CARACAS (AP) — The Venezuelan Baseball League (LVBP) announced Friday that the Tigres de Aragua and Navegantes del Magallanes teams received a license from the United States Department of the Treasury, which reverses the almost three-year blockade on the participation of Major League affiliated players in those two local ninths.
The LVBP has “the immense pleasure of announcing to the general public, especially its fans, that the Tigres de Aragua and Navegantes del Magallanes teams have finally received the license from the United States Government’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. ”, OFAC, for its acronym in English.
“The administrative measure allows both currencies to reestablish their legal system before Major League Baseball and their reintegration into the Winter League Agreement, in order to use all the personnel that militate in organized baseball, something that they had not been able to do since 2019,” the LVBP added in a statement, citing its president, Giuseppe Palmisano.
It was not clear when the licenses expire or if they could be revoked or modified at any time, as was established in December 2019, when the United States Department of the Treasury authorized the participation of players and coaches affiliated with the majors in six of the eight teams —Caribes de Anzoátegui, Leones de Caracas, Tiburones de la Guaira, Bravos de Margarita, Cardenales de Lara and Águilas de Zulia— after considering that these novenas had no link with the Venezuelan government.
In August 2019, the LVBP was initially suspended when the administration of now-former President Donald Trump, which was trying to pressure President Nicolás Maduro to step down from office, expanded sanctions against Venezuela.
The previous authorization excluded Tigres and Navegantes, the two remaining LVBP teams, on the grounds that they had links with the government of President Nicolás Maduro. Both teams have the legal figure of foundations attached to the governments of the states of Carabobo and Aragua, which for years have been in the hands of allies of Maduro.
The US sanctions, which include the freezing of Venezuelan government assets in the United States, prohibit Americans and related foreign companies from doing business with the Venezuelan government, their family members, or those with business ties to government companies or officials.
The 2022-2023 season, which starts on October 22, will be played under the all-against-all format, adopted during the pandemic. In the postseason to define the two finalists, five teams will also play under the eliminatory format, while due to tournament conditions it was established that the figure of the wild card will be determined through a series of a maximum of two commitments between the clubs that occupy the fifth and sixth place.
If the team that finished in fifth place wins the first game, then they will have secured their place in the next round. The sixth would have to prevail in both matches to earn his ticket to the classification.
The Final Series will be played, as usual, with a maximum of seven games.
The presence in the rosters of replacement players in the Tigres and the Navegantes, among other teams, coming from independent leagues, did not seem to undermine the enthusiasm of the fans of this South American country, where baseball and not soccer is the most popular sport .
