Padres and Giants to Play in MLB's 1st-Ever Series in Mexico City Next Season
Mike Chiari@@mikechiari
Featured Columnist IVAugust 31, 2022
Major League Baseball announced Wednesday that the San Diego Padres and San Francisco Giants will face off next year in the first MLB regular-season series to be played in Mexico City.
MLB @MLBHistory will be made! For the first time MLB will play a regular season series in Mexico City.<br><br>See you in April 2023. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/MexicoSeries?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#MexicoSeries</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/YoAmoElBeis?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#YoAmoElBeis</a> <a href="https://t.co/aVn5g5ydnp">pic.twitter.com/aVn5g5ydnp</a>
The series will take place April 29 and 30, 2023.
The games in the Mexican capital will mark MLB's first tilts in the country since 2019 when a pair of two-game sets occurred in Monterrey.
The Cincinnati Reds and St. Louis Cardinals split a two-game series in Monterrey in April 2019, while the Houston Astros swept the Los Angeles Angels in a two-game set there the following month.
MLB held games in Monterrey in 1996, 1999 and 2018 as well. The 1996 series between the New York Mets and Padres marked the first time any MLB regular-season games had been played outside the United States or Canada.
Since then, MLB has branched out internationally and hosted games in Puerto Rico, Japan, Australia and the United Kingdom.
The first-ever MLB regular-season series in Mexico City was supposed to happen in April 2020 with the Padres facing the Arizona Diamondbacks, but it was canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
MLB reiterated its desire this year to have games in Mexico City, in addition to wanting to host games in Tokyo, London and Paris in the future.
Given that San Diego is the closest MLB city to the Mexican border, the Padres were a sensible choice to be one of the first teams to play in Mexico City.
Although they don't have any Mexico-born players on their roster, their roster is headlined by high-profile Latino players, such as Manny Machado and Juan Soto.
The Giants are one of the Padres' chief rivals, and they do have a Mexican player on their roster in outfielder Luis Gonzalez, who is hitting .253 with four home runs, 32 RBI and 10 stolen bases in his third MLB season in 2022.
When the Padres and Giants meet in Mexico City next season, it will mark the first MLB game to be played outside the U.S. or Canada since the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox played a two-game set in London in June 2019.