Mainly important for the flow of coffee from the second half of the 19th century onwards, the railway also contributed to naming a team that scared its opponents and whose city was the stage for the beginning of the activities of three former players who defended Brazil in World Cups.
When the Batatais station, in the metropolitan region of Ribeirão Preto, was inaugurated in October 1886, the municipality saw its economy develop, thanks to the ease that coffee growers now had in transporting their production to the port of Santos —an activity until then carried out on the back of mules—, but the population did not imagine that the tracks would also give a nickname that persists to this day in the city’s football club.
Founded only 33 years later, in 1919, Batatais FC gained the nickname Fantasma da Mogiana due to the strength that the team had in its first decades throughout the region, which was served by Companhia Mogiana de Estradas de Ferro.
It was in this scenario that goalkeeper Batatais (1910-1960) and striker Lopes (1910-1996) began their football activities, who were semi-finalists in the 1938 World Cup, played in France, and, decades later, defender Baldocchi, three-time world champion in 1970, in the first World Cup played in Mexico.
Data from the FPF (São Paulo Football Federation) shows that the club played more than one hundred matches between 1934 and 1937, having suffered only three defeats, a period in which the association gained its historic nickname.
In the year following this series, the current Batatais railway station building was inaugurated, responding to requests from the population, considered large for the time and demanding a worthy station, replacing the one created in the previous century.
The request is understandable, since, from a small town in the 1880s, the municipality had grown to 25,168 inhabitants in 1909, and continued to grow.
As a comparison, neighboring Franca (400 km from São Paulo) had 10,406 residents at the time, compared to today’s 365,494 inhabitants, according to the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics). Batatais, however, located between two of the main cities in the interior — Ribeirão Preto and Franca itself — currently has 59,939 residents.
The 1938 station received passengers for another four decades, until it began to only serve freight transport, but only until the 1980s.
The tracks were removed in 1988, as happened in much of the interior of São Paulo, and the station has had multiple uses since then: it was the headquarters of the GCM (Municipal Civil Guard) and a warehouse, before being hit by a fire at the end of the 1990s. After being restored, it was transformed into a cultural space, a destination that remains today.
And what happened to the players who played for the club and played in World Cups? Baldocchi began his career at Batatais in 1964 and, after playing one season, was sold to Botafogo de Ribeirão Preto. He also defended Palmeiras, Corinthians and Fortaleza, in addition, of course, to the three-time world champion team.
Algisto Lorenzato, the former goalkeeper Batatais, had a career at Fluminense, where he arrived in 1935, according to Flu-Memória, and experienced the beginning of the era of professionalism in football in Rio.
It was while defending the club that he was called up to play in the French Cup in 1938, Brazil’s first major result in the World Cup.
After not advancing from the first phase in the 1930 (Uruguay) and 1934 (Italy) world championships, on French soil Brazil finished the dispute in third place, in a team led by defender Domingos da Guia and striker Leônidas da Silva.
He was on the field in the victory over Poland, 6-5, and also played the iconic Fla-Flu da Lagoa, in the decision of the 1941 Carioca Championship, in which he remained on the field even with a collarbone injury.
In the same 1938 World Cup, José dos Santos Lopes, Zeca Lopes, as he became known in Batatais, or Lopes, as he was called in the world of football, defended the Brazilian team.
Striker, after emerging at the local club, he was the first Corinthians player to be called up to defend Brazil in a World Cup.
ACHIEVEMENTS ON THE FIELD
The nickname Fantasma da Mogiana is still used by its fans today, but the club is not competing in any professional state division in the current season.
After being a semi-finalist in Série A-2 of the Campeonato Paulista in 2016 – one step away from unprecedented access to the elite –, the club entered a downward spiral that culminated in successive relegations, until it no longer competed in state competitions.
Currently, it participates in youth category championships and the current board seeks to rebuild the indebted club.
In its trajectory, however, it won championships such as the one from São Paulo in the interior, in 1945, a title that was approved by the FPF in 2021, along with 25 other second division titles obtained by 15 clubs between 1918 and 1945. It was, at the time, the maximum title that a team from the interior could obtain.
It was also one of the clubs, alongside Ponte Preta and XV de Piracicaba, that pushed for the creation of the access law in 1947, forming the second state division. They came close to promotion two years later, when they were defeated by Guarani (2-1) in the final.
In 2004, he won the second state under-20 division, by beating São Vicente, and, in 2017, he was runner-up in the São Paulo Junior Cup, after losing the final to Corinthians at Pacaembu, 2-1.
