MIAMI -- The Caribbean Baseball Series, the championship event for winter leagues in three countries and Puerto Rico, will move to Miami's Orange Bowl in February, organizers announced Thursday.
The series, which began in 1949 and lapsed from 1960-1970 after the Communist takeover in Cuba, will be played on a round-robin basis by championship teams from leagues in the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Puerto Rico and Venezuela. Several teams in each league have major league players on their rosters.
The seven-day series has been rotated in past years among the four locations, and except for the years it has been played in Mexico has experienced occasional financial and attendance problems.
'One of the problems has been that if the home team has a bad start, the fans don't come,' said Carlos Isava of Venezuela, co-chairman of the series, who has been working for four years to bring it to Miami.
He also said in the years when interest is high, the stadiums are not big enough to handle the crowds.
Rick Horrow, president of Horrow Sports Ventures, one of the organizers, said the configuration of the Orange Bowl for baseball was still under consideration.
The football stadium is laid out in such a way that no matter where the baseball field is placed, one of the outfield fences will be closer to home plate than is acceptable by most baseball standards.
Horrow said the solution would be construction of an 'orange monster' wall similar to the 37-foot high wall at Fenway Park in Boston. It would be topped by a mesh fence, and any fly ball hit into the mesh, or netting, would be a ground-rule double. A fly ball over the wall and the netting would be a home run.
'The dimensions of the field are being worked on,' Horrow said. 'We are developing them with an eye toward preserving the integrity of the game.'
He said Ron Fraser, coach of the University of Miami baseball team, would be in charge of the baseball aspects of the series and would make sure the game itself is not changed.
The Orange Bowl was chosen because of its location in the heart of Miami's Latin community and because of its large capacity, Horrow said.
He said Miami was selected over 24 other possible cities, including six in the United States. He said one reason for Miami's selection was that many consider the city the capital of the Caribbean. It also offers sufficient hotel space and good transportation and communications facilities.
Horrow said he hoped attendance would average as high as 15,000-20,000 fans over the seven days beginning Feb. 3, and that the games would be televised in as many as eight countries, including the United States.
The last baseball game played in the Orange Bowl was in 1956 when 51,713 watched Hall of Fame pitcher Satchel Paige and the Columbus (Ohio) Jets play the minor league Miami Marlins.
