Every year, at the end of August, the Monterrey kids who won the 1957 Little League World Series of Baseball relive the climax of their final match, the day that Angel Macias pitched a perfect game, leading the Mexican team to become the first team of foreign origin to win the U.S.-based series. 

The youngsters learned to play barefoot on rocky fields. They organized raffles and donation collections to pay for their travel. They won 13 games, without a single loss, even though the team members were short and typically weighed 30 pounds less than their opponents. Not everyone on the team knew each other: The squad was a mix of four teams from Monterrey.

This constellation of extraordinary circumstances made the Monterrey kids’ victory a real feat. President Dwight D. Eisenhower received the champions in Washington, and a day later they spoke with Vice President Richard Nixon. When they were preparing to return to Monterrey, a Mexican Air Force plane took them to Mexico City, where they met with President Adolfo Ruiz Cortines.

Fourteen youths made up the team, 12 of them from poor families in Monterrey, which, in 1957, was a maze of small, rural communities. The team crossed the U.S.-Mexico border at Reynosa and, with their bats on their shoulders, they walked five miles on the side of the road until a man in a van gave them a ride to a hotel in McAllen, Texas.

For team member Jose Maiz, the 63 years that have passed since the ‘57 series, which is held every year in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, has prompted a different perspective on the whole affair. 

"If people remember us, it's because of Angel," Maiz said. “I was in left field and, if I had known ahead of time, we could have played sitting down because the ball didn't leave the infield. More perfect is impossible. Not even Don Larsen's perfect game in the World Series." 

Macias was a flawless pitching machine: He pitched with both hands.

Such a game would not have been possible without Harold “Lucky” Haskings, an Army veteran, and Cesar L. Faz, a frustrated coach, formerly with a team in McAllen. Faz was an obsessive instructor of technique, in batting and fielding. When he was not on the diamond, he drew outlines on a blackboard. "Here they have to throw the ball, and here the player makes his move," he advised the kids.

Haskings, a man of great discipline, was a teacher as well as a partner at a bottling company. He bought the team’s shoes and uniforms.

Each August the surviving players gather to celebrate the anniversary of the championship, but this year the pandemic has kept the celebration in check. Besides the virus, the champions face another challenge: the poor state of Macias' health. Macias has Alzheimer’s, and has sold his house and ranch to deal with emergencies. Furthermore, his wife had a double embolism and kidney surgery. "With half her body paralyzed, she doesn't want to let go,” Maiz said. “She doesn't want to leave him alone."

Maiz recently visited Macias at his home, which is decorated with trophies and photographs. He took Macias to the park around the corner and stayed with him as people took pictures with Macias and Maiz recalled their epic final game.

Three years ago, Macias told an amusing story about the return trip to Mexico after the World Series victory. The pilot told the teens: "Come to the windows. I'm going to do a flyover so you can see what the city looks like." The kids glued their eyes to the windows and saw massive crowds below. "In Monterrey, there were 400,000 inhabitants and, according to the news, 350,000 people were waiting for us all along the way, from the airport to the Government Palace," Macias said.

In "Little Giants," one of the two films that tells the team’s story, coach Faz shakes his arms in the dusk of Monterrey and describes the long journey: "Fourteen kids and two men who had been strangers returned home a month later with the World Series in their hands."

Legend has it that the day of the perfect game is the only time that Monterrey’s factories quit blowing smoke long enough for thousands of workers to see Macias pitch with both hands.