Cuba and Curacao to play in next Series

“It is a historic milestone,” said Juan Francisco Puello Herrera, commissioner of Caribbean baseball. “For the first time, we will have eight teams participating in the tournament with the addition of Cuba and Curacao as special guests.”

Cuba and Curacao will join representatives from Colombia, Mexico, Panama, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic and Venezuela in the tournament. Puello Herrera said he is not ready to say whether Cuba and/or Curacao would remain in the event for 2024, when it is scheduled to be held at the Miami Marlins stadium in the Sun City’s Little Havana.

Giuseppe Palmisano, president of the Venezuelan Professional Baseball League (LVBP) and president of the organizing committee of the 2023 Caribbean Series, informed that the 2023 Caribbean classic will be held from February 2 to 10 in two stadiums in the metropolitan area of the Venezuelan capital.

Palmisano explained that a round robin will be played in each venue from February 2 to 8, the semifinals will be played on February 9 and the grand finale on February 10. He also said that the final schedule will be announced during the summer.

Cuba was one of the founders of the CBPC and dominated the first stage of the Caribbean Series (between 1949 and 1960), winning seven of 12 versions – including the last five – but left the entity when the government banned professional sports, including baseball, after the triumph of the socialist revolution in 1959.

Cuba returned to the Caribbean Series as a special guest in 2014 and even won the 2015 edition in Puerto Rico the following year, but was absent from the last three editions due to disagreements between Puello Herrera and the late president of the Cuban baseball federation, Higinio Velez, who passed away in May last year.

During the meeting with the media, the president of the Cuban Baseball Federation, Juan Reynaldo Pérez, informed that the creation of a winter league in Cuba is currently on the table to define the country’s representative in future editions of the Caribbean Series. As in the past, in 2023, the champion of the National Series will be the Cuban representative.

Unlike its neighbors, Curaçao does not have a strong professional league, but many of its players shine in the U.S. Major Leagues and represent the basis of the very good team that takes the Kingdom of the Netherlands to major international events, including the World Baseball Classic.

“We have Major League, minor league and other major event ballplayers who have already shown interest in being part of the team we will take to Caracas,” said Jedred Magdalena, president of the Curaçao Baseball Federation.

Venezuela has not hosted the Caribbean Series since 2014. In its last turn in the rotating order of venues, in February 2019, the event had to be emergency moved from Barquisimeto to the capital of Panama due to social and political problems in the South American nation.

“We hope to be up to the task and set the bar high for the next edition, in Miami. We are working hard to make the logistics work,” said Humberto Oropeza, president of Venezuela’s Cardenales de Lara and member of the organizing committee for the 2023 Caribbean Series.