The first Puerto Rican baseball game was played on January 9, 1898, at the Velodrome of Stop 15 in Santurce. Anos Iglesias Van Pelt, who organized the game, was one of the pitchers.
Van Pelt was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1879, and his father, Emilio Iglesias, was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Van Pelt learned to play baseball as a child in the United States. When he moved to Puerto Rico at age 16, he noticed that baseball was not played there.
Moreover, Van Pelt connected with some Cubans in Puerto Rico since they were also familiar with baseball. Braulio Sánchez was one of the Cuban guys he met, and Van Pelt saw him holding a bat and a ball. They came together and organized a team of Cuban baseball players. On the other side, there were three Puerto Ricans, Manuel del Valle, Eduardo Saldaña, and Jesús Cabañas, who also spent time in Cuba and taught fellow Puerto Ricans to play baseball.
This resulted in a Puerto Rican team called Borinquen and a Cuban team called Almendares. Van Pelt pitched for Borinquen since he was Puerto Rican and faced off against his Cuban buddy Sánchez. The game barely lasted and was called due to rain, with Borinquen leading 3-0 in the third inning. Nevertheless, it still set the groundwork for baseball in Puerto Rico. The first full game was played on January 30, 1989, and Borinquen won again 9-3.
The game has thrived in Puerto Rico, and we have seen various players excel in Liga de Béisbol Professional de Puerto Rico, established in 1938. It was renamed after the best Puerto Rican player in Major League Baseball history, Roberto Clemente, in 2012 to Liga de Béisbol Profesional Roberto Clemente.
Right-handed pitcher Hiram Bithorn was the first MLB player from Puerto Rico. He made his MLB debut in 1942 for the Chicago Cubs.
According to Baseball Reference, 308-born position players from Puerto Rico have played in MLB alongside 98 pitchers. Sandy Alomar, Alex Cora, Joe Espada, Charlie Montoyo, and Edwin Rodriguez are the only Puerto Rican-born managers to manage in the MLB.
Puerto Rico has competed in every Caribbean Series since it began in Havana, Cuba, in 1949 and has won 16 club championships as a country, which trails the leader, the Dominican Republic, by six for the most ever with 22.
Puerto Rico has also qualified for all six World Baseball Classics since its inauguration in 2006, but it lost to Team USA 8-0 in the 2017 finals at Petco Park in San Diego.
They’ve played in the Pam American Games, the Central American and Caribbean Games, the Intercontinental Cup, the Baseball World Cup, and the Caribbean Cup. They won one gold medal in the Pam American Games in 1951 and three gold medals in the Central American and Caribbean games in 1966, 1993, and 2010. They got a silver medal in the inaugural Intercontinental Cup in 1973 and lost to Japan in the gold medal game. They won the Baseball World Cup once in 1951 by beating Venezuela in the gold medal game. Puerto Rico won one Caribbean Cup in 2022 when they beat Cuba Nassau Bahamas at Andre Rodgers Stadium.
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