Sport | Baseball |
---|---|
Founded | 1925 |
Director | Plinio Escalante Bolio |
No. of teams | 16 |
Country | Mexico |
Headquarters | Mexico City, Mexico |
Continent | North America |
Most recent champion(s) |
Pericos de Puebla (2016) |
Most titles | Diablos Rojos del México (16 titles) |
TV partner(s) |
Televisa Multimedios Televisión AYM Sports Latin American Sports |
Official website | www.lmb.com.mx |
The Mexican Baseball League (Spanish: Liga Mexicana de Béisbol or LMB) is a professional baseball league based in Mexico. It is a class Triple-A league in organized Minor League Baseball, one grade below Major League Baseball (MLB). Unlike the other two Triple-A circuits, the International League and the Pacific Coast League, Mexican League teams are not affiliated with major league teams.
The Mexican League has two minor leagues of its own, the Liga Norte de México and the Mexican Academy League. An additional baseball circuit, the Mexican Pacific League, is a Winter league.
The Mexican League was founded in 1925 by sportswriter Alejandro Aguilar Reyes and former baseball player Ernesto Carmona. The league included six teams (74 Regimiento, México, Agrario, Nacional, Guanajuato and Águila). Puebla's 74 Regimiento won the initial league championship. Since then, the league has expanded to 16 teams, divided equally into a north and a south zone, the champions of which meet to contest a best-of-seven game playoff series. The season begins in mid-March with the playoffs running through mid-August.
Judges, under the doctrine of stare decisis, use the case Federal Baseball Club of Baltimore v. National League of Professional Baseball Clubs to maintain that the baseball leagues and commissioner are not violating anti-trust laws because they are not doing anything different from what was done when the previous holding was handed down. Included in the previous ruling was the fact that the baseball leagues at the time of the ruling could transmit information about their games via telegraph wires; radio and television are merely extensions of the type of coverage provided by the older medium. Further, because the leagues are only negotiating as agents for their member clubs, their actions in negotiating the television and radio broadcasts are essentially no different from their actions with telegraphs. Therefore, the previous decision can be maintained. Judges also have asserted that this the previous decision has not ever been objected to by Congress, in that no corrective legislation which would have overturned the ruling has ever been enacted, so it must also be of the opinion of Congress that baseball does not fall under the rules of the Sherman Antitrust Act (some judges have found differently, but final rulings have always overall held in favor of Organized Baseball).