9 Beans & A Burrito

The year was 1989, the place, Arizona State University, the characters, ASU students. Born that year was the “9 Beans and a Burrito”. A group of Hispanic students formed a softball team, which would lead to lifelong friendships and eventually the 9 Beans and a Burrito Foundation. “9 Beans and A Burrito” started as an intramural softball team at Arizona State University. How did we come up with such a name? A few elements were considered when it came time to decide on a name for the newly formed team. Given the fact that all of us were of Hispanic decent, we wanted our name to reveal our background. “Beans” was a simple enough concept, while still giving our team name an element of humor. However, a problem arose when we tried to attach the label of “Bean” to our extraordinarily huge 6’5”, 350 lb teammate. Since the rest of us were somewhat small in comparison, we had no choice but to honor him with his own title of the “Burrito”. Although we had about 20 members, only ten players can play on the softball field at one time. One position was taken by the “Burrito, which left 9 positions available for the “Beans”. Hence, we became “9 Beans and A Burrito”. As a softball team we excelled within the intramural ranks. This led to team competing in other sports, including football, basketball and volleyball.