The president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, whose speech insists on reducing expenses, paid more than 21 million dollars to buy a baseball stadium in Hermosillo, Sonora state.
Several Mexican newspapers disclosed on Friday the news that the president, who played baseball non-professionally and is a fan of this sport, concluded the purchase of the Héctor Espino stadium for just over 511 million pesos, a little over 21 million dollars.
According to the newspaper Reforma, on Thursday the Secretary of Finance of the state of Sonora, Raúl Navarro, reported that the payment had been made and the money would be allocated to pensions, public security, hospital infrastructure, and medical supplies.
Developing baseball is one of the priorities of the López Obrador Government, which in August announced the purchase of two stadiums for one billion pesos to build schools to teach baseball, the only team sport in which Mexico did not qualify for the last Pan American Games, although it does have a place in the Tokyo Olympics.
Reforma denounced that the payment was made during the COVID-19 health and economic contingency and quoted a senator who estimated that with the transaction amount, 472,000 medical protective suits can be purchased to attend to the coronavirus.
In addition to the investment in Hermosillo, according to his announcement last summer, there will be another expense in Ciudad Obregón, in the same state of Sonora, a place deeply rooted in baseball.
López Obrador often recounts in his speeches that he was a center fielder with good movement and boasts of having his pinky finger on his left hand hunched over as a result of a fall during a defensive action when he was young.
Last September, at the opening of the Baseball Hall of Fame, the president confessed that his biggest dream was to have been a professional baseball player. EFE