Puerto Rico Winter Baseball:

Format of Recent Seasons

The Regular Season

The six teams in the Puerto Rico Professional Baseball League (LBPPR) play a regular season, sometimes called the primera vuelta or first turn (perhaps from horse racing) of 50 games per team, mostly in November and December, half home and half away. There are no multi-game series as in North American baseball; if a team is home one day, it is probably on the road the next (but often visiting the same opponent). Most Mondays are "free days" with no games anywhere; in addition, almost all games are in the evening (or late afternoons on Sundays), making it rare that you can watch more than one game the same day.

Year-by-Year Variations

In 1999, the regular season was seriously hampered by rain. In 2000, the start of the season was delayed for the controversial Presidential election. To compensate for the late start, about once a week doubleheaders were scheduled for all teams; there were additional doubleheaders in the original schedule. In addition to the league-wide vacation days, ample reasignaciones were scheduled to accommodate rainouts. Most were unnecessary, as rain mostly took the form of playable drizzle.

In 2001, the regular season was an asymmetrical 54 games. The three metro teams were grouped, as was Caguas with the two western teams. Each team hosted opponents within the group 6 times and other opponents 5 times. But the top four teams qualified for the playoffs without regard to group. There were no days reserved for reasignaciones; rainouts would be rescheduled as doubleheaders. This was another bad guess; Hurricane Michelle (which came as close as Cuba) left three feet of water in some metro city streets and afterward, a dozen doubleheaders. In 2002, the schedule went back to a symmetrical 50 games (5 games hosted against each of the 5 opponents) and the reasignaciones returned. The biggest schedule news in 2002 was the expansion of the Caribbean Series, resulting in a later finish for Caribbean baseball that required a petition to Major League Baseball.

Championship and Caribbean Series

In the new year, the top four teams in the league enter a best-of-7 semifinals and a best-of-9 finals. However, in 2003-04, with the Crabbers and the new Senators sharing the Bithorn and with both making the playoffs, the league changed the first round of the playoffs to a 12-game round robin (which was also done for a decade a generation ago). Each of the four teams played every other one two games at home and two games away, evidently without regard for the order of finish in the regular season.

The Puerto Rico champion is entered in the Caribbean Series, recently a 12-game round robin against the winners of the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, and the winter (Pacific) league of México.

Amateur League

In the summer, there is an amateur league, the Double-A league, with four divisions of 6 teams each. They play almost all their games on Saturday and Sunday. Lovely concrete municipal stadiums seat perhaps 1000 throughout the island. A few of them are former homes for teams in the LBPPR. It would be a much larger job to visit all these and report on their hidden treasures.

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