year I was in Houston, 2002, the tournament that somone mentioned was restricted to Latin players and was known as a Latino tournament. I would venture that it is still restricted but have not talked to anyone from there since 2003. About the only exception that was allowed then was if you married a latin women if you were non-latin by birth. Teams came from Mexico to play and there are two age brackets, one for younger guys and one for the 40 and over folks. The 40 and over folks may still have a small group of teams that play around 5-6 tournaments in the summer. There may even still be a league that plays on Thursdays. I played in that one in 2000. The point of contact is Albert Arrondo. He is listed in Houston's ASA as a point of contact for men's FP.

If you mean the Father's Day tournament, it was never a Latino only tournament in the six or seven years I played in it. Yes, most of the teams in it had mostly Latino players (the team that I played for usually had 2 or 3 non-Latinos), and yes there were teams that would come up from Mexico, but AFAIK there were never any race requirements, and knowing Mr. Mesa I find it hard to believe he would ever initiate race requirements.

One year we were playing a predominantly African-American team in the first or second round, and my first time up to bat there's a runner on base. I remember the third base coach yelling at me "Siéntalo, siéntalo!" Now, I was still a fairly young kid then, and for me Spanish has always been a distant second language, so I had to think for a split second before coming to the conclusion that he wanted me to sit on a fastball. So that's what I did, and the first pitch was indeed a fastball that I hit hard but lined out to the second baseman. I went back to the dugout and wasn't in there for 2 seconds before one of the other players informed me that the coach was telling me to bunt (set rather than sit)! Needless to say the third base coach stuck to our regular signals from that point on whenever I was batting.