Baseball in Venezuela

Baseball is Venezuela's leading sport.

History
Baseball in Venezuela originates with the early twentieth century cultural influence of United States oil companies, introduced in the country at the end of the 1910s and at the beginning of the 1920s by American immigrants and workers from the exploding oil industry in the country.

Baseball's definitive explosion in Venezuela was in 1941, the year of the Baseball World Cup in Havana when the national team beat Cuba in the finals. This team was consecrated by the press and the fans as "Los Héroes del '41" (The Heroes of '41). Since that year, baseball has transformed into the nation's most popular sport, a status it enjoys till today. Buoyed by this success, the sport took on a life on its own, and in 1945, the Venezuelan Professional Baseball League (VPBL) was established as the country's primary baseball league.

The VPBL is a winter league that was established in 1945, with Leones del Caracas the leading team; another leading club is Valencia's Navegantes del Magallanes, established in 1917. There are currently 8 teams in the league. There is a Venezuelan Summer League established in 1997 and composed of teams affiliated with Major League Baseball (MLB) clubs. The Liga paralela is a secondary Venezuelan winter league, with the teams acting as farm teams for VPBL clubs. In 2021, the Venezuelan Major League, a summer league circuit, was launched.

Venezuelan teams have won the Caribbean Series a number of times. The Venezuela national baseball team won the Baseball World Cup several times in the 1940s, and the baseball tournament at the Pan American Games in 1959. The team finished 7th in the inaugural World Baseball Classic and 3rd in the 2009 event, but has dropped to 10th in the 2013 event.

Over 350 Venezuelans have played in Major League Baseball since 1939, with 59 Venezuelans playing in MLB as of Opening Day 2014, the second most from any country (after the Dominican Republic). The Luis Aparicio Award was established in 2004, in honor of Luis Aparicio, the only Venezuelan ballplayer to have been inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. The award is given annually to honor the Venezuelan player who recorded the best individual performance in Major League Baseball, as voted on by sports journalists in Venezuela.

Six MLB teams maintained training academies in Venezuela in 2010, down from 21 in 2002. Possible reasons for the decline include strained relations between the U.S. and Venezuela and the increasingly ubiquitous presence of MLB teams in the country creating more competition for talent there.

In November 2011 Washington Nationals catcher Wilson Ramos was kidnapped while home to play for his Venezuelan winter league team, Tigres de Aragua. Two days later he was rescued unharmed by police commandos in the mountains of Carabobo state. Eight people were arrested in connection with the kidnapping.

Out of the 50 players involved in the 2012 Major League Baseball World Series, 9 were Venezuelan.

International Free Agency in Venezuela

The morality of the international free agency process in nations such as Venezuela is often questioned due to various reasons. Money-hungry agents prey on naive and underprivileged latino baseball players in attempts to pocket as much of their signing bonuses as possible. As a result of this exploitation, many opt to attend baseball academies rather than school, which leaves them without education. These academies are often very low quality, with their main purpose being to hide players that are too young to officially sign from other teams that are scouting talent in the same area.

Players are led on by these teams by being promised free visas, even though they do not have enough to fulfill all of the promises they make. Organizations and agents often crush the dreams of these baseball players through false promises and exploitation, and get away with these acts due to the lack of regulation and laws surrounding the exploitation of young athletes. Major League Baseball is aware of this issue, however due to the current system providing the league with cheaper talent, there is no urgency to resolve any existing issues.