Venados - Obregon Game

We went to another Mazatlan Venados Baseball game on Friday night. Mazatalan had previously beat their rivals from Los Moches to move on to the current series against Obregon. It was a good game but I think that either Obregon has a better team or the Venados simply do not want to win that bad. I don't usually feel this way about sports but this just seems different for some reason.

We decided to treat ourselves to better seats in a private "Cabina" (Cabin) instead of being in the bleachers but that turned into a hassle as the people who rented the cabin for all of the regular season thought (wrongly) that they had a right to it for the Playoffs as well. When we showed up at our cabin it was already full of people who had a key but no tickets and they did not want to leave. My son went to fetch a Security Guard who did not seem at all anxious to kick them out as they were probably very important people in Mazatlan. We were not going anywhere either so the intruders finally got the message and left temporally but returned as soon as the Security guy was gone, crowding in and telling us that they "own" the cabina and we should not have been sold tickets to it. When we asked to see his tickets, he just kept waving around a key that may or may not have been for the Cabina.

By now the game was into the third inning and we had not been able to watch any of it. Brooks went to get Security again and tried to get him to ask everyone to either show their tickets or leave. The Security guy did not want to do that but instead offered a "compromise". Seeing how there were eight seats in the cabin and there were only six in our group, he was going to allow two of the other group to have the two empty seats even though they had no tickets. Two women with a young child and a baby immediately took over the end of our "Private" cabin with the blessings of Security. I counted that as four but Secutity counted it as two and he had the "Riot Stick". The result was that one or two of our group had to stand through the entire game and we missed seeing a good part of it because of all the hassle.

I found this incident very unsettling because it exhibited the worse possible stereotype of Mexican people, that is: pushy people, officials not doing their job and the suspicion of payoffs or "influence" taking place. This is a side of Mexico that we had not experienced to date but although I was disappointed, I am not going to let this isolated incident colour my very positive general impression of Mexico and it's people. The bad feeling I had probably negativly affected my overall impression of the game but I hope the Venados go on to win and to represent Mexico in the Caribbean World Series. Their fans deserve a win!

On edit: Sorry, once again I am unable to post photos. They are simply shots of the game and more important, the "Pacifico Girls", a dance team providing some "very talented" entertainment. (the best part of the game)!

Follow-Up: The Venados lost the next two games and are now out of the race.