The Weekend Intelligence: Baseball at the border

Jason Palmer
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Jason Palmer
The economist.

Take me up to the. Ball for a lot of you, this song is going to conjure up a scene with great clarity. I need some peanuts and cracker Jack. I don't care for those of you who have not had the joy of peanuts and cracker Jack, let me just tell you that baseball is central to the american self conception. Other sports are more popular, like american football, but baseball is the one called America's pastime, the one that feels more elemental somehow.

Jason Palmer
Also, crackerjack is caramel coated popcorn. It's nice now. Lots of other countries love baseball, like Japan, South Korea, lots of caribbean nations. And, of course, America's neighbor to the South, a neighbor with whom relations have been strained recently. To both put it lightly, they're sending.

Cuitlawak Rodriguez
Prisoners, murderers, drug dealers, mental patients, and terrorists, the worst they have in every. Country all over the world. This isn't just in South America. The border will be a deciding factor in the american election this year. It's constantly in the spotlight, the crack through which so many Americans only see illegal migrants and drugs and violence spilling in.

Jason Palmer
But you know what else is coming and going all the time, with no trouble at all, a mexican baseball team.

I'm Jason Palmer, and this is the weekend intelligence. My colleagues Aaron Braun and Sara Burke come at the border from two perspectives, kind of literally. Aaron is our west coast correspondent and Sarah is our bureau chief for Mexico. They report all the time about the tensions that come into such sharp focus at that imaginary line and the societal effects that stretch far from it. But consider Laredo, in the american state of Texas, and Nuevo Laredo, in the mexican state of Tamaulipas, one urban region really split by an international border.

There, Aaron and Sarah found a surprising story of unity and a nostalgia for a time when the border brought people together more than it drove them apart.

Aaron Braun
As soon as I enter Unitrade Stadium in Laredo, Texas. I feel at home. I'm pretty happy. This is, like, the ideal night for baseball, honestly. It's still early enough in the season that, like, the nights are cool.

It's a little breezy. You've got a hot dog. What else could you want? A victory, probably. I'm a big baseball fan.

I grew up watching the Chicago Cubs play at Wrigley Field, which means I'm used to opening days in April where it's 40 degrees fahrenheit. Occasionally it even snows. If you've ever been to a minor league baseball game in the US, the stadium looks a lot like that. And tonight it's packed. There are so many people here that it took me 45 minutes to buy a hot dog.

They just hit a two run homer. So fans were on their feet. They were super loud. And the tickos are back in the game. Now it's only three to two.

They're down only one. I'm waiting in line for a hot dog. So I missed the home run, which is sad. It's the saddest thing. This crowd is way more rambunctious than your standard Cubs game because the pace of baseball is pretty slow.

Major league games are perfect for catching up with friends and lounging around. But in Laredo, things are rowdier. Oh, another foul ball into the stands. It's right after the 7th inning stretch, and the Teicos are still behind despite that home run. But suddenly they start to turn things around.

Oh, he hit it. Center field. They're gonna score two. Kenny scores, and they go on to win. They win on opening night, and it's the perfect way to start the season.

Aaron Braun
The Tecolotes de los dos Laredos are a baseball team worth following in their own right. They think they've got what it takes to win the Mexican League championship this year, which they havent done since 1989. But I havent come to Laredo to talk about baseball, not really. Los Tecos are the only pro baseball team in the world that plays home games in two countries.

Eduardo Luna
I feel its a privilege. Were the only ones in the world that have something like this that get to play in two countries. And its wonderful because it represents the two cities, the two fan bases, the mexican side and the Laredo, Texas side. You have to make sure that you are making both of them happy when you're playing. It sounds nice, right?

A vision of harmony on the border that Americans in particular are not used to hearing. And that's a big part of the reason why Aaron and I wanted to come here to Laredo and Nuevo Laredo. We all hear so much about the border, especially in election year, for both the US and Mexico. And we wanted to find out how people who live here experience it every day and how that's changed since we all became so fixated on it. And it has changed.

