Baseball Game
Facts about Venezuelan baseball:
- League Name: LVBP — Liga Venezolana de Béisbol Profesional (Venezuelan Professional Baseball League)
- There are 8 teams in the league.
- Tigres (Tigers)
- Leones (Lions)
- Navegantes (Mariners)
- Tiburones (Sharks)
- Cardinales (Cardinals)
- Águilas (Eagles)
- Bravos (Braves — or perhaps, the good-jobs!)
- Caribes (Caribbeans)
- All teams play 63 games during round robin phase one. Each of the top five from phase one play another 16 games in round robin phase two. The top two from that phase play a seven-game series for the championship.
- Interesting, but now defunct, franchise names:
- Sabios (Wisemen)
- Industriales (Industrials)
- Lácteos (Dairies)
- Cervecería (Brewery — kinda like the Milwaukee Brewers — has since become the Leones)
- Licoreros (Distilleries — more potent than the Breweries)
- Pastora (Shepherdess — direct translation…in reality might be something more fierce)
I’d love to see the Brewery up against the Dairy. I know those two don’t go well together in my stomach. I wonder if there would be the same adverse affect on the playing field.
So I went to a game a week or so ago with a group of people from the school. It was the Tiburones vs. the Cardinales. The stadium, which is the biggest in the league, holds 25,690. There were perhaps 5,000 people there. But these 5,000 people were having a really great time. I’d love to see it when it’s packed. Supposedly everyone throws beer cups when the home team hits a homer.
We were 22 rows up from first base. Pretty good seats for $3. And the beers were $.60 — also not bad, well, the price, that is.
The game itself was fairly exciting. We witnessed two home runs (both by the visiting team so no beer throwing), three beanballs, two ejections and some great heckling by the fans.
Enjoy the gallery.
Fino Cambur 
Sounds like a really good time. And I definitely agree that arapas need to be introduced to Safeco. We should get Felix to get on that! That would be homerun for all involved. I miss you!