SEE / Irving Guanipa Ojeda
The next edition of the Venezuelan Professional Baseball League (LVBP), initially scheduled to begin within a month (or month and a half), at the latest, still has no date for its start and there really are no established championship conditions or the assurance that the eight teams that comprise it can have the due recognition of Major League Baseball (MLB).
In this way, the president of the LVBP, Giuseppe Palmisano, let it be seen on the portal The Emergent, and commented, with some nostalgia, “The league is late … The season is in danger.”
The manager of the Navegantes del Magallanes team also acknowledged that the championship may not take place, which is a statement to take into account since the top manager of the Venezuelan Professional Baseball League has constantly maintained a positive attitude towards regarding the entire situation of the entity that presides.
The situation that has arisen to question the holding of the contest, corresponding to the 2021-2022 season, comes from the events that occurred in 2019, when the league’s board of directors ruled to do everything possible in their power to move forward the tournament when Major League Baseball vetoed the LVBP, this after the veto implemented by the United States Department of the Treasury through OFAC. Despite everything, the local entity was optimistic with the completion of the 2020-2021 harvest, due to the difficulties of the Covid-19 pandemic, which in the end could be carried out. But now the situation has been complicated because the United States Department of the Treasury approved that six of the eight groups that make up the LVBP can maintain normal relations and closer relations with the offices of the Major. Therefore the local teams are waiting for the renewal of the license they received two years ago. The most compromising situation is that this permit expires on November 21 and the Joe Biden government has not yet made a pronouncement on the extension of that approval, when it is just over two months to expire; much less is there a clear, or encouraging, outlook for the Navegantes del Magallanes and Tigres de Aragua teams, which are the two teams that are not included in the aforementioned authorization. “We are waiting, first to have a renewal response for the six teams,” added Palmisano in conversation with journalist Guillermo Linares, from The Emergent, “Before requesting the review of the cases of Magallanes and Tigres.” That is why all teams are waiting for a prompt response from the US government on the full approval of the renewal of licenses.
