By Cheché Vidal
(La versión en español de este artículo la encuentra aquí)
It has been deeply moving to witness the victory of the Venezuelan national team at the World Baseball Classic. A collective, overflowing joy that crossed borders and reminded millions of Venezuelans around the world that there is something that unites them beyond politics, exile, or distance: baseball.
Yet when I analyze the careers of those players, when I see where they come from and how they got to where they are, the emotion only grows. Because behind Venezuela’s triumph lies a story that goes far beyond the tricolor cap. There is a system. And that system is called Major League Baseball, or, as it is known in Spanish, las Grandes Ligas.
Without taking any credit away from the Venezuelan players, who have forged themselves through years of daily effort, constant discipline, and sacrifices that most people never see, the truth is that there is something even more powerful than nationality that binds them: the fact that they were developed, almost entirely, within the baseball competition system created by the United States.
Nearly every team that competed in that championship, which most in the world calls “the baseball World Cup,” even if its official name is something else, shares that in common: their stars are, overwhelmingly, Major League players formed within the extraordinary network of competitions that MLB has built over decades.
An analysis of the roster of that champion Venezuelan team reveals that the average player signed his first professional North American contract at 16 or 17 years of age, spent between five and ten years in the Minor Leagues, and accumulated a median of eleven years inside the system before competing in this tournament. Salvador Pérez, just 35 years old and the player with the longest career on the team, entered the system at barely 16 and has now spent twenty years playing in the system. In other words, he has spent half his life competing in pursuit of his highest excellence within the Major Leagues.
And that, far from diminishing Venezuela’s achievement, enriches it. Because it is a simultaneous demonstration of two equally admirable things: the quality of the Venezuelan ballplayer, and the greatness of the competition system that made it possible.
And this last point deserves to be studied. Because even though this system was conceived to supply talent to the United States Major Leagues, it has been designed with such precision that it has become a source of pride and part of the cultural fabric of every country where it is present. Can anyone deny that baseball is also one of Venezuela’s favorite sports? Or Puerto Rico’s? Or the Dominican Republic’s? Or even Cuba’s?
A System That Elevates Talent, Not Clubs
To understand what is at stake, one must understand the architecture of North American baseball. As I develop in my book Fair Competition, the sports industry can only be understood through its foundational system: the sport competition. That associative, virtuous, and vast system that enriches the lives of billions of people and produces joy and heartbreak in those who follow the feats of the world’s greatest athletes.
North American baseball has built, in my view, one of the best-designed competition systems in the history of sport. Seen from the top down: MLB is the crown, the summit to which everyone who enters the system aspires. Below it, the Minor Leagues, and somewhat the College Leagues, function as the great laboratory of talent, a structure of progressive development where players compete, grow, and rise according to their merits. And woven into all of this, the winter leagues, the Venezuelan Professional Baseball League, the Dominican, the Puerto Rican, which operate during MLB’s off-season as a proving ground for talents on the verge of making their definitive leap.
The Venezuelan Professional Baseball League lasts just three months a year. But those three months are part of a perfectly calibrated mechanism that feeds the larger system: the Major Leagues, which runs for another six months. Together, the winter league and the Major Leagues create a fan base in each country that follows baseball all year long: three months up close, in the stadium; six months from afar, through television and media.
Below those national professional leagues exists a carefully designed development competition pyramid that starts from the very youngest players and gives life to baseball academies and schools, not necessarily clubs, that teach the foundations of discipline and fill the children who play with dreams of the Major Leagues. And something truly remarkable to observe is that, within this “North American” system, a child from Venezuelan states like Zulia, or Sucre, or any town in Venezuela, can start playing baseball in his neighborhood, keep growing, competing, climbing league by league, and if he has the talent, the discipline, and yes, a bit of luck, reach the Major Leagues. The Venezuelan Baseball Federation (FEVEBEISBOL) organized 26 national championships in 2024 alone, meticulously designed to generate opportunities across all categories and formats, and has at least 23 scheduled for 2025. That is the base of the pyramid.
It is worth noting that, without being the sport with the broadest participation base in countries like Venezuela, where football surpasses it widely in that regard, baseball develops elite competitive athletes with an efficiency that no other sports system in those countries seems to match. And it does so while rewarding those with the most talent: for those who choose to dedicate themselves to baseball as a profession, the system offers a dignified and relatively well-paid career, with two leagues in which to make a living, the winter league and the Major Leagues, and even the possibility of earning a university degree for those who choose the college baseball route. All of this in turn generates loyal fans, thanks to a powerful combination: local teams entertaining the public and developing a fan base in the winter leagues, and the season-by-season following of homegrown talents as they grow into stars in the Major Leagues. Venezuela’s triumph at the World Classic, and the reaction of an entire country, illustrates all of this with great eloquence.
The Most Open Closed System in the World
Here comes the detail that may seem paradoxical, but which is the key to everything: this is a closed competition system. In North American baseball there is no promotion or relegation between leagues, as there is in European football. MLB franchises do not go down. Minor League teams do not come up. And yet, this apparently “closed” system is, in practice, the most meritocratically open in the world of sport. Because what rises is not the teams, but the individuals. What moves up is talent. And the only passport the system requires is effort, discipline, and ability.
In that sense, North American baseball is more fair, more democratic, and more egalitarian than many systems that claim to be open. A kid from a resource-poor town in Venezuela has exactly the same rules of the game as one raised in the Yankees’ academies in New York. The rules do not change depending on where you were born or where you come from. In baseball, dual nationality is a footnote, not a requirement to play in the league, if you have the talent and the discipline to do so.
And that is extraordinary.
That is exactly the lesson of the World Baseball Classic. Venezuela won. But at the same time, the system that made it possible for those Venezuelans to become who they are also won. That is the very definition of a great competition system: a system that aspires to be fair competition: one that develops the individual, that inspires them to pursue excellence and reach their full potential, and that also allows them to demonstrate that excellence by proudly representing what they love most. In this case, their country.
Congratulations, Venezuela. And congratulations too, United States: thank you for baseball.
(And how much international football still has to learn!)
Author’s note: It is no coincidence that football — or soccer, as it is called in the United States — is also experiencing extraordinary growth in that country. Its top professional league, Major League Soccer or MLS, is equally structured as a closed competition — with no promotion or relegation — following the same model as baseball. The MLS was born as a legacy of the 1994 World Cup, of which I was Vice President, and that model is precisely what explains why soccer is today surpassing baseball in popularity among American adults. The system works. It always works.
(See: https://www.si.com/soccer/soccer-passes-baseball-race-america-favorite-sport)