Three years ago, Cesar Salazar was a new student at Sahuaro High School who couldn’t speak English and was stripped of playing time because of eligibility reasons. Now he has a chance to be the opening-day starting catcher for the Arizona baseball team as a true freshman.
Salazar moved to Tucson three years ago after living in Hermosillo, Mexico, for the first 16 years of his life. Salazar’s transition from Mexico to the United States was imaginably a difficult one, but he said his comfort level began to rise with the help of time and baseball.
“My first year was really tough, knowing no English, not being able to have a long conversation with somebody,” Salazar said.