“It felt surreal," Wes Avila, the chef-owner behind Chinatown's Angry Egret Dinette tells L.A. TACO about his recent moment on the mound. "It felt like I won the golden ticket from Willy Wonka.”
Last week, Avila enjoyed the once-in-a-lifetime chance to throw out a ceremonial first pitch at Game 3 of the World Series in Atlanta. This son of Pico Rivera, a past winner of our TACO Madness competition, and lifelong Dodgers fan won the unique opportunity as one of three grand-place finalists in the Mastercard Home Team Advantage Small Business Contest, which also came with $10,000 for each winner.
At Avila's side was his wife, Tanya, along with fellow winners Jeanette and Ken Katz, owners of Atlanta's own La Bodega Atlrestaurant, and Jae'Da Turner, owner of consulting firm Black Owned Bos. in Boston. The group watched a compilation of infamously awry first pitches in the stadium's basement before hitting the field themselves to attempt to throw their own heaters.
Avila is respected far and wide as the L.A. taquero who founded and steered the original Guerrilla Tacos enterprise and is soon to endow Los Angeles with a new, Yucatan-inspired project called Ka'teen headed to Hollywood's forthcoming Tommie Hotel.
You can watch Wes throw his pitch below, as he lobs it to a short hop before home plate in front of tens of thousands of cheering baseball fans. Through the struggle to pick between the Cheating Trashtros and the Southern fans who gave us the racist "Tomahawk Chop," we have to thank Avila for giving us a hometown hero we can root for.
Hopefully, Dodgers scouts were taking notes, too.
