Baseball The king of sports in Venezuela?

Venezuela is perhaps the only South American country where Baseball has more followers than soccer and is considered by sports specialists as the king of the nation's sport, this theoretically since that statement has been doubted for a long time. A game of the Lions of Caracas against the Navegantes de Magallanes de Carabobo, both belonging together with 6 other teams to the Professional Baseball League of Venezuela, the main one in the country; for decades it has totally paralyzed the nation, counting about 20,000 spectators considered lucky, who witness the matches directly in the stadium each time their teams face each other. While the other teams in the League play in an area where about 15,000,000 inhabitants live, half of those born in Venezuela and the vast majority are followers of the sport.

baseball ahead.

But it is that baseball in Venezuela took root along with the growth of the nascent oil industry and its marked influence in North America, consolidating itself in 1941 when the Venezuelan Amateur Baseball Team was titled champion of the World Series of the specialty played in Havana , Cuba, repeating the titles for the years 1944 and 1945. Thus becoming the first achievements of the nation in team sports, which led to a general euphoria and fanaticism that is still lived today.

Silent fanaticism.

But already in the late eighties and early nineties, soccer in Venezuela made these baseball matches seem like only amateur matches when teams like Deportivo Táchira received Marítimo in an atmosphere worthy of the best leagues in the world. Caracas, Estudiantes or ULA both from Mérida, filling their headquarters at the "Pueblo Nuevo" stadium with 40,000 spectators or when those same teams from Mérida as in their former headquarters in "Soto Rosa" hosted their maximum capacity, approximately 15,000 spectators while the the whole city breathed and talked about soccer all week.

From Guyana to the south east of the country, two teams Mineros and Minerven, walked around the country an exquisite game that caused general admiration not only in the country but on the continent, while in the capital a pharmaceutical group began to invest in one of the most successful soccer projects in national football Caracas FC.

All this led to the fact that at the beginning of the current century, Doctor Richard Páez Monzón, first leading Estudiantes de Mérida to the quarterfinals of the 1999 Copa Libertadores de América and then leading the "vinotinto", united the country around to the greatest sporting passion known to date: the “Boom vinotinto”.

Beyond transforming a losing team on the field beforehand into one that faced and beat the greats of South America, giving their irreverence when playing high-level shows, managed to bring together financing, marketing, identity and for the first time in long time sense of belonging in all Venezuelans.

This phenomenon, despite the obvious failures in the federative structures, has been maintained until today, with relative stability for five different cycles, and there has been a litter of stars that shine in the most important leagues around the world and that definitely give football the title of the king of sport in Venezuela, a title that must be endorsed with the achievement of a title at the international level, beyond the world runner-up in the U-20 category achieved by Venezuela.

images Pixabay y Meridiano

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Dango