The Caribbean Winter League

There is a quaint term Americans use to describe baseball’s off-season – the hot stove league.

This refers to the period between October and February when baseball players are honing their golf skills and recovering from their painfully long 7 month work-year. Team owners are making trades and fixing to increase ticket prices. Baseball aficionados are sitting around their hot stoves contemplating the new season and wishing that summer would arrive quickly.

Indeed, as I write it is wickedly cold in the northern climes of North America (can it really be minus 38 in Minnesota today)? People may indeed literally being sitting around hot stoves sipping buckets of hot grog.

Last week I had the pleasure of visiting the Dominican Republic for the 2nd time in as many years (in my constant search for international schools). There the winter baseball league is in full swing. Each of six teams plays a 50 game schedule and then the best advance to the Caribbean Series to play against the champions from Mexico, Puerto Rico and Venezuela.

If you have had enough ice-fishing, snow-shoeing or blizzard watching, then board the next plane and head south – far south where the sound of a ball hitting a bat can be heard just above the warm trade winds.