GREELEY, Colo. — Baseball’s place as "America's favorite pastime" may be fading, but in northern Colorado, the deep history of the sport in Hispanic communities means those fond memories live on.
Starting more than 100 years ago, Mexican American farmworkers came north to Colorado from across the southwest to tend crops like sugar beets, potatoes and cherries. Eventually, employers like the Great Western Sugar Company gave their workers materials and land to build neighborhoods known as colonias.
They worked hard in the fields all week, and found a weekend outlet in athletics.
“Baseball, to the Mexican people, was their Sunday afternoon delight,” said Louie Suniga, who grew up around the sport.
At first, they played on makeshift baseball diamonds – old beet fields cleaned of weeds. You’d hit a homerun if the ball went over the ditch.
“That was pretty rough playing there because if you chase the ball out there, it'd be full of thorns by time you got it,” Suniga said.
When it came to gear, Suniga said “you got what you got.” He described gloves without padding and catcher’s helmets with just a couple of thin wires protecting your face.
“A lot of teams had a struggle to get enough to buy uniforms, baseballs,” he said.
Suniga said discrimination off the baseball field was common growing up. He remembers kids swinging at him while he walked down the street. Outside of the grocery store, he’d “see the sign that says, ‘No Mexicans, dogs or Indians.”
But with each town creating its own baseball team, with almost all Hispanic players, friendly rivalries gave them a way to blow off steam.
“It was so competitive,” Suniga said. “Everybody was trying to dig into somebody, especially if they were losing.”
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Still, baseball was a unifier. Suniga remembers cars lining the streets and families gathering for hours to watch the games.
“You can’t believe the support these people had,” he said.
The players, with their raw talent and love for the game, helped organize the teams into a league recognized as semi-pro.
Suniga’s father, Lee “Trigger” Suniga, was one of those leaders.
“My dad was a heck of a ballplayer,” Suniga said. He was the president of the Rocky Mountain Baseball League and managed the Fort Collins Legionnaires team, which he also played on.
Suniga Street in Fort Collins is named for his legacy.
“I thought he was one of the best outfielders I’d ever seen,” Suniga said. “He was the backbone of Fort Collins, as far as baseball.”
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“Trigger” even took the first Hispanic baseball team to play against prisoners at Canon City State Penitentiary.
“I'll tell you what, they had some talent there,” Suniga said.
In the heyday from the 1920s to 1960s, “baseball helped out a lot of these people in these towns,” he said. And most of all, “it was a lot of fun.”
Today, some of these Hispanic teams have been revamped, like the Greeley Grays who are now a collegiate team.
At the Greeley History Museum, a traveling exhibit brought stories and artifacts from the sport to town. Many of the photographs, uniforms, bats and balls – along with oral histories – were collected by Gabe and Jody Lopez, who wrote the book From Sugar to Diamonds: Spanish/Mexican Baseball 1925-1969. The Smithsonian is taking the exhibit, called ¡Pleibol! In the Barrios and the Big Leagues, across the country.
“Looking at the trophies, looking at the old uniforms, this is just amazing,” said Gilbert Salazar who stopped by with family members visiting from California.
“I was the batboy there,” he said. “I remember my dad coaching my uncles.” Now, he’s a coach himself for a local team.
“They have leagues now, the Mexicano leagues that are around here,” he said. “They got some amazing players nowadays too.”
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