Aaron Braun
The connection between Los dos Laredos over the last two decades has become strained by drug trafficking and gang violence, by the migration crisis and by Donald Trump. But Los Tekos keep growing in spite of all of this. So we've come here to tell a story of the fronteriso way of life, of what it's like to belong to the lands on the border. It's a story about unity that's fraying around the edges. Are Los tecos only a gesture to a more unified past?

Or could they be a glimpse of a frontariso future?

Cuitlawak Rodriguez
So my father would pick me up from school after, you know, and then it would. We would drive straight here. So I would spend my whole, you know, I would come here, go to the locker room, change into my uniform, and I would just hang out and play with the, you know, play on the field or with the players. And, you know, and during the game, I would be in the dugout with the team, you know, and sometimes I would run out here. It's a warm evening a couple of weeks after opening day when I come to Parque la Junta, the Tecos Stadium in Nuevo Olaredo.

Unlike Arian, I'm not a baseball fan, or not of baseball as a game, but I love it as an experience. I've been in Mexico City, where I live, and also in Japan, where I used to, and even in Cuba. Tonight I've come here to meet the team's general manager, Cuitlawak Rodriguez. The modest stadium is slap bang in the center of Nuevo Laredo. It's a landmark for everyone here, but no more than for him, you know.

Cuitlawak Rodriguez
Right there, where we have the portable store that used to be a stand, popcorn and fruit stand that my grandmother used to run. Cuitlawak grew up in the stadium, playing around and even performing for the crowd, a bit like a mascot. The first baseman back then, it was Andres Mora. He wouldn't just toss me the ball back, he would throw it up as high as he could. So then I would be, you know, trying to catch a fly ball, and then the crowd would see it, and then everybody would start like, whoa.

And then I would catch it. People would clap. So I was a little bit of a show in between innings here. How old were you then? I was between six and nine years old, I guess I did that whole show.

Cuitlawak's father, Chito, is a legend in Mexico's baseball world. He used to manage the tecos. That's short for the Tecolotes, which means owls, because they were one of the first teams to play at night. They won the league championship. Under his leadership, the mexican league used to find and develop young mexican talent and connect those players to teams in the United States.

That big brother that looms so large in Mexico's history and presence, that's what Cuitlawak's father was so good at doing. That's my father right there. That plaque right there. The first one in the bottom row. The first one.

You look alike. You can tell it's your dad. I mean, like, you're younger. I hope so.

Aaron Braun
The Tecos were formed in 1940 in Nuevo Laredo. From 1947 until 2003, they played in Parque la Junta, but that team was transferred to Tijuana in the two thousands. The tacos spent a few years here and there in the border cities, and in 2017, they came back for good. That's when Char Damansor, the current owner, moved a team he owned in Veracruz to Los dos Laredos. It's really unique, right, to have the only team in the world that has two hometowns in two different countries and then the opportunity to be able to make more business.

Char Damansor
You have two stadiums to run out. You have not two different fans, but two fan bases, after all. One in Laredo, one in Novo Laredo. We are sitting in Chada's office at Unitrade Stadium in Laredo. Chada is energetic.

Aaron Braun
He's smiling the entire time we're talking, and he's really proud of what he's built. When he moved the Teicos back to Laredo and the team had a skeleton staff, he drove the team bus himself. And Chada's family is a baseball dynasty. So for, like, probably three or four years, we were running four teams out of the 16. My dad, my brother, and my twin brother and me, and then my dad's brother, my uncle.

Char Damansor
He was still running the Diablos. Chada has the energy of a salesman, and his product is this binational baseball team. He makes it all sound so easy. But I keep thinking about the logistical challenges of playing on the border. Do you worry at all about increased border security and how that might make things harder?

Not at all, because, after all, we are in compliance with all the requirements that has been needed. And for the cities? For both cities and for both countries. Artecos is a good example of how things can work if you do it right. The team's success, he tells me, depends on playing in both cities.

