
This is our second in the series of articles to help our readers understand that baseball is not over after the last game of the world Series. While the baseball season winds down and ends in October, baseball takes on a continuance in the Caribbean where many professional baseball players head south to play in many of the teams in countries like Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Venezuela and other countries some outside of the Caribbean.
Here is a bit of history on Dominican Baseball.
The Dominican League, in Spanish Liga de Béisbol Profesional de la República Dominicana (LIDOM), also known as the Dominican Winter League, in Spanish Liga Dominicana de Béibol Invernal, is a winter league based in the Dominican Republic. The league consists of six teams with players mainly from Major League Baseball teams. The league was founded in 1951 but didn’t move its schedule to the winter until the 1955/1956 season. The league’s champion has represented the nation in the Caribbean Series since the 1970 tournament. A Dominican team has won the series a record seventeen times.
The tournament was not held on 1961-62, 1962-63 and 1965-66 due to social and political conflicts happening in the country.
The LIDOM currently has six teams that play in a 50-game league round from October to December, the Serie Regular. The top four teams advance to another round robin of eighteen games per team in January. The top two teams from the round robin go on to a nine-game championship series to determine the league’s champion. The league champion then goes on to the Caribbean Series.
