Gonzalez, crowd thankful for July 4 baseball

EDINBURG - Rain cost Edinburg Fourth of July baseball the last two seasons. What was usually one of the biggest games of the year, regardless of the teams involved or their records, was seemingly inevitably washed away.

But in 2009, a season that for much of the winter looked doubtful at best, there was an Independence Day game at Edinburg Baseball Stadium under surprisingly clear skies. Two rivals that recently had very uncertain futures, the Edinburg Roadrunners and Rio Grande Valley WhiteWings, played the third of a four-game series Saturday night through a stiff but needed breeze in front of an announced crowd of 1,833, with Edinburg winning 13-1.

"The last couple of years it has been rainy and stuff like that," Roadrunners third baseman Eric Gonzalez said. "I was hoping for a bigger crowd, but oh well. We got the win anyway. That's a big win for us."

Though it might sound cliché, the fact there was a game at all was something of a win for the fans.

For them, it was a chance to do celebrate Independence Day at a place where millions of others had before, with thousands of other fans watching a sport intertwined with the nation's history. For some fans, like La Feria's Miguel Gonzalez, it was also a chance to watch his son Eric, and a reminder that this opportunity didn't look probable earlier this year.

"I feel glad and happy," said Miguel Gonzalez through a translator, who was sitting with a group of fans called "The Roadrunners Third-Base Fan Club" on picnic tables on the concourse down the third-base line. "It's a good thing to have."

On some levels, the game was just another in an 80-game season between two middling teams in a low-level independent league. Maybe, though, there was something else to it, that an area that came close to losing its two teams was able to watch them play on the Fourth of July during a season that almost didn't happen.

"We were really afraid if we were going to have a team at all," said Edinburg resident and fellow member of the third-base fan club Richard Ramirez. "We were even discussing the options, even of the Coyotes. If the Coyotes were coming back, we would have come back. But it worked out fine. That's great."

A cynic could say that the rain was appropriate and indicative of the three years the Edinburg franchise was called the Roadrunners. During those three years, the ULB and its Valley franchises seemed to bottom out and fall away to the fringes of the area's sports consciousness.

Though the new ownership still has work to do in getting the Roadrunners and WhiteWings back to where they were, at least they were able to provide a game on July 4 and fireworks on July 3. And for Mission resident Jack Wolfe, a better option for entertainment than his other choice.

"I'd be in bed watching TV (if not for the game)," Wolfe said. 

For players like Gonzalez, Independence Day games are one of the highlights of the season. In some leagues, there are special holiday presentations and speeches.

None of that is present in the ULB, but it doesn't diminish the night's game for Eric Gonzalez.

"It's probably the best day to play ball," he said. "You watch the big leagues and everything with the flag and everything for the troops, it gives you more motivation to play."

And if Saturday night's game was never scheduled?

"I would have missed it a lot," Eric Gonzalez said. "It would be a big day not playing ball. Luckily, we came back to play this year."

Brian Sandalow covers the Edinburg Roadrunners for Valley Freedom Newspapers. You can reach him at (956) 683-4436.