The Playoff Picture Starts to Clear

With the semifinal round of the Venezuelan baseball league a third of the way completed, it looks like three teams will be fighting to finish in the top two spots and qualify for the championship series. Fortunately I am well-qualified to analyze two of them as I made the trip to Maracay yesterday to watch a second installment of the Tigers-Sharks rivalry. You may remember that on Monday I witnessed their first encounter, with the Tigers coming out 13-7 winners. Since then the Sharks had not lost again, winning three straight. The Tigers, on the other hand, had dropped two out of three, and another loss would have left them in big trouble since the defending champion Anzoátegui Carribeans had gotten off to a piping hot 5-0 start.


Maracay is a medium-sized city located about two hours west of Caracas, and the capital of the state of Aragua. It is not particularly beckoning to tourists or full of cultural sites to visit, but it does have one claim to fame- it is the birthplace of Venezuelan aviation. It is still home to a large air force base and in fact, Lieutenant Colonel Hugo Chávez was stationed in Maracay when he launched his part in the failed 1992 coup attempt against President Carlos Andres Pérez. 

The Aragua Tigers shared Maracay's mostly undistinguished history for much of its own. They did not win a championship for 28 years after their back-to-back 1975-76 triumphs led by none other than the unlikely combination of  David Concepcion and Rod Carew. Indeed the Tigers often finished at the bottom of the table during that time and attendance struggled. They finally ended their drought in 2004, thanks mostly to the exploits of hometown hero Miguel Cabrera. Cabrera starred on the team for the next several years as they won five of the next six championships, culminating with their first Caribbean Series (played against the winners of the Dominican, Puerto Rican, and Mexican leagues) title in 2009. Cabrera is now barred in his contract with the Detroit Tigers from playing in the Venezuelan League, but he is still revered in Maracay.

This year's team has suffered from a mixture of tragedy and bad luck, and currently is missing four regular players due to injury, not including the tragically-deceased Rosman García. Nevertheless the team and its fans seem to believe that they still possess the magic from recent years. They have scraped by on good pitching and timely hitting most of the year, led by ace Yohan Pino. Most of their batters have struggled at times, Wilson Ramos most notably and understandably, and the now-injured Lastings Milledge actually led the team in hitting during the first round. But they added Yusmeiro Petit, and his league-best 75 strikeouts, in the pre-semifinals draft, and Edgardo Alfonzo is hitting a cool .500 thus far to lead the league in the round robin.

The Sharks, on the other hand, boast a fearsome lineup that had three of the league's top four hitters during the first round, and added last year's championship series hero Luis Jiménez in the mid-season draft. Center fielder Gregor Blanco has been the catalyst at the top of the lineup, while Japanese League legend Alex Cabrera is about to move up to second place all-time in the list of home run hitters in Venezuelan League history. They have also been getting spectacular play at shortstop from Reds prospect Miguel Rojas, who may be becoming my favorite player. Their pitching, though, is fairly ordinary leading up to their superstar closer Francisco Rodriguez.

The Aragua stadium is smaller and less impressive than its Caracas counterpart despite recent renovations that have improved it after decades of neglect. Its location, though, is spectacular at the foot of a small mountain rage, over which lies the Carribbean Sea. The Tigers got off to a great start, knocking out opposing starter Zack Kroenke before he recorded an out. They ultimately scored three runs in the first inning and were on the cusp of ending the game as a contest before it really began. The Sharks never really threatened as the innings progressed, and the Tigers cruised home to a 5-0 win behind the stellar pitching of Petit.

Nice view

As the outcome of the game became clearer, one of the more entertaining spectacles to watch became the banter between fans and beer vendors. First of all, in almost any setting in Venezuela it is acceptable to call somebody you don't know by any name you choose. 'Mi pana' (my buddy) and 'Hermano' (bro) are particularly popular, but my friend I stayed with in September likes to call everyone 'Cachete,' which means cheek (I don't know either), and I was assured that I could use any name or noun that I desired. So my personal favorite was the man in front of me who called the beer man 'Julio' despite the fact that it definitely was not his name.

This is to show the beer at the top left, I swear.

Next, as in the U.S. there are beer vendors who move through the crowd pitching their merchandise and taking orders. However here there are also waiters/maitre d's who stand in front of sections of fans. They will take an order from you and keep a tab on a piece of cardboard they carry. When you choose to close your tab you simply hold up the cups of all the beers you bought and pay up. As the game continues these orchestrators also determine if anyone needs to be cut off, which is not an unusual occurrence. In Venezuela, I would say that the affordability of liquids runs in this order, from most expensive to cheapest:

Soda (15 bolivares for 12 oz. is normal)
Juice (10 bolivares for a can)
(tie) Water (8 bolivares for a bottle)
(tie) Beer (8 bolivares for a bottle)
Gasoline (.10 bolivares for a liter)

(4.3 bolivares:1 dollar at the official exchange rate; more like 8 bolivares:1 dollar on the black market)

I haven't decided yet if this is madness or genius. With prices like that it is no wonder that exchanges between fans become more colorful as the game progresses. By the time the game was ending there was a spirited debate between two gentlemen about whether or not 10 beers was a respectable number at which to quit.

In any case, following the conclusion of games today, the league standings are as such:

Anzoátegui Carribeans 5-1
La Guaira Sharks 4-2
Aragua Tigers 3-2
Magallanes Navigators 2-4
Zulia Eagles 0-5

The Carribbeans have benefited from playing three games against Magallanes and two against Zulia, so their start is not as impressive as it might seem. The best case scenario for me is for the Tigers and Sharks to make it to the finals because they are the two closest teams to me and because they have the best names. Next on my to-see list is a trip to Valencia to see the country's most popular team, Magallanes.