It is the city that makes a difference for the people to attend to a stadium. What do you mean by that, the city that makes the difference? Well, if you have a team in Monterrey or Mexico City. Oh, because they're so much bigger. You mean Tijuana has 5 million people living there.

We have here, I don't know, probably 300,000. Yeah. And Monterrey has 5 million and Mexico City, 20 million. So it helps to have the two. It helps a lot.

It helps a lot. And that's probably one of the best things that it helps with the fans. If we were only in one of these cities, I didn't think we'll be any successful at all.

Andrew Lawson Carranco
Now we're in San Agustin Plaza. This is the first place that Laredo was established. So if you look around here, this is a pretty traditional mexican plaza. Andrew Lawson Carranco tells me that Spaniards founded Laredo in 1755 on the northern bank of the Rio Grande. You have the church, you would have administration, and you'd have shops around here.

And the old days, there would have been a convent right there, too. So San Agustin Plaza is really the heart and soul of what Laredo is. It feels like a little bit like Mexico here, and, of course, it was a Spanish Plaza. Andrew's a Laredo native. He's a real estate developer and an amateur historian.

Aaron Braun
He's also quite the character. We're the same age, 31, but he wears a bowtie and a hat every day. Today, it's pushing 90 degrees, so he's got on a palm straw hat to keep away that south Texas son. And a pocket square is tucked neatly in his jacket. Throughout its history, Laredo has been governed by seemingly everyone.

About 60 years after the Spaniards established Laredo, Mexico won its independence. So Laredo became part of Mexico. At the time, Mexico included almost all of the southwestern United States, including California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. For about a decade, beginning in 1836, Texas briefly governed itself, but its borders were different. The Republic of Texas ended north of Laredo.

The southern part of modern day Texas, where Laredo is now, was still part of Mexico's Tamalipa state. In the 1830s, a new president was elected in Mexico. He tried to unify and centralize the country. This angered northerners, so they launched their own independence movement. And in 1840, Tamalipas, along with two other northern states seceded.

They called their new country the Republic of the Rio Grande. Its capital was Laredo. No one ever really wanted us. The Mexicans dont want us because were Americans, and the Americans dont want us because were Mexican. So we're the republic of the Rio Grande for that reason.

How long did the republic last? Eleven months. And then the president defected and became a colonel on the mexican army. And the vice president was beheaded, and his head was showcased around the Rio Grande and the states that rebelled, which were Nuevo Leon, Coila, and Tamalipas. In the 1840s, the United States and Mexico went to war.

The fighting ended with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The United States claimed the southwest and drew a new southern border, the Rio Grande. And just like that, Laredoans became Americans, and more specifically, they became Texans. Understandably, not everyone was happy about that. Some Laredo families decided they'd rather move south than live in the United States.

So they crossed the river and settled on what was at that point mostly ranchlands. Some families even exhumed the bones of their relatives so they could rest in Mexico. And Nuevo Laredo was born.

Aaron Braun
Okay, I'm feeding a dollar bill into one of the change machines that's gonna give me my $1 token that I need to pay to cross to the mexican side of the border. Great.

They're working on the border. Maybe they're expanding it. All right, I'm gonna wait. Now, I just went through the turnstile. I'm right near the entrance to the bridge, and so I might text the team and tell them where we're at.

Because the Tekos have two home stadia, one on each side of the border, they alternate between them, and that means that the morning of every game, a handful of players are crossing the bridge, either from Mexico to the US or vice versa. Most players walk across because the queue for cars can take hours.

Okay, I've just paid to cross the bridge or to come in to where the bridge is. And now I'm looking for Eduardo. Okay, I see him. He's approaching. Hola, quita.

Muy vien. Gracias. There are three main bridges that connect Laredo and Nuevo Laredo and one more about 40 minutes away. One is just for trade that the trucks take. One is for cars, and one is for both cars and trucks.

Aaron Braun
And then there's this one that I'm on for pedestrians.

We're walking right over the river right now. Are you so used to this that you are just like, oh, another day, another border crossing? Yeah. Like I said, this is one of the high stakes.

