Before he was the 2025-26 Gatorade Arizona Baseball Player of the Year, Alain Gomez-Gudiño spent his 16th birthday in a train station in Mexico.
Gomez-Gudiño and his family were nearing the culmination of a months-long journey that began in Venezuela, just waiting on a CBP One permit to officially enter the United States.
While waiting he resumed playing baseball with one of the few things he carried with him from Venezuela, his catcher’s mitt, its leather soaked with river water from each of the eight countries he traversed to reach the United States.
