Matt Dixon manages the San Antonio location of Austin-based Vista Brewing, as well as SA’s newest sandlot baseball team, the Texas Dingers. Credit: Instagram / mad_rittr

Exercise can act as a stress reliever, and in this day and age, who wouldn’t want less stress?

Matt Dixon, the manager of Austin-based Vista Brewing’s San Antonio taproom gets it. He’s spearheading an effort to bring baseball and mental health together via a partnership with the Saint City Culinary Foundation.

Dixon manages the Alamo City location of Austin-based Vista Brewing, as well as new SA sandlot baseball team, the Texas Dingers. The Dingers, who will host their first home game this Saturday, is a team comprised entirely of local foodservice workers.

Dixon approached Joel Rivas — founder of the Culinary Foundation and Heard, a nonprofit focused on providing mental health and tele-heath services to bar and restaurant workers — late last year about creating a partnership that would allow the team to operate under the foundation’s umbrella.

“I pitched [Rivas] the idea, ‘Would you ever have a sandlot baseball team as one of your programs?’ And he was like, ‘Dude, you don’t know how long I’ve been wanting to do that,’” Dixon told the Current. “He happens to be a huge baseball guy, so that conversation took off. And now we’re set up as a nonprofit program under Saint City.”

The Foundation expanded the San Antonio branch of Heard in September of 2020, developing a comprehensive health program specifically for hospitality industry professionals. Many in the industry can’t get health insurance through their employer or are unable to afford their workplace insurance. What’s more, employers often view mental-health therapy and coaching sessions as a luxury and don’t include them in their benefits.

“We have seen a lot more of the normalization of talking about therapy, people saying they’re not okay and looking for help … that doesn’t mean there has been a decrease in people relying on substances to aid that, but that trend has been encouraging,” Saint City Culinary Foundation founder Rivas told the Current. “But out of all of the programs we’ve run across the U.S., San Antonio is one of the hardest to get people to buy into mental health and wellness. We can have a wellness program in Austin that draws 35 people, where in San Antonio it draws two.”

Both Dixon and Rivas hope the general feel-good benefits of knuckle balling in the sun will draw out more industry workers. Texas is home to over a dozen sandlot teams, and Dixon maintains it’s only a matter of months before San Antonio has a handful of teams to call its own.

Baseball city

The Alamo City is no stranger to the professional baseball phenomenon.

Historical evidence suggests baseball teams may have existed in San Antonio as early as 1867,  the Express-News reports. In 1884, the San Antonio Sunsets and Galveston Nine played a game that the daily credited with giving birth to professional baseball in the city. Legendary New York Yankees slugger Babe Ruth played games in San Antonio, along with other heavy hitters such as Dizzy Dean, Mickey Mantle, Pedro Martinez and Mike Piazza, according to reports.

During that golden era, sandlot baseball became a pastime for San Antonians who couldn’t make it to Mantle status.

“There are dudes that used to play sandlot baseball back in the day, guys that were either washed up or didn’t make it to be able to play professional ball,” Dixon said. “Or just guys that liked to get together to play baseball from the neighborhood, and that the whole sandlot idea kind of died with those guys.”

In 1949, the South Texas Negro League was created and much of the talent played here in San Antonio, at Pittman-Sullivan Park — so it’s not a coincidence that the Texas Dingers have claimed that as their home field. In a 2020 interview segment, a handful of former South Texas Negro League baseball players told TV station KSAT12 that, even as the sport became increasingly integrated in the following decades, they noticed a decline in Blacks represented in the sport.

Subsequently, they told KSAT, they witnessed a decline in young black children being interested.

Eastside clinics

Dixon said he and the rest of the Dingers are making it a mission not only to work with San Antonio’s Parks and Recreation Department to rejuvenate the inner city ballpark but to host free baseball clinics for Eastside youth.

“These old ballplayers talk about African American boys and girls getting out of baseball, when it used to be all that they played. But now, they’re more [interested in] basketball and football, and these guys have a huge desire for the African American community to have a love for baseball again,” Dixon said. “So if we could do something, just one week out of the summer that’s free to the neighborhood, I’d love to do that.”

Dixon says he’s in talks with SA Youth, a nonprofit that works with high-risk kid and young adults, to make this dream of a baseball clinic a reality.

“This league is much more than, you know, wanting to be social,” he said. “It’s about being able to support our city in different ways, too.”

Saint City founder Rivas agrees that the spirit of the Dingers and its ragtag team members is one rooted in support. For what are foodservice workers to each other — and their guests — if not a team of folks supporting each other in providing great experiences?

“In San Antonio, we have such a culture of community, loyalty and love, when people dive into something, they go all in, and often they put themselves in the backseat when they do that,” Rivas said. “They’re such beautiful, good people at heart that they inherently pour so much into their work that there’s not a lot left for themselves.”

The Dingers’ first home game is this Saturday, April 23 at Pittman-Sullivan Park. Tickets are $10 at the gate, and a portion of the proceeds from ticket sales and concessions will benefit Heard.

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This article appears in Apr 6-19, 2022.

Nina Rangel uses nearly 20 years of experience in the foodservice industry to tell the stories of movers and shakers in the food scene in San Antonio. As the Food + Nightlife Editor for the San Antonio...