Today, baseball is a popular sport around the world with numerous countries practicing it at amateur and professional levels.
The Caribbean Series, also called Caribbean World Series, is the highest tournament for professional baseball teams in Latin America. The tournament location is rotated annually among the countries and is normally played in February after all of the leagues have ended their national tournaments.
In professional sports, scouts are experienced talent evaluators who travel extensively for the purposes of watching athletes play their chosen sports and determining whether their set of skills and talents represent what is needed by the scout's organization. Some scouts are interested primarily in the selection of prospects, younger players who may require further development by the acquiring team but who are judged to be worthy of that effort and expense for the potential future payoff that it could bring, while others concentrate on players who are already polished professionals whose rights may be available soon, either through free agency or trading, and who are seen as filling a team's specific need at a certain position. Advance scouts watch the teams that their teams are going to play in order to help determine strategy.
The Major League Baseball Players Association is the collective bargaining representative for all current Major League Baseball players. All players, managers, coaches, and athletic trainers who hold or have held a signed contract with a Major League club are eligible for membership in the Association.
The Leones del Caracas are a Venezuelan baseball team that currently plays in the Venezuelan Professional Baseball League. They have won 20 league championships.
The Dominican Summer League (DSL) is a branch of affiliated Minor League Baseball which is played in the Dominican Republic. The league was founded in 1985. After the demise of the Venezuelan Summer League after the 2015 season, it is the only Latin America-based rookie league.
The Dominican Republic Professional Baseball League or LIDOM by its acronym in Spanish, is a winter professional baseball league consisting of six teams spread across the Dominican Republic; it is the highest level of professional baseball league in the Dominican Republic. The league's players include many prospects that go on to play in Major League Baseball in the United States while also signing many current MLB veterans. The champion of LIDOM advances to play in the yearly Caribbean Series.
The Venezuelan Professional Baseball League or Liga Venezolana de Béisbol Profesional (LVBP) is the professional baseball league in Venezuela. The league's champion takes part in the Caribbean Series each year.
The Inter-American League was a high-level circuit in Minor league baseball that lasted only three months before folding during the 1979 season.
Wayne Maurice Gomes[goms] is an American former professional baseball relief pitcher. He played in Major League Baseball (MLB) from 1997 through 2002 for the Philadelphia Phillies, San Francisco Giants, and Boston Red Sox. Listed at 6' 2", 215 lb., Gomes batted and threw right handed.
Jorge E. Pérez-Díaz served as Secretary of Justice of Puerto Rico from 1991 to 1992. He was appointed by former Governor Rafael Hernández Colón. Prior to becoming the Secretary of Justice, Pérez-Díaz served as Prosecutor General of Puerto Rico from 1989 to 1991. He is currently Major League Baseball's Senior Vice President and Special Counsel, Litigation and International Affairs.
Sex work in Venezuela is legal and regulated. The country's Ministry of Health and Social Development requires sex workers to carry identification cards and to have monthly health checkups. Prostitution is common, particularly in Caracas and in other domestic tourist destinations. The Venezuelan sex work industry arose in conjunction with the oil industry of the twentieth century and continues today.
Venezuela is a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children trafficked for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and forced labor. Venezuela's political, economic, and social concerns contribute to the factors and types of human trafficking in the country. In particular, the severe poverty in Venezuela has increased the rate of human trafficking. Venezuelan women and girls are trafficked within the country for sexual exploitation, lured from poor regions in the nation's interior to urban and tourist areas. Victims are recruited through false job offers and subsequently forced into prostitution or conditions of labor exploitation. Child prostitution in urban areas and child sex tourism in resort destinations such as Margarita Island appear to be growing. Venezuelan women and girls are trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation to Western Europe and Mexico, in addition to Caribbean destinations such as Trinidad and Tobago, Aruba, and the Dominican Republic. Men, women, and children from Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, and the People's Republic of China are trafficked to and through Venezuela and may be subjected to commercial sexual exploitation and forced labor. U.S. State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons placed the country in "Tier 3" in 2017, a category for countries whose governments do not fully comply with the minimum standards and are not making significant efforts to do so.
Baseball in Venezuela originates with the early twentieth century cultural influence of United States oil companies, and is the country's leading sport. Baseball was introduced in Venezuela at the end of the 1910s and at the beginning of the 1920s by American immigrants and workers from the exploding oil industry. Baseball's definitive explosion in Venezuela was in 1941, following the worldwide championships 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".
Jorge Pasquel was a Mexican businessman and sports executive. He was president of the Mexican League and owned interests in several teams at a time when the league recruited from Negro league baseball and Major League Baseball, creating a big threat to the Major League talent level. Jorge Pasquel brought racial integration to professional baseball and had a big role when Jackie Robinson debuted in 1947 with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Mr Pasquel died in a plane crash in 1955. He was inducted into the Mexican Professional Baseball Hall of Fame in 1971.
Cecil Herbert Raybourn was a professional baseball playerprofessional baseball player, scout, and New York Yankees Director of Latin American Operations who, in 1990, discovered and signed Panamanian MLB Hall of Famer Mariano Rivera.
Baseball is the most popular sport in the Dominican Republic. It is a major sport in the country, and was introduced in the late-19th century in the city of San Pedro de Macorís by Cuban immigrants. After the United States, the Dominican Republic has the second-highest number of baseball players in Major League Baseball (MLB). The Dominican Republic national baseball team has won the Baseball World Cup in 1948 and the World Baseball Classic in 2013.
Tucupita José Marcano is a Venezuelan professional baseball infielder for the Pittsburgh Pirates of Major League Baseball (MLB). He previously played in MLB for the San Diego Padres.