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The summer baseball scene in Austin is about to get a southern exposure as Florida native Nestor Castro will be coaching a team that was started with the help of his son Miguel Castro.

Miguel Castro arrived in Austin from Orlando, Florida in 2013 to play for the Riverland Community College baseball team and he also played for the Austin Greyhounds after a stint with the Austin Blue Sox, which went defunct after the summer of 2017. Miguel said the idea to form a new amateur baseball team formed when his dad retired and moved to Austin a year ago.

“My dad and my whole family have always been involved in baseball,” Miguel said. “My dad has coached or played baseball for 30 years and now that he’s retired, he wanted to get a team going.”

Miguel will also play for the team, which will be called the Austin Blue Jays.

Nestor Castro, who formerly coached at Central Pointe Christian Academy in Florida, has been around baseball for most of his life. He played in Puerto Rico before coming to the United States to play Class AA baseball, and as a coach he relishes in developing players. 

In 2019, Nestor coached a team to championship in the Perfect Game tournament, which features teams from all around the world. Nestor has worked with many players who went on to have success on the diamond, including current New York Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor.

“Everyone in my family played baseball,” Nestor said. “It’s my passion and when I moved here two years ago, I was retired and I decided I was going to make a new team. The goal is to eventually have a year-round team that could play in tournaments in the winter in Florida.”

While dreams of playing year-round are trenched in the future, the Blue Jays will focus their first summer on competing in Minnesota. They will be classified as an independent amateur team, which means they can schedule A, B or C teams. When the tournament comes around in August, they will be assigned a region.

Starting a team from scratch is a challenge, but the Castro’s are reaching out across town to find any players who want to give it a shot.

“We want to really build up a family bond and stay together this first summer. We want the families involved and we want everyone to enjoy it,” Miguel said. “We’re looking for anyone who has the desire to play. We’ll have older guys on the team just playing because they love it and we’d like to have younger guys who are going to school and getting a degree.”

The Blue Jays have already received some help from the community as the Tienda Y Taqueria Guerrero restaurant has stepped up as a sponsor and Miguel Garate, an admissions specialist at Riverland Community College and who is highly involved in the community, has also helped the team get started.

“There is a need for another team, especially when we have more and more people coming to the community,” Garate said. “They’re looking for a place to play. When I found out they were working on this, I said ‘let’s get some sponsors and let’s get this started.’ This will bring more people to our fields and our parks in the summer to have fun.”

The Blue Jays will only be able to use players who have a permanent address within 30 miles of home plate of Seltz Field. The team doesn’t have a schedule or roster yet, but the first game of the season is scheduled to be in early May and the season will run into August.

For more information, send an e-mail to austinbluejaysbaseball@gmail.com.