“We decided that we’re not necessarily talking to the 40-something or 50-something-year-old guy who is working two or three jobs, regardless of race,” Reifert said. “That guy’s plate is full. But the kid who gets the benefit of how hard his parents have worked, and goes to school, and has some disposable income is just as reachable.”

Similar efforts in San Diego have helped the Padres, who compete for fans with the Los Angeles Angels and Los Angeles Dodgers. Bounded by rival teams to the north, a desert to the east and the Pacific Ocean on the west, San Diego has looked to nearby Mexico for fans.

Under one promotion this year, Padres fans in Tijuana paid $20 for a ticket to the game, a roundtrip bus ride to the ballpark, a soda and a T-shirt. Tijuana is about 15 miles south of San Diego, directly across the Mexican border.

“We feel it’s important to go out into the Latino community, not just throw out a Spanish-language ad and sit around hoping that they will come out. It’s about relationships,” Padres spokeswoman Jenifer Barsell said.

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Barsell said a recent survey showed that Latinos accounted for just over 20 percent of attendees at Petco Park between August 2004 and July 2005.

For the White Sox, the Latino fan base first started to take shape in the 1950s, when the team’s roster included several pioneers of the sport, including Chico Carrasquel, the first Latin American player to appear in an All-Star Game, Minnie Minoso, one of the first black Latino Major League stars, and Venezuela’s Luis Aparicio, the 1956 Rookie of Year who was later inducted into the Hall of Fame, said Dominic Pacyga, a history professor at Chicago’s Columbia College.

In 1959, the last year the White Sox won a pennant, their manager was Al “El Senor” Lopez, the son of Spanish immigrants.

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“Today, the population in baseball as a whole — and the White Sox in particular — is more Hispanic than ever before,” Pacyga said. “It’s really a sort of multiethnic polyglot of a team that appeals to a lot of people.”

Self-described “Sox junkie” Melissa Perez wore her “Hecho en Mexico” (Made in Mexico) T-shirt to the Latino college night and got her picture posted on U.S. Cellular’s Jumbotron. The 20-year-old said the White Sox are a source of pride and admiration.

“You see that Latinos can do more,” she said. “We know how to play baseball. We know how to play other things besides soccer.”

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