The Dominican Winter Baseball League (Spanish: Liga Dominicana de Béisbol Invernal) is a winter baseball league consisting of six baseball teams spread across the Dominican Republic; it is the top domestic baseball league in that country. The league's players include many from Major League Baseball, and its champion plays each year in the Caribbean Series.
Each team plays a fifty-game schedule that begins the end of October and runs to the end of December. The top four teams engage in a 18 game round-robin play-off the first three weeks of January; the top two teams in those standings then play a best-of-nine series for the national title. The league's champion advances to the Caribbean Series to play against the champions of Mexico, Venezuela, and Puerto Rico.
[edit] Teams and their home cities
[edit] Former teams
[edit] History
Baseball was introduced in the Caribbean in 1866 by U.S. sailors loading sugar in the then Spanish colony of Cuba.[citation needed] Eight years later, in 1874, the first organized game of baseball was played between Cuban teams. In the years to come it would be Cuba which would spread baseball throughout the Caribbean. When the Ten Years' War (1868-1878) in Cuba brought turmoil to the colony, many Cubans fled their country and migrated to the Dominican Republic, bringing with them the game called "baseball" or "béisbol". The sport turned competitive in the 1920s when baseball games began being played against neighboring countries Dominican teams were competing.
[edit] Founding teams
In the early 1900s, four Dominican teams formed. These teams still exist today, and form the foundation of Dominican professional baseball:
- Tigres del Licey (1907)
- Estrellas Orientales (1911)
- Sandino, later renamed Las Águilas (1937)
- Leones del Escogido (1921)
[edit] Championship history
[edit] See also
| Dominican Winter Baseball League | | | | |
