MEXICO CITY (AP) — On Thursday, May 20th, Mexico’s Public Education Secretariat said it is opening several schools to train youths for baseball, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s favorite sport.
Three-year high-school level schools will also be set up for boxing, track and field, and sports therapy, but a larger number will focus on baseball, which is largely regionally popular in Mexico’s north, but also in the southern state along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico and in the Yucatan Peninsula.
In Mexico City, there is a long baseball tradition, that dates all the way back to the late 1940s early 1950s.
Soccer remains by far the most popular sport in Mexico, but the president grew up playing baseball in the Gulf coast state of Tabasco.
AMLO is known in the rest of the world for the videos he posts of himself at-bat. Earlier this week, AMLO stopped during a presidential tour to take a turn at bat in a pickup game he saw taking place on a field in the northern state of Sinaloa.
Baseball schools will be set up in two places in northern Sonora state, one each in the Gulf coast states of Veracruz and Campeche and one on the outskirts of Mexico City.
A total of two boxing schools and one track and field school will be set up in or near Mexico City. Each school will serve about 210 students. Classes are scheduled to begin in August.
Graduates will get a diploma and will either be able to join teams, teach or act as trainers.
Source: Informador MX