Dominican Winter Baseball League

Infobox sports league
logo=
sport=Baseball
founded=1951
teams=6
country=DOM
champion=Águilas Cibaeñas
website= [http://www.lidom.com lidom.com]

The Dominican Winter Baseball League ( _es. Liga Dominicana de Béisbol Invernal) is a winter baseball league consisting of six baseball teams spread across the Dominican Republic. The league's players include many from Major League Baseball, and its champion plays each year in the Caribbean Series.

Each team plays a fifty-game schedule that begins the end of October and runs to the end of December. The top four teams engage in a 16 game round-robin play-off the first three weeks of January; the top two teams in those standings then play a best-of-nine series for the national title. The league's champion advances to the Caribbean Series to play against the champions of Mexico, Venezuela, and Puerto Rico.

Teams and their home cities

*Águilas Cibaeñas (Santiago)
*Azucareros del Este (La Romana)
*Estrellas Orientales (San Pedro de Macorís)
*Gigantes del Cibao (San Francisco de Macorís)
*Leones del Escogido (Santo Domingo)
*Tigres del Licey (Santo Domingo)

Former Teams

*Caimanes Del Sur (San Cristóbal)

History

Baseball was introduced in the Caribbean in 1866 by U.S. sailors loading sugar in the then Spanish colony of Cuba.Fact|date=February 2007 Eight years later in 1874 the first organized game of baseball was played between Cuban teams. In the years to come it would be Cuba who would spread baseball throughout the Caribbean. When the Ten Years' War (1868-1878) in Cuba brought turmoil to the colony, many Cubans fled their country and migrated to the Dominican Republic, bringing with them the game called "Baseball" or "Béisbol".

Founding teams

In the early 1900s, four Dominican teams formed. These teams still exist today, and form the foundation of Dominican professional baseball:

*Tigres del Licey (1906)
*Estrellas Orientales (1911)
*Sandino (later renamed Las Águilas) (1921)
*Leones del Escogido (1921)
*Gigantes del Cibao (1996)

Championship History

ee also

* Caribbean World Series