The San Diego Padres will host the Los Angeles Dodgers for a three-game series in Mexico next season, Major League Baseball announced Monday.
The games will take place May 4-6 at Estadio Monterrey, which has a capacity of 27,000. It will be MLB and the Padres’ first foray south of the border in 19 years. This will be the third time the Padres have played in Mexico. The Friars opened the season in Monterrey against the Rockies in 1999. Three years earlier, the Pads faced off against the Mets in the first series played in Mexico, which was also held in Monterrey.
The games are part of MLB’s plan to bring professional baseball to other parts of the globe. The series will be the first of six to be played in Mexico over the next six seasons, the league said.
For Padres, the series is a chance for the team to expand its Mexican fan base, Padres CEO Erik Greupner said.
“As a team with a binational fan base and reach that extends into Baja California and throughout Mexico, we are excited to once again play regular-season games in Monterrey and help grow the popularity of gour great game,” he said.
This will be the Dodgers’ first regular-season series in Mexico. They previously played two exhibition games in Monterrey in 1991. The Dodgers’ only other regular-season games outside of the U.S. was the season-opener against Arizona in Sydney, Australia.
Both teams have connections to Mexico with both having players from there, the most notable of whom is Adrian Gonzalez. The former Padres and current Dodgers was born in San Diego but grew up in Tijuana.
“I’m extremely excited about returning home to Mexico to play a series against my former team, the Padres,” the Golden Glove winner said. “This series will be memorable for all involved as we visit Monterrey to repay the baseball fans in Mexico for their never-ending support of the game we all love.”
MLB is also planning other games for Asia and the United Kingdom to expand the global appeal of the game, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The Mexico series will the replace the games originally planned for Petco Park. The series was proposed for Mexico City, but delays in the stadium construction moved the games to Monterrey, according to the Union-Tribune.