Today I'm crossing with Josh Rodriguez from Houston. Having the option to play ball in the mexican league but still live in Texas is a huge benefit for him. He likes the comfort, the security, the familiarity of living in the United States. He's a veteran on the team and really at ease walking across the border. The team sends a van to pick up Josh and his teammates on the mexican side of the border.

The entire process, from walking across the river to getting into the van, only takes about ten minutes.

Cuitlawak Rodriguez
Anymore? Anymore.

Char Damansor
Condo, Fuela Semana Pasada.

I meet one of the team's backup catchers, Eduardo Luna, on the Nuevo Larredo side of the bridge. He's from Monterey, Mexico, which is about 3 hours away in a neighbouring state. Eduardo's really smiley and friendly. He's open and very confident for someone so young. He's just 20 years old, and he started playing for the Tecos when he was just 16 years old.

Less than half of the team lives in Nuevo Laredo at this point. They are mostly Mexicans like him, or players from other spanish speaking countries. They live there because Mexico is cheaper or it feels more like home, or they do not have visas to live in the United States. Security is tighter on the american side. There are agents stood halfway across the bridge before we've even reached passport control.

Sometimes those agents simply wave you through, and other times they stop you. Can I see your Passport, please? Yeah, yeah. We got through quickly. But there are other days where it can take an hour, hour and a half to get through.

Even on a good day like today, crossing is unpredictable and cumbersome. You get dropped off or park on one side and then have a car or taxi pick you up on the other. Passport control may have a line. You may get your bag searched by customs. Crossing by car.

One evening, as we did, was a whole other ballgame. Many more questions. These communities never feel more divided than when you're in line waiting to cross the border. But it wasn't always this way.

Hi. It's nice to meet you. I've heard a lot about you. Thank you. Nice to meet you as well.

If you talk to people who grew up in Laredo and Nuevo Laredo, even up through maybe the early 1990s, they describe the border as something that they've always crossed and easily, almost as if it weren't a border. I remember we used to come from school trips and you would just say, us citizen at the border. And that was it. And sometimes they would ask you for. We used to have, like, this little birth certificate, a little version of our birth certificate where it would say that you were born in the United States.

This is Andrea Odonez. She's the manager of the Republic of the Rio Grande museum, which is in Laredo. She was born there, but she grew up in Nuevo Laredo. A lot is that on Sundays we would go to the palaces to just walk around, and they had little stands where they would sell newspapers, comic books, magazines, and all of that. Andrea moved back to Laredo in the early two thousands when she was a teenager.

She has the kind of energy you'd get from a teacher or a librarian. She's warm, friendly, chatty, and super passionate about telling other people about Loredo's history. Her uncle was actually a co owner of the Tekos for a while. I rarely remember the games. I'm not big on sports.

Andrea Odonez
What I remember the most is after leaving the game, we would, you know, there were, like, the street vendors, and we would eat, you know, tacos, or we would get, like, raspados. When the Tecos first started playing in Laredo back in the 1980s, they crossed easily, too. Over the phone, Cuitlawack, the Tecos manager who spent his childhood at matches in Pkela junta, told me that the team used to simply bus players across. Back then, for the team to cross, the players didn't really need visas. What we would do is present a document to customs of who was on the bus.

Cuitlawak Rodriguez
Customs would get on the bus and verify that all these people were on the bus. Nobody extra, nobody last, nobody more. All these people on the bus, okay. Bus crosses on the way back, same thing. They would verify everybody was on board, and boom, that was it.

No, not like today that you need visas and passports. And, you know, it was very, very different back then.

From 1985 until they left in 2004, the tecos played about a third of their home games in Laredo. It was to make sure Tecos fans who lived there could go to as many games as possible. And for extra publicity, news outlets on the american side gave them more media coverage after the end of the mexican american war. With the new border at the Rio Grande, Nuevo Larrero and Laredos economies grew because of their geography. Goods flowed across the border from Mexico City or Monterrey, through Nuevo Laredo and into Texas.

And goods flowed the opposite way, too.

Oh, yeah. You hear the train going?

