Mexican hero tries to catch on

Nick Christensen

Wednesday, May 5, 2004 | 9:39 a.m.

If there's one member of the Las Vegas 51s whose life exemplifies the highs and lows of baseball, it's Luis Garcia.

Garcia learned the game on the streets of Guadalajara, Mexico, where the popularity of soccer made it hard to find 17 other guys to play baseball, much less a field on which to set up a game.

Garcia, 25, is in his fifth season in the American minor leagues after a year in the Dominican Republic and a year in Mexico. He was 2-for-3 with a walk, and Jose Flores -- pinch-running for Garcia in the ninth -- scored the 51s' winning run on a wild pitch in an 8-7 victory over the Tucson Sidewinders Tuesday night at Cashman Field.

After an up-and-down minor league career, Garcia hit a career-low .215 in his first year in Triple-A with Buffalo last year.

"I asked him why he had an off-year, and he was taking a lot of advice from a lot of people," said 51s manager Terry Kennedy. "He never settled in on one thing, so we talked to him about doing one thing mentally."

But two months after the end of his summer season, Garcia became a national hero. Garcia hit a ninth-inning home run that put his native Mexico up 2-1 against the United States in the Olympic qualifying tournament last November in Panama. It earned him instant celebrity across Mexico and throughout baseball.

"It was great to play for my country, Garcia said. "We didn't get the chance to make the Olympics, but I think it was a great experience, especially beating the U.S."

The Mexican team lost to Canada in the semifinals, dashing their hopes of making it to this year's Summer Olympics in Athens.

Garcia, though, went back to Mexico to play winter ball with the Naranjeros de Hermosillo (Hermosillo Orange Growers). He hit .270 in 47 games and helped the team advance to the semifinals of the Caribbean Series championship.

Teams in the Mexican winter league have at most five American players -- the rest are Mexican.

He signed with the Dodgers as a free agent over the winter, hoping to find his way to the majors. The Dodgers gave him plenty of opportunities through March to test his acumen in major

league-caliber games.

"They didn't know me very well; at that time they knew about the home run, but they hadn't heard much about me," he said. "They wanted to see me at spring training at the big league level, to see how good I was. I started from there, and maybe have a chance to go up and help the team up there."

Garcia hit .371 in 35 at bats in spring training.

Kennedy said Garcia has a few things to work on while in Triple-A.

"He needs to work on his pitch selection and aggressiveness," Kennedy said. "He's a pretty mellow guy, and sometimes that carries into his at-bat."

One thing that surprises Garcia is, despite his celebrity, the Las Vegas Mexican community has not had a visible presence at 51s games. He said there's even a contrast between crowds at winter ball games in Hermosillo, a city of 750,000, and Las Vegas. The Naranjeros averaged about 6,000 fans a game. The 51s this year have averaged 3,280 fans per game.

"It's exciting when you have 8,000 people cheering for you; it kind of fires you up a little more," he said.

But despite the lack of crowd support, he said he's found it easier to play in Las Vegas than in Buffalo.

"I know there's a big Mexican community here in Las Vegas," he said. "There's a lot of Mexican places, where I can just speak Spanish, a lot of places to eat Mexican too."