A new collection of recreated vintage Mexican baseball hats almost instantly sold out when it went on sale last week, illustrating the hunger fans have for uncovering the forgotten history of the ball game in Latin America.

The big picture: Historians, fans and activists in recent years have worked to uncover the history of the key roles Latinos in the U.S. played in the formation of the game.

Driving the news: Seattle-based Ebbets Field Flannels last week released a limited series of vintage baseball caps of teams from Mexico that played from 1915 to 1940.

Background: Baseball in Mexico grew out of teams formed by companies, political parties and military units before an official league was created.

Cohen told Axios he got interested in Mexican baseball history after visiting his friend Tomas Morales, the late dean of Mexican baseball writers, in the early 1990s.

Between the lines: A bilingual baseball exhibit on Latinos' historical connections to the game opened at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History last year and is on tour now.

Of note: More than 30% of Major League players are Latino, and the league's fanbase is becoming more diverse.

What's next: Cohen said Ebbets Field Flannels is designing 15 to 20 different vintage caps from unknown Mexican teams and is looking for help identifying their history.

Editor's note: This story has been corrected to show that the Heroico Colegio Militar hat appears to feature a petroglyph (not the Comintra Tigers hat)