Ampliar

Ampliar

Ampliar

Ampliar

Even though the controversy has never ever died down altogether, most of sport researchers and historians point to American Alexander ”Joe” Cartwright as the “Founding Father of Baseball,” thanks in part to his contributions to this massive pastime.

Baseball, as we know it today, is the resulting mixture of several games, especially Great Britain's cricket and rounder, two sports that came and settled down in the U.S. in the 18th century.

Mr. Cartwright, a New York City banker born in 1820, managed to whip those games played at the time into a new kind of sport that soon spread all across the country and spilled over the U.S. boundaries, since American sailors used to play it during their spare time while their vessels were anchored offshore.

This is how baseball reached this corner of the world. Batos, batey... Indians used to play... baseball! In pre-Hispanic America, Taino Indians used to play a game in a rudimentary way that remarkably resembled today's baseball. They called it batos, a term considered by many as the root of the English word bat.

Maybe because it's a game with clear-cut antecedents harking back to the indigenous civilization and because of the profound roots this sport has grown throughout several generations, baseball in Cuba has turned into a sort of activity deeply ingrained in the lives of all Cubans. In the 19th century, its passionate attraction swept away the public's preference for bullfighting –eventually banned as it was considered too bloody a practice.

Cuba: a major world scenario for baseball Either way, baseball spread like a prairie wildfire all across Cuba, chiefly in Havana and Matanzas, two provinces that put together their own teams to play the first-ever official game on the island nation on December 27, 1874 in the grounds of the Matanzas' Palmar del Junco Ballpark, still a living relic that's beaten the pass of time.

Among the players that took the field in that historic ballgame, there were such names as Esteban Bellan and Enrique Sabourin. Mr. Sabourin was not only a ballplayer and team head coach, but also a Cuban patriot who fought for the independence of Cuba, who was banished and eventually passed away on the island of Ceuta.

For his part, Mr. Bellan lived in the United States for seven years (1867-1874) and after playing for several clubs, he was finally hired to play with the New York Mutuals. He went down in history books as the first Latin American player ever to join a U.S. professional baseball team.

The development of the game in Havana and Matanzas gave rise to the first national championship on December 29, 1878.

All along the past century, Cuban ballplayers have scored unforgettable heroics in Central American, Pan American and world tournaments, as well as in Olympic Games and Intercontinental Cup competition.

Baseball passion in Latin America In other Latin American nations, like Venezuela, the baseball fever popped up in 1941 after that country clinched a world title in Havana in that same year. The Venezuelan Baseball Professional League was officially founded in 1945, whose first championship took place a year later in 1946 and has continued nonstop ever since. The league's first expansion team was the Lara Cardinals in 1964 and the Zulia Eagles four years later. The most recent expansion clubs came into being in 1991 with the addition of the Eastern Caribs and the Cabimas Oilers. The latter was eventually dubbed Pastora de los Llanos (Shepherdess of the Plains).

In the meantime, the Dominican Republic's professional baseball league kicked off as far back as 1890 with a couple of pro teams: Ozama and New Club. In 1907, the Licey showed up, a team born out of the merge of the existing three clubs at the time that reigned with no match for a number of years. The resulting new ball club was the Escogido (Selected), whose official foundation harks back to February 21, 1921.

Mexico put together its own baseball federation in 1943, in lieu of the fact that not all states took part in it at the onset. In the late 20th century, there were 32 representative organizations in the country, plus five sport organizations, all of them attached to the Mexican Baseball Federation.

On April 25, 1987, the federation turned into a civil association whose main goals lie in the organization, development and spreading of baseball in all categories and competition levels with a view to garner international recognition.