Curacao announced its 35-Man Preselection Roster for the 2023 Caribbean Series Wednesday.
This year’s Caribbean Series is the first time the nation of Curacao has been invited to the tournament. The 2023 event will feature teams from seven nations for the first time out of their respectable winter leagues, as well as a national team representing Curacao.
The Curacao Baseball Federation (CBF) will bring their national team consisting of players that play in Major League Baseball organizations, Caribbean professional winter leagues, Curacao’s professional league Federashon Beisbol Korsou AA league, and the Netherlands’ Honkbal Hoofdklasse league. Curacao’s Federation Professional Leagues consists of three levels from Rookie, A, and AA.
Next season, in 2023-24, Curacao will have a professional winter league in place, replacing the Curacao Professional League that started in 2018 and folded following the 2019-20 season. The winner of the previous Curacao Professional League played in the now-defunct Latin American Series tournament, which stopped in 2020 and consisted of five other countries’ independent professional leagues, such as Liga Invernal Veracruzana 2013-16 & 2019, Liga Veracruzana Estal de Beisbol (Mexico) 2017-2018, Liga Argentina de Beisbol 2019, Liga Profesional de Beisbol Colombia 2013-2019, Probeis Panama Professional Baseball League 2013-2019, and Liga de Beisbol Professional Nacional 2013-2019.
The Latin American Series ended following 2020 when the Caribbean Professional Baseball Confederation, which operates the Caribbean Series, decided to invite Panama to the 2019 Caribbean Series, which was later relocated from Margarita Island, Venezuela to Panama City, Panama.
Curacao is looking to make history this Caribbean Series as a baseball nation on the rise, having recently found success in World Baseball Softball Confederation events. The island took first place at the 2021 Caribbean Baseball Cup, second place in the Haarlem Honkbalweek 2022 tournament, and this past December earned a berth for the Central American and Caribbean Games in El Salvador by placing third at the 2022 Caribbean Baseball Cup in the Bahamas.
