Dominican Winter Baseball League
 |
|
| Sport | Baseball |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1951 |
| No. of teams | 6 |
| Country | Dominican Republic |
| Most recent champion(s) |
Tigres del Licey |
| Official website | lidom.com |
The Dominican Republic Professional Baseball League (Spanish: Liga de Béisbol Profesional de la República Dominicana) or LIDOM by its acronym in Spanish, is a winter professional baseball league consisting of six teams spread across the Dominican Republic; it is the highest level of professional baseball league in the Dominican Republic. The league's players include many prospects that go on to play in Major League Baseball in the United States while also signing many current MLB veterans. The champion of LIDOM advances to play in the yearly Caribbean Series.
Each team plays a fifty-game round-robin schedule that begins at the middle of October and runs to the end of December. The top four teams engage in another round-robin schedule with 18 games per team from the end of December to the end of January; the top two teams in those standings then play a best-of-nine series for the national title. The league's champion advances to the Caribbean Series to play against the representatives from Mexico, Venezuela, Cuba and Puerto Rico.
The current champion of LIDOM are the Tigres del Licey, who won the National Championship nine-game Series (5-4) versus theirs opponents Águilas Cibaeñas.
For his close involvement in the Dominican league's establishment and early development, Pedro Miguel Caratini (born ca. 1880) has been called "the father of Dominican baseball".
During the years 1930-1963, military dictator General Rafael Trujillo can be credited with furthering the sport of baseball in Dominican Republic. Trujillo encouraged many sugar refineries to create teams of cane cutting laborers to play baseball during the idle months of cultivation. Fostering high levels of competition, the organization structure continued to mature stimulating growth in the intensity and popularity of the game.
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Wikipedia