UPDATE: CARIBBEAN SERIES MOVED TO PANAMA

After a week of speculation concerning whether the Caribbean Series would be played in Barquisimeto, Venezuela as planned, the Caribbean Professional Baseball Confederation (CBPC) announced Monday that the annual tournament has been moved from the strife-ridden nation to Panama City, where it will be held between February 4-10 at Rod Carew National Stadium, a 27,000-seat ballpark completed in 1999.  The event is being pushed back two days from its original February 2 start to allow organizers more time to put things together while completing the tournament in enough time for Major League Baseball minor leaguers to report on time to spring training camps in Arizona or Florida.

For the first time, six national champions will be represented at the Serie del Caribe, including the new host Herrera Toros, who are presently playing in Veracruz at the Latin American Series as titlists from the Panamanian Professional Baseball League, aka Probeis.  Other teams set to converge next week in Panama are the Santurce Cangrejeros (Puerto Rico), Orientales Estrellas (Dominican Republic), Lara Cardinales (Venezuela), Las Tunas Lenadores (Cuba) and either the Jalisco Charros or Obregon Yaquis, who are in the middle of the Mexican Pacific League championship series.

Rod Carew National Baseball Stadium, Panama

Although Panama is a last-minute Caribbean Series entry, the country is no stranger to the crown jewel of Latin baseball.  The Central American nation was one of four charter participants in the 1949 Serie del Caribe along with Cuba, Venezuela and Puerto Rico.  The Carta Vieja Yankees won the 1950 CS under manager Wayne Blackburn as Panama took part in the first twelve tournaments and hosted it three times before new dictator (and former pitcher) Fidel Castro pulled Cuba out after the 1960 event, which was ironically held in Panama City.  That move led to the CS shutting down for nine winters before starting back up in 1970 with Mexico and the Dominican Republic replacing Cuba and Panama in the four-team lineup.  Cuba returned to the fold on a temporary basis in 2014 while Panama is one of the countries in the mix for future Caribbean Series when the six-nation Latin American Series becomes a qualifying tournament for the CS next year.

Puro Beisbol editor Fernando Ballesteros cited sources as saying both Guadalajara and Santo Domingo also expressed interest in filling in as host.

Mexico to host CS semi-annually, Panama to rejoin field

Two major changes in the Caribbean Series were approved this month by the Caribbean Professional Baseball Confederation.  The CBPC signed off on Mexico as hosts of the annual event every two years instead of the traditional four-year cycle with Puerto Rico, Venezuela and the Dominican Republic while original CS member Panama will return in 2019 as a guest participant.

Radio station CMHW in Villa Clara, Cuba reports that the CBPC has determined that Mexico will host the Caribbean Series every odd year through 2028, starting in 2019.  Guadalajara, deemed a commercial success after hosting Pool D in this month's World Baseball Classic, will likely get the nod to host the CS in two years, placing another feather in the hat of Jalisco Charros owner Armando Navarro, whose high-octane activism to bring large-scale baseball events to Mexico's Second City appears to be going well.  Guadalajara has never hosted the Caribbean Series, but 13,000-seat Estadio Charros (pictured) has more than proven itself a worthy venue.

Things get a little cloudy after that.  Mazatlan's turn in Mexico's reconfigured CS rotation is due to come up in 2021, but the aging Estadio Teodoro Mariscal and the lack of progress on a new ballpark north of the Zona Dorado tourist area have combined to make the Pearl of the Pacific a questionable site in four years.  If a new ballpark isn't built or extensive Mariscal renovations completed by then, Mazatlan stands to miss their turn as CS host.  Mexicali would be next up in the Mexican cycle, followed by Hermosillo, Culiacan and now Guadalajara.

The scheduling format change came about after the CBPC determined that the other three nations in the host rotation lag well behind Mexico in terms of commercial viability for various reasons.  Cuba only returned to the CS in 2014 and has not hosted the event since then.  Radio Artemisa in Cuba reports that acting national baseball commissioner Yosvani Aragon says enough documentation and money are on hand to become full members of the CS (perhaps hosting as soon as 2021), but "everyone knows that behind all this is the U.S. government and the blockade" for Cuba's failure to host, a point of view echoed by CBPC president Juan Francisco Puello in Prensa Latina, the official state news agency of the island nation.

Also approved by the CBPC was the inclusion of Panama as guests in the Caribbean Series, starting in 2019.  Panama was one of the four original CS teams when the tournament began in 1949, winning the title one year later.  However, the CS went dark after Fidel Castro pulled Cuba out in 1960, and neither Cuba nor Panama returned when the event resumed in 1970.  Mexico and the Dominican Republic were admitted to fill out the four-nation field.  Puello says that Professional Baseball League of Panama (or "Probeis") officials will need documentation to indicate their house is in order if the former U.S. possession will be allowed to field a team at Guadalajara in 2019.

Probeis is a four-team circuit that began play in 2011.  Three of the four clubs share 27,000-seat Estadio Nacional Rod Carew in Panama City, a $25 million facility that opened in 1999.  Probeis sends its pennant-winning team to the Latin America Series, a de facto AA version of the Caribbean Series that also includes champions from Nicaragua, Colombia and Veracruz, Mexico (which has had its own winter league paralleling the Mexican Pacific League for years, but with a fraction of the LMP's support).  The Panama Metros represented the country at January's Serie Latinoamericana in Colombia, which was won by Nicaraguan titlists Chinandega.  Six Panama-born players appeared in MLB last season, including catcher Carlos Ruiz (now with Seattle) and infielder Ruben Tejada, currently in camp with the New York Yankees.

The next Caribbean Series is scheduled for Barquisimeto, Venezuela in February 2018.  Cuba will be back as a guest participant for a fifth time.  Puerto Rico was due to host the CS in 2019 (when Panama makes its return), but the CBPC's decision to move the tourney to Guadalajara that year pushes the Boricuans' turn back to 2020.