The railroads were crucial to this. They were built in the second half of the 19th century. And if you visit the municipal archives in Nuevo Larredo, you'll find they're located in the town's former railway station, which is over 100 years old.

Andrew Lawson Carranco
The railway arrived when Novolaredo was a small town. Ten years later, the government determined that Novolaredo, at that point had grown economically. It had much more economic activity and on top of that, more residents. So Nuevo Laredo should have the status of a city. Carlos Suniga, head of the municipal archives here, is showing me photos of the town from almost a century ago, and I can still hear the trains going right by the building.

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Aaron Braun
In. The 20th century, there was a dream of building one highway through the Americas. It was never fully realized, but highways were built roughly where it was envisioned. Today, Federal Highway 85 in Mexico runs from Mexico City through Monterey up to Nuevo Laredo. On the US side of the border, it turns into Interstate 35, which goes almost all the way up to to Canada.

In the 1990s, NAfTa supercharged the existing trade and Laredo blossomed. Its population doubled in size. From 1990 to today. The economies of the two cities were so intertwined that when the mexican peso crashed in 1994, Laredo took a hit, too. Supply chain issues during the COVID-19 pandemic and escalating tensions between the US and China convinced some american firms to move business closer to home, near shoring.

It's called Mexico, and Laredo especially have been beneficiaries of this. Last year, Laredo surpassed Los Angeles to become the number one port in the country. Judging by trade value, about 20,000 trucks cross the city's bridges each day. Sometimes the lines of lorries stretch back miles as drivers wait to cross. Firms cant build warehouse space fast enough.

Laredo developed as the business center, Nuevo Laredo as the cultural one.

Andrew Lawson Carranco
In this period, there was a lot of cultural activity. A lot of people pursued careers in acting, singing, and well, heres the a large theater. I glance around the room to see what else is in this slightly random collection of items, many donated by locals. I spy over in a corner assigned tecos baseball bat and ball encased in glass. This team matters so much that their equipment mixes into the archives.

We couldn't have a museum without this, right? The baseball bat autographed by the tecolotes. Carlos makes me understand, really feel, how the border is so central to Nuevo Larrero's identity. The city has always been in Mexico, and people living there feel strongly mexican. But it is also a melting pot.

There are Mexicans who came from other parts of the country. There are Latin Americans from other places who intended to migrate to the United States and ended up staying in Nuevo Larredo instead. The city, Carlos tells me, has a diversity and open outlook that comes with being on the border.

Aaron Braun
In Laredo, the effects of being on the border feel a little bit different. The town used to be in Mexico. Many Americans living there are of mexican descent. Laredo is 95% hispanic, one of the highest proportions of a major city in the US. And everyone speaks Spanish, or at least Spanglish.

So it feels a bit like a hybrid between the two. As Andrea, the museum manager, explained to. Me, I think the people from Laredo are, have a mentality, and I don't know if it's just from Laredo, but a border mentality where you're neither from here nor there, it's really you are from the border. Our language is a little different. Our way of life is a little bit different.

Andrea Odonez
A lot of people that come from out of town tell us, oh, this looks a lot like Mexico, but you're not in Mexico. In the context of this border culture, having a team that plays both sides actually means something for the players and the fans, regardless of their nationality. Like Eduardo, the backup catcher who I crossed the border with.

Eduardo Luna
The two Laredo sides are really the same fanbase. We can't divide the fans. It's the same passion. It's the same people that live here in Nuevo Valoredo that when we play on this side, they cross over to go there. It's a different culture because it's a different country.

I mean, it's different rules, different things, but at least I feel it's the same passion. It's the same passion for baseball. But in the last 20 years or so, that sense of different rules but shared passion has come under strain. 1st 911 tightened border security everywhere, including this part of the border. Passports were required.

Checkpoint queues grew longer. Owning a business on one side and living on the other became difficult. Thats why Andreas family moved to Laredo from Nuevo Laredo. Around that time, cartel violence in Nuevo Laredo also got much worse. Car bombings are apparently a new tactic for the drug cartel.

