I was 15 just 10 years ago, when I learned about the game of baseball. The Algodoneros de Guasave team (of the winter Liga Mexicana del Pacífico) had been sold and moved to Guadalajara, Jalisco, and the Charros de Jalisco had been revived. Against all odds, the Charros de Jalisco reached the LMP finals that same winter, losing against Tomateros de Culiacán. But that's a different story. After the Charros' winter success, teenage me became obsessed with baseball. I bought OOTP 16 and starting watching MLB on TV and online. But of course, what fun is watching sports without rooting for a team. So I scoured through Baseball Reference, looking at MLB rosters until I found that the Toronto Blue Jays employed a pair of Mexican pitchers. I watched most of Marco Estrada's starts that year and he became my favorite player. Of course, there's also Roberto Osuna (we'll pretend he's not a wife-beater in this universe). The rest of the team had other Latin players such as Edwin Encarnación, José Bautista and Ezequiel Carrera. There were other charismatic players on the roster: Marcus Stroman, RA Dickey, Justin Smoak, Josh Donaldson, Kevin Pillar are amongst the players I liked from that era. 10 years later, I don't have as much time to watch baseball as I had when I was in high school. But then the Blue Jays made the playoffs again, so I started watching MLB again. Now they're in the World Series (Won Game 1 today!) and I decided I would manage them on OOTP.
After that block of text (here comes another one), let me introduce the save. I'll be writing about fictional GM/Manager Manuel Almada. I'll write more about that in the next post. Fun fact: The fake name is a reference to 2B Manuel Rodríguez, one of my favorite players and Charros legend, and Baldomero "Melo" Almada, who was the first México-born player to play in MLB back in 1937. I'll be managing the Toronto Blue Jays from 2015 onwards and hopefully we can make a World Series before 2025!