[Padreman]

The Mexican League was founded in 1925 with 5 teams and slowly grew. By the late 30s and 40s, the league was drawing the top players from the Negro Leagues, including Satchel Paige, Cool Papa Bell, Martin Dihigo, Ray Dandridge and Willie Wells. Native Mexican talent was almost run out of the league in 1940, when many Cuban and Negro League stars took central stage - only a handful of Mexican players like Angel Castro and Jesus Valenzuela were competitive with the foreign imports. Four Negro Leaguers (Bell, Wild Bill Wright, René González and Alonzo Perry) won Triple Crowns - since then only three other players have won Triple Crowns in the Mexican League (Ángel Castro, Ty Gainey and Kit Pellow). In 1946, millionaire owner Jorge Pasquel began luring big-leaguers like Sal Maglie and Max Lanier to Mexico and offered blank contracts to Joe DiMaggio, Stan Musial, and Ted Williams. While the white Americans who did jump borders added prestige and famous names to the league, they generally were of lesser talent than and could not compete with the league's population of Cuban and Negro League greats. Also, by this time Mexican players were much more prevalent and productive than they had been in the '40-'41 seasons, when Negro Leaguers almost forced them out of the league. Legal action by the American major leagues and salary cuts by the Mexican clubs led to most of the Americans leaving by 1948. With integration the black stars mostly returned north as well, though some stayed south due to the racially tolerant environment.
By 1955, the Mexican League was fading. New owners helped make the league part of Organized Baseball as a AA circuit. Later, it became a AAA league - while the talent was AA on average, the attendance and size of the cities represented were comparable to other AAA circuits.