There have been four reported since the. Height of the drug war. Just south of the border, a decapitated body and a bloodstained message were left on a busy Nuevo Laredo street around 05:00 a.m.. Wednesday. The message warns people not to use social media to report crime.

Andrew Lawson Carranco
A border warning from the Webb county. Sheriff do not cross to Nuevo Laredo because of reports of cartel gunfights. That's just across the border from Laredo. Contraband has always crossed borders, flowing through the towns on either side. Criminals were.

And today, gangs are attracted to Nuevo Laredo precisely because the same roads that facilitate trade help them deliver drugs or migrants or whatever else it might be. For many years, Mexicos institutional revolutionary party, better known as the PRI, kept a lid on gangs by making pacts with them. But in 2000, the party lost power. For the first time. Violence started to grow.

Nowhere more so than here. Nuevo Larredo was home to the Zetas, a gang made up of soldiers whod defected from the mexican army. They started out as part of the Gulf cartel. Thanks to their military training, the Zetas were incredibly brutal and smart. They expanded from trafficking drugs to also extorting businesses, bribing the police, you name it.

In 2006, then president of Mexico Felipe Calderon decided to directly confront those criminal groups. With the help of the United States, he launched the war on drugs. The less drugs we use, the less pressure there will be in Mexico. We have got responsibilities to help prevent guns from going from the United States into Mexico.

This had unintended consequences. There was the violence expected in clashes between government forces and the gangs. But gangs also started to splinter as leaders were taken out and others fought to take over. These divided gangs started to fight, and that added to the bloodshed. This led to huge issues in areas where gangs were operating.

Nuevo Laredo became infamous as the site of horrific violence. People there talked to me about the climate of terror that they lived through, and they told me the most awful stories. Like a day in 2012 when nine bodies were found hanging from a bridge. The same day, police also found 14 heads in call boxes. The bodies were later found dumped near a bridge to the United States.

Aaron Braun
Americans, even Laredo natives, were advised to stay away. America's state Department currently warns people not to travel anywhere in the state of Tamalipas. Several Laredoans told me that sometimes you can hear gunshots ring out across the river. Andrew, the amateur historian, tells me he hasn't crossed since he was a child. Do you know if people go into Nuevo Lardo as much as they used to?

No, they don't. No, absolutely not. I haven't crossed in 20 years.

All this means that the two cities are starting to feel very different. Most of the new development in Laredo is happening away from the border. On the north end of the city, near the Tico stadium, actually, there are brand new neighborhoods of mega mansions and manicured lawns. Local officials hang out at the country club, and for the first time during this trip, more people actually spoke to me in English than Spanish. By comparison, the historic downtown seems sort of economically depressed.

The trade bridges carrying the keys to Laredo's new wealth blow right by it. Downtown seems forgotten, almost like a historic artifact. Nuevo Laredo's downtown has fared better. Its historic plazas near the border still seem to be the center of life in the city. Children play there, vendors sell fresh fruit, and elote musicians play.

But around the corners from the bustling plazas are the scars of the last two decades of violence. Gift shops are boarded up. Side streets are abandoned. Posters plastered on light poles show the faces of Nuevo Laredo's most wanted.

Our communities are very intertwined and embedded together. Nilda Garcia of Texas A and M International University, which is situated just down the road from the Unitrade stadium, studies gangs. She's also from a mexican border town that's a few hours away, and she was a student in Laredo. But when it comes to violence and security, it's an immense, it's a world of difference. People crossing the border from the north may not notice, but Nilda tells me there's gang members that hang out in the city at the plazas around the corner from the border, and they're all monitoring what's happening.

Right around the time I was in Nuevo Laredo, gangs detain four local umpires. And it's a reminder that there are real safety issues that the tecos have to keep in mind as they're shuttling players stop or umpires back and forth. So they, these vigilantes or Al corners, they're all over the place. As soon as you cross, you're gonna see them. And when you come back and cross it again to come to the United States, you're gonna see them everywhere.

So they aha.

