Professional baseball returns to Puerto Rico

[NewEnglandAmazins]

SEPTEMBER 8TH - Jose Andreu Garcia, league president of the Puerto Rican Professional Baseball League formally announced that the start of the 2008-09 season will be on November 6th. This announcement follows the cancellation of the 2007-08 season due to the economic hardship of the league and team owners. All six teams return to participate in this season’s full schedule with the highlight being the return of the storied Santurce Crabbers franchise. In 2004 Mets infielder Jose (Tony) Valentin purchased the franchise rights and moved the team to his home town of Manatí, Puerto Rico changing its name to the Athenians of Manatí. For the upcoming season, the Santurce Crabbers will play at Hiram Bithorn Stadium just outside of San Juan, Puerto Rico. The other five teams who will play in the league are the Indios de Mayaguez, Leones de Ponce, Gigantes de Carolina and the Criollos de Caguas.

In a release to the press, Jose Andreu also announced that the league will now be known as the Puerto Rico Baseball League with a new image and logo created a new marketing team that will work to promote the league and its games. The league will also have a new website. The release also announced the detatils of the Rookie player draft that will be held during the week of September 15th. At this draft, native Puerto Rican players who have not participated in the league, the last two years, will be selected by the six clubs.


Source: http://www.ebeisbol.com/index.html

[Rally Monkey]

This is obviously fantastic news. Thanks for the update.

[Richard]

Great! Hopefully it is managed better than before and the star Puerto Rican players get involved.

[DaClyde]

Now when can some company produce a low-budget set of baseball cards for this, so we can finally get something that covers all leagues involved in the Caribbean Series?

[Paul Wendt]

Source: http://www.ebeisbol.com/index.html

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The other five teams who will play in the league are the Indios de Mayaguez, Leones de Ponce, Gigantes de Carolina and the Criollos de Caguas.
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That is only four other teams but it is correctly quoted.

[geezer]

The other team left unmentioned is the Arecibo Wolverines (Lobos de Arecibo).

[beisbolfiebre]

WPIX used to present Winter Ball from Borinquen (Puerto Rico's original name) back in the 1960s. What a delight it was to see the likes of Roberto Clemente, Julio Gotay, Jose Pagan, Luis Arroyo, and Vic Power. For the life of me, I cannot understand why baseball went into such a decline in PR since there was no corresponding increase in the popularity of balompié (football).

A few years ago it was rumored that the MLB draft disrupted local baseball growth by moving players from their home town to minor league and instructional ball. Don't know for sure if this is the cause but would like to know what the problem really is.

[Richard]

Does anyone know if the Puerto Rico Winter League is doing better this time?