Locating points where the Union B.B.C., first documented club in Mexico and Latin America played in 1869.

I visited Brownsville, Texas, last week. My purpose was to follow the historical path of the Union Base Ball Club of Matamoros, Mexico, whose appearance in newspapers from 1869 make it the earliest baseball club that has been documented in Latin America. I wanted to find the exact points where the games were celebrated according to the information contained in the newspaper reports from that year.

The Union Club crossed the border, marked by the Rio Grande river, from Matamoros to Brownsville to play in the grounds of Fort Brown, an important military garrison. Actually, the Fort was just some feet away from the international crossing point, and a portion of the huge grounds used then to play are at the present, a part of the american immigration facilities.

The rest of the playing grounds are now occupied by the facilites of the University of Texas in Brownsville and the Texas Southmost College. UTB is the institution that holds the collections used in this investigation.

The Union Club played at the cavalry and infantry grounds at the Fort, since there were a couple of teams composed of soldiers (many of them Civil War veterans) from the garrison such as the McClellan B.B.C from the 10th Infantry and the Sheridan B.B.C. that represented a cavalry unit.

The Union Base Ball Club is first reported on October 23rd, 1869 in the newspaper The Daily Ranchero of Brownsville, Texas. It presents the result of a game between the Union club and the Rio Grande B.B.C. in which the latter won 29 to 22. In the box score of the game, some hispanic last names can be seen in the Union club like Bañado, Garcia, Caceres or Elizondo. Others are from European origin, but who had migrated to Matamoros, like Shreck or Bres. The 1870 census of Texas shows that Manuel Bañado and Plácido García were Mexican natives who were living in Brownsville. The ages of the several ballplayers ranges from 19 to 25 years old.

First report of the Union B.B.C. appeared on the Daily Ranchero on October 23rd, 1869.

This Mexican baseball club is reported playing four games by the same Daily Ranchero newspaper in the last months of 1869 and first days of 1870. These reports serve as evidence that places this team as the first baseball club documented in all Latin America. Some sources assure that, in Cuba, the Habana Base Ball Club was founded as early as 1868 (this was stated by one of its founders, Nemesio Guillo, in 1923) but there are no contemporary accounts for this club until 1874 when the game against Matanzas B.B.C. in the Palmar de Junco grounds is reported in a newspaper.

After visiting the place where the garrison was located and take some photos, I was able to find a map from Fort Brown made in that same year of 1869 and superimposed it on a satellite image from Google Earth so I could use some modern references to locate where those baseball grounds are now and what has been constructed on them at the passage of time. To my surprise, a part of the ground where the Union club played at the cavalry field is today a small park with benches in front of a Barnes and Noble library and a Starbucks. In those benches, I enjoyed a cup of coffee, totally unaware at that moment that I was standing at the point where the first baseball club documented in Mexico and all Latin America had its games.

Some of the original buildings from Fort Brown remain in their place and are used by the university. The cavalry barracks building is today the operations center of the campus police.

Images of the cavalry barracks building. In front of it, there was one of the grounds where the Union Base Ball Club from Matamoros Mexico played some games in 1869.