Estadio Quisqueya Juan Marichal, built in 1955, is the most historic ballpark in the Caribbean.
But Juan Francisco Puello Herrera, the commissioner of the Confederacion de Beisbol Profesional del Caribe, doesn’t hold the ballpark, which has hosted 10 Caribbean Series, in particularly high regard.
“I compare it to garbage. I have written many times that attention must be paid to this, I have promised not to talk about it anymore because it falls on deaf ears,” he said in Spanish on D’AGENDA, a Sunday show broadcast on Dominican network Telesistema.
Puello, who previously served as president of LIDOM, the island nation’s winter league, thinks the old ballpark, which is the home of the Tigres del Licey and the current Caribbean Series champion Leones del Escogido, is long overdue for replacement.
“The stadium (Quisqueya) has already completed its life cycle for years. What needs to be done is a stadium with the conditions required, and there is no need to spend a lot of money,” Puello said on D’AGENDA.
Built with a design similar to Bobby Maduro Miami Stadium, a ballpark in Miami that held 13,500 people and was built in 1949, Estadio Quisqueya Juan Marichal was opened in October 1955 as Estadio Trujillo, named after the then-military dictator of the Dominican Republic, Rafael Trujillo. It has undergone several renovations, and currently has a capacity of around 14,500, roughly average for the four leagues that comprise the CBPC. The ballpark has the second-largest capacity in the Dominican Republic, behind Estadio Cibao, the home of the Aguilas Cibaenas.
The newest ballpark in the CBPC’s leagues, Estadio Monumental Simon Bolivar in Caracas, Venezuela, will co-host the 2026 Caribbean Series. It will be the second time the ballpark, which took 10 years to construct due to the country’s economic crisis, has hosted the Caribbean Series. Estadio Monumental also co-hosted the Caribbean Series in 2023, the year it opened, in an event that saw eight teams participate in the Caribbean Series for the first time.
Photo: A general view during a spring training game between the Minnesota Twins and the Detroit Tigers at Estadio Quisqueya Juan Marichal on March 7, 2020 in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. (Photo by Brace Hemmelgarn/Minnesota Twins/Getty Images)
