INTRODUCTION

The Greater Pomona Valley is located between the San Gabriel Valley and the Cucamonga Valley, straddling the border between Los Angeles County and San Bernardino County. In 1893, the California Assembly voted to form a new county, San Antonio County, with Pomona as its seat. However, Los Angeles political and economic interests defeated the proposal. Today, the Greater Pomona Valley is divided between western San Bernardino County and eastern Los Angeles County and surrounding communities of interest. Since the early 1900s, Mexican American communities have sprung up mainly due to the push and pull of economic factors, especially in the cities of Azusa, La Verne, Claremont, Pomona, Chino, Cucamonga, Upland, and Ontario.

Mexican Americans worked largely in the packinghouses, railroads, and citrus fields. Like their counterparts throughout California and the nation, they quickly established a complexly detailed set of organizations that promoted civil, cultural, and political rights. Moreover, they created sports networks at the local, state, and national levels. Nearly every community, small or large, had baseball teams representing it. While the rise of baseball as a spectator sport in the Mexican community simply reflected the rise of mass spectator sports in the country, Mexican American baseball, without shame, promoted the sport to reaffirm Mexican heritage and to advance a political agenda.

Moreover, teams traveled to nearby communities, crisscrossed county lines, traversed within their respective state borders and across state lines, and ventured into Mexico. These baseball trips established permanent networks that eventually merged into an interrelated maze of families, labor associations, and political groups. Both labor and sports were exceptions to the general rule that segregated Mexicans within the physical confines of where they lived. With sports, Mexicans were able to travel near and far to make contact with countless communities and talk not only about baseball but also their political strategies.

It must have been an incredible sight to see dozens of cars and trucks carrying players and their fans to out-of-town games. As they approached their destinations, the cars honked their horns signaling their arrival. With sports, interlinked communities built a stronger sense of pride and cultural unity and a common destiny.