© by Ray Sanchez 06.26.16
As I’ve said before, the thing I like most about local sports Halls of Fame is the fact that we get to re-visit the performances of some of our greatest sports stars. So it is again with this year’s El Paso Baseball Hall of Fame. This year’s inductee are, in alphabetical order:
• Darrin Glenn, former Hanks High School star who went on to play minor league baseball as high as Class AAA.
• Eric Enders, an El Paso writer and historian who has written 10 books on baseball and was the first Mexican-American to be employed by the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
• Matt Hicks, who became director of broadcasting and play by
play voice for the El Paso Diablos from 1995 through 2004. Since 2012 he has done 
• Pete Leyva (posthumous) who was a player, coach, umpire, sponsor and president of the El Paso Texans in the early years of the last century.
• Victor Maldonado, former Irving High School star who went on to become a highly regarded umpire.
I’VE FOLLOWED the careers of practically all the inductees to our various sports hall of fame. I even got to know some of them personally. So have other El Pasoans, like former El Paso Diablos owner Jim Paul.
Paul was so happy to see Matt Hicks inducted this year that he sent him a message of congratulations. It follows, with Paul’s permission, in part:
“Matt: you deserve to be in this Hall of Fame! All I did was submit your name. Anyone who gets to do play by play for a major league team (and is not an ex-player) deserves to be in a Hall of Fame. The odds are so stacked against the dreamers … People don’t know the sacrifices you had to make and the starvation wages you had to live on to get to this point: Night after night after season after season and year after year and never giving up after 25 grueling seasons.”
WELL SAID. I also got a special thrill out of seeing Pete Leyva inducted. So many of our oldtimers fall through the cracks or are forgotten. His son, Ben Leyva, came to El Paso from California and nominated him personally. Following is a column, in part, I wrote about Pete:
“Every time I think of the late Pete Leyva, I think of the Roaring ‘20s. That’s when Leyva was at the height of his youth and seemed to be enjoying life to the fullest … During those years, he rolled dice and dealt black jack at the luxurious Tivoli nightclub in Juárez and later did similar work in Tijuana, Mexico and Las Vegas. He mingled with movie stars and got to know actress Judy Garland very well.
“On top of all that, Pete Leyva was a heck of a baseball pitcher … He was so good he was the star of the El Paso professional team … There was no professional baseball in El Paso during World War II, but in 1946 Andy Cohen and a friend tried to get professional baseball going again. It didn’t work and the team was about to fold. Leyva stepped in, put up some of his own cash, and kept it going until Jack Corbett took over the following year.”
RECOLLECTIONS of Jim Paul and mine just a couple on this year’s inductees. If you have comments of your own, please email them to me at rayf358@yahoo.com.
You have plenty of time. The induction banquet won’t be held until Saturday, Aug. 6, at the Radisson hotel with doors opening at 5 p.m. and banquet starting at 6 p.m. Tickets are $30 each and can be purchased by calling Leo Caraveo at 915-328-7821 or going online to elpasobaseballhalloffame.org.
Save