The murder rate has fallen, but not because the gangs are losing power. It's because one single gang, the northeast cartel, has control here. And when one gang rules, there are fewer clashes. But violence can flare up, really, at any time. It's totally unpredictable.

This is not going to change. Gangs are so entrenched, they not only basically run the illicit economy, but they intertwine with the legal one, too.

Aaron Braun
But gang violence isnt the only problem raising tensions on the border as President Donald Trump wanted to use military funds to put up a border fence in part of Webb county, which includes Laredo. It was never built, but locals still feel the threat of that wall looming, especially with migration so high right now. In 2023, more migrants were apprehended crossing Americas southern border than any other year on record. Compared to other border cities like San Diego or Nogales in Arizona, Laredo doesnt see that many migrants, but their numbers are growing. American officials are also worried about drug trafficking.

Fentanyl is killing tens of thousands of Americans every year, and it's coming from Mexico. So the border everywhere has become more politicized, more militarized, harder. Locals worry that security is going to tighten, making crossing even more difficult and increasing the friction between the two cities.

Back at Nueva La Reverend, the Tekos pitchers are warming up for tonight's game. The crowd is slowly filing into the stalls, and they're getting themselves settled with pre game drinks and snacks. While down on the field, the power hitters slug it out in batting practice, the vibe is relaxed. Friendly players are ribbing each other in both English and Spanish, in contrast to the new Unitrade stadium in Laredo. The Nuevo Laredo stadium hasn't changed much, if at all, since Cuitlawak, the general manager, grew up catching fly balls decades ago.

I'm on the roof. There are flying ants and lots of bricks and tiles that are broken and lots of wires and peeling paint. There's a guy up here filming someone drinking a Coke. But yeah, it is run down.

But none of that matters once the game starts.

The Laredo audience may be rowdier than the average american Major League Baseball one, but the nuevo Laredo side puts them to shame.

People are using retracas, those wooden rattles that make a huge noise when you spin them around, and some people even bought large drums.

Spectators here are making jokes as much as they are watching the game. Everyone seems to be drinking beer from a huge plastic cup, often rimmed with salt. And there's a lot of eating, a lot of eating. People beckoning over, circulating food vendors to order crisps and with hot sauce or skewers of prawns. Oh, hang on, there are brushettes going around.

Were those the camera on? There is good food this side.

The dugout is so close to some of the seats that you can almost chat to the players. It's so close we can see them dancing to the backstreet boys. Well, dancing is an exaggeration.

Bopping to the Backstreet boys. I'm bopping to the Backstreet boys. I spot this one fan, Yolanda, partway through the game. She looks like she's in her seventies. She's got white hair.

And I go to speak to her and she tells me she's been buying these same seats for 40 years.

And she's holding a huge megaphone, which she says is her second one because she broke the first one from shouting too loudly. When the Tekos get a hit, she alternates between shouting into her megaphone and having it make this siren sound. Oh, nice. He's running. He's running.

Our conversation actually is interrupted because the tecos scores. Go, Tekos. And Yolanda whips out the megaphone.

And I tried to back away because it really is that loud.

This is gonna make them feel good. This is good. The tackles win this night too. Three which they really needed in between opening weekend and this game. Two weeks later, they'd lost four of their six away games.

The Nuevo Laredo games are so mexican, but the league is becoming less so.

Aaron Braun
Rule changes have allowed teams to bring in more foreigners, mainly former major League baseball players. Players like Kenny Svargas, who used to play in the MLB for the Minnesota Twins.

How did that feel? Hola. Very good, very good. My bad. They little bit tired today, but it was because they gained yesterday.

Cuitlawak Rodriguez
But by the game time I'd be alright. I'd be ready to go. Kenny's is one of the Teiko's most powerful sluggers. He's huge, six foot five with this big boisterous laugh. He's friendly and fun and we chatted while he was messing around during batting practice.

Aaron Braun
All right, let's hear how you do, pal.

