loanDepot Park in Miami will host the 2024 Caribbean Series. (Photo by Omar Vega/LatinContent via Getty Images)
By Julian Guilarte
World Baseball Network
Colombia and Panama might be included in an expanded eight-team field in the Caribbean Series in 2024 at LoanDepot Park in Miami, Florida.
The 2023 Caribbean Series in Caracas, Venezuela, was expanded to eight teams. The Dominican Republic’s representative, the Tigres del Licey, defeated Venezuela’s Leones del Caracas 3-0 in the championship game. Colombia’s representative, the Vaqueros de Monteria, lost the third-place game to Mexico’s Cañeros de Los Mochis.
The 2024 Caribbean Series has already welcomed Nicaragua and Curaçao into its field. The 2024 Caribbean Series will be the 66th tournament in its history, and it will be the 75th anniversary of when the tournament was founded by the Caribbean Professional Baseball Confederation. The Dominican Republic, Mexico, Venezuela, and Puerto Rico will send the champions of their respective winter leagues to the event as well.
Colombia last won the Caribbean Series in 2022 when the Caimanes de Barranquilla defeated the Dominican Republic’s Gigantes del Cibao 4-1. That is the only Caribbean Series championship in Colombia’s history.
Panama’s last Caribbean Series title was in 2019, when the Toros de Herrera defeated Cuba’s Leñadores de Las Tunas. Panama won one other title in the early years of the event in 1950.
Within the next 30 days, the tournament’s organizing committee will evaluate how Colombia and Panama could be added to the 2024 Caribbean Series.
The CBPC has already had press conferences in the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Puerto Rico. The Miami 2024 organizing committee and Miami Marlins executives have also been involved in putting together the 2024 tournament.
The Caribbean Series is played between the champions of various winter leagues around the Caribbean and Latin America, though Nicaragua will be represented by the team that wins the 2023 German Pomares Ordonez League regular season during the spring and summer season. Curacao will have a newly-minted professional winter league season for 2023-24 and will send the champion of that league.