Caribbean Finale...or Not?

I'm still down here in Santiago, Dominican Republic, working the Caribbean Series for Baseball Prospectus. Since the last time I posted here, I've cranked out quite a few words, including a couple of Unfiltered posts and a chat:

Caribbean Series 2008: Day Two

Caribbean Series '08: Extras (Unfiltered)

Caribbean Series 2008: Day Three

Baseball Prospectus Chat

Caribbean Series '08: Day Four (Unfiltered)

Caribbean Series 2008: Day Five

Some of those are subscriber-only features, but a good number of them (Day Five, the Extras, and the Chat for certain) are available to everyone.

As expected, it's come down to the two Dominican teams who face off tonight in a not-quite-winner-takes-all affair: if the capital's team, Licey, wins, they're the champions, if the host team, the Cibao Eagles, win, then we have two teams tied at 5-1, with a tiebreaker tomorrow. I love DR, and I love baseball, but it's really exhausting to cover a doubleheader a day, so I'm kind of hoping for a conclusion tonight, and only having to worry about filing my story tomorrow. I'll leave you with some pics, which might be my last update from here, since the Internet access at the hotel is pretty dicey.



This is Venezuela's Selwyn Langaigne, waiting for a pitch. I thought we might be looking at a racial incident when a fan near where I was taking the picture started yelling at Langaigne, "You look like a Haitian!" But apparently the man knew Langaigne and Timo Perez (who received the same heckling) so Langaigne didn't come into the stands to cave the guy's skull in.



There's been a lot of speculation about this group, the Mariachis of Jalisco, whom some suspect of not being mariachis at all. I'm sure that in Mexico there would be a test the authorities could give them, and lengthy prison terms if they were actually caught impersonating mariachis.



This is an as-yet unidentified Licey player warming up in the outfield. I'm crazy to figure out who this guy is, since I got lots of good shots of him. We share the press box with photographers and a number of others who aren't writers--actually, those in the "other" category outnumber us--and the biggest thing that the photographers are obsessed with is getting a roster with the correct numbers for all the players on it. Invariably, it takes days to generate this precious document, because the teams were effectively just put together and the guys are still choosing and switching numbers. Doesn't seem like a hard job to me, but documenting the number is always big trouble.