And Kennys is the team's unofficial barber. He's sort of an unofficial captain and a joker. He cut all of their hair in preparation for opening day weekend. Players like Kennis, they've raised the quality of the mexican league. That's why the club's owner, Charamantur, recruits them.

Char Damansor
After all, we are not a developing league. We are not part of the mexican government. For us to develop mexican players, we are an independent league that we need to based on having fans in our stadiums. So let's give them the big show. The Ticos have gone from a mexican team to a multicultural one.

Aaron Braun
Kennis is from Puerto Rico. Other stars are cuban and venezuelan and mexican american. And they're taking slots that may have gone to those young mexican players who were just starting their careers, but the team is embracing its americanness. Star players like kennys appeal to the mexican fans, but they really appeal to Texans who may have watched him in the MLB on opening day at Unitrade Stadium. The team wears these special jerseys.

They're blue and gold, and they say bi nationals on the front. But as I'm watching the game, I really wonder how much of the pomp around the city's unity is, is just nostalgia or even a good marketing tactic, because no one who we talk to thinks things are going back to the way they were, at least not anytime soon. Lots of border towns have sister cities on the other side. San Diego has Tijuana. El Paso has Juarez.

But the relationship between Laredo and Nuevo Laredo is different. They really were one city once, and now they're very much two. That's why I love this plaza. I like coming out here because I can just picture everything here, and you. Can picture standing next to me in that old spanish plaza in Laredo.

Andrew's hat is doing its job, blocking the afternoon sun. He explains how Laredo is building infrastructure, developing and imagining what it means to be a place apart. And if we want to block down this way, which I suppose we can, it's under construction. You can see where there's been a lot of action and growth in some of the bar scene down there, and people wanted to come down here. Do you think part of that is because so many people used to go out in Huevo, Laredo, and now that option is kind of less appealing to folks?

Yeah. No, I mean, that's absolutely what it is. And it's taken us 15 years to figure out what that looks like, and now we're getting there. Everybody talks about this really strong binational community and how integrated they are. But when people no longer cross like.

They used to, like how people, things. Get at the same time here, Andrew takes a long pause. That's a hard question to answer. Maybe because it is.

Andrew Lawson Carranco
Maybe it sounds better in Latin, you know, est it is. Why would it not be? You know, just because I can't go somewhere doesn't mean I love it.

Aaron Braun
This is the thing I've been struggling to understand the whole time we were reporting in Laredo. People my age, Andrew's age and younger just aren't crossing the way their parents and grandparents did. So how can the two Laredos stay together when there are so many things pushing them apart?

The closest I've come to an answer to that question is that binational baseball reflects the idealism that people like Andrew or Chada or Andrea or Nilda have. When they tell me that the two cities are one it's not just nostalgia for the way things used to be before 911, before the gang violence, before the migrant crisis. The teams very existence challenges the idea that the border is now an impermeable, negative thing. As long as Los Tecos are crossing back and forth, residents of Los dos Laredos can feel joined by the border, not just separated by it. The team still plays where it wants to play, where its fans want it to play, because, as Sarah and I saw, the tacos can draw a crowd on both sides of the border.

The day after the game, I went to Enuevo Larero. I was walking across the bridge again with Eduardo and I saw a woman who looked familiar. I'm sure that woman was at the game last night, the one with the pink hair. I'm sure she was sitting with tiny.

I say hi, and didn't we see each other last night? She says yes, she remembers me too. She's now crossing back to Laredo and she'll be going to the game there tonight. Eduardo says it's so nice that people from both sides cross to see the games, and I agree, it really is.

The border may be more tedious to traverse these days, but at least one tecos fan keeps walking across.

Jason Palmer
Thanks for listening to the weekend intelligence, which this week was reported by Sarah Burke and Aaron Braun. The producer was Maggie Khedifa. Special thanks to Mark Nieto. Sound design by Nico Raufast and the executive producer is Gemma Newby. You've been listening to a free episode for the next three weeks.

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The Weekend Intelligence: Baseball at the border

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1: Introduction

2: The Tecolotes' Story

3: Border Dynamics

4: Personal Stories

5: Conclusion

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