Home|Sports|Caribbean Baseball Championship on the horizonSports
Tournament will qualify two teams for next year’s CAC Games
Simba FrenchSend an emailNovember 18, 2022 155 2 minute readFacebookTwitterLinkedInShare via Email
The plans for the 4th Annual Caribbean Baseball Championship are taking place as according to schedule as the Bahamas Baseball Association (BBA) addressed the media yesterday at the Office of the Prime Minister.
The tournament, that is set for December 4-11 at the new Andre Rodgers Baseball Stadium, will pit The Bahamas against five other teams. Also competing are the defending champions Curacao, Haiti, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and Cuba. This is a qualifier for the Central America and Caribbean (CAC) Games in El Salvador in 2023. Those six teams will battle for two spots at the games.
BBA Secretary General Theodore Sweeting addressed the media and provided updates about the tournament.
The Bahamian team has not been named as yet, but one thing for certain is that Major League Baseball (MLB) players who are on their team’s 40-man roster cannot play in this round. That means that Miami Marlins’ infielder Jasrado “Jazz” Chisholm and Washington Nationals’ infielder Lucius Fox will be unavailable to play for The Bahamas.
“The team is in Grand Bahama,” Sweeting said. “That’s the only place we have a full 94-feet diamond field for them to practice and get ready for December. A lot of our other players are still in college and they’ll be home by November 28 and then we get ready to put that team in the field so they’re just coming together. I think we can be very competitive.”
The BBA will officially name the team on November 28 and Sweeting said that the federation is using Minor League Baseball (MiLB) and collegiate players. They are waiting on the MiLB teams to release the players. That is the biggest challenge the team is facing, according to Sweeting.
The manager for the team is Geron Sands. Some of the players the country can expect to see are Tahnaj Thomas, Chavez Young, Ian Lewis, Evan Sweeting and D’Shawn Knowles.
The baseball stadium that had its completion date shifted from year to year appears to be finally be finished. It is one of the main concerns that The Bahamas had when agreeing to host this tournament – when will the stadium be finished.
“MLB is coming in after the completion and they will do their inspection. What they like to do is to make sure that the surface and everything that their professional players are playing on meets their standards. Our field is astro turf, so we know we’re going to meet the standards when they do their final inspection of the stadium, so we’re not concerned about that,” Sweeting said.
The astro turf is currently being laid out.
“The field drains extremely well. About a month ago, we had a lot of rain that came down. Within 10 minutes, after the rain stopped, we could go right back on the field and walk up and down. There was no puddle, so it drains very well,” Sweeting said.
Sweeting is expecting to see at least 2,000 fans come out and support the host nation at the tournament on a nightly basis. The tickets purchased will be valid for an entire day’s games. The Bahamas will be playing the evening game up until the second round of the tournament.
The Bahamas opens the tournament against Haiti on Sunday December 4 at 7:30 p.m.