Over 120 different players have made appearances for Major League Baseball teams, the first being Mel Almada who played for the Boston Red Sox starting in 1933.

Other notable Mexican MLB players include Fernando Valenzuela, Vinny Castilla, Joakim Soria, and Julio Urias.

The building of the Mexican Central Railway as well as America's economic and political interest in Mexico during the 1880s also played a part in the spread of baseball's popularity south of the Rio Grande.

[citation needed] The first Mexican-born player to play in the MLB was Mel Almeda, an outfielder from Huatabampo, who made his debut for the Boston Red Sox on September 8, 1933.

It would be 16 years before another Mexican-born player would play in MLB, when Bobby Ávila made his debut for the Cleveland Indians in 1947.

Club owners from MLB seized the opportunity to offer poor contracts to the players lacking free agency and union representation.

In 1946, then-owner of the LMB, Jorge Pasquel, attempted to elevate the level of competition in the league by offering contracts to several American MLB players.

[4] In 2018, after complaints about Julio Urías's loss of his signing bonus to his former LMB club, MLB decided to sever their relationship with the Mexican League.

This choice effectively bans all MLB teams from signing players directly out of the LMB, which may prevent some top Mexican prospects from making their way to the Majors.

In 1925, the Mexican League was formed by sports journalist Alejandro Aguilar Reyes and his friend Ernesto Carmona.