Baseball

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

A familiar place for Dominican Republic: 2012 Caribbean Series Champs

El Barrio, NY – As anyone with access to the internet will see, the final standings of the Caribbean Series has the Dominican Republic winning the 2012 title.  Winning the Caribbean Classic (not withstanding that it has become mostly a rookie roster series devoid of established MLB Stars) is a familiar place for the Dominican Republic as they have been champions 19 times since 1970 and 13 times since 1990.

So this year’s standings are as follows with two teams tied for second place.

Dom. Rep. 4 2 .667 -
Puerto Rico 3 3 .500 –
Venezuela 3 3 .500 –
Mexico 2 4 .333

Last year’s champions, Mexico, came last with a 2-4 record beating only Puerto Rico and Venezuela for its two wins. Venezuela who began with a 0-3 record won 3 straight to come up with a .500 record. Both Venezuela and Puerto Rico wrested a victory from the Dominican Republic (4-2).

As noted in my earlier blog, Panama, Nicaragua and possibly Columbia would be participants if it were not for economic woes that keep them from competing and participating Caribbean Series.

Puerto Rico had a similar scenario when its winter baseball was suspended in 2007. The formally named "Professional Baseball League of Puerto Rico" (Liga de Béisbol Profesional de Puerto Rico) started with 6 teams in its inception. Now they only have 4.

So, it appears that democracy and capitalism falls short for some countries in having competitive baseball in their winter baseball seasons (winter-cold for us in the States, that is). The Dominican Republic, deemed as a “poor” Caribbean nation does not show the same deficiency as the other countries cited above given the possible correlation of how MLB has set up baseball academies (farms) that churn out a large number of major league baseball players over the years.

So now there is talk of Cuba’s possible comeback into the Caribbean Series, and putting into context some of the above elements of the issues mentioned above would be food for thought – con comida criolla, that is.

First published at 

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