Leones del Caracas
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Wikipedia - Leones del Caracas
The Caracas Base Ball Club C.A., better known by its commercial name as the Leones del Caracas, is a professional baseball team of the Venezuelan Professional Baseball League (LVPB). The owner and sole shareholder of the sports club is Ricardo Cisneros, president of Ateneas Sports Holding.
Its name comes from the official name of the city of Caracas—Santiago de León de Caracas—which Diego de Losada assigned to it when it was founded in 1567. Consequently, a lion appears as a symbol on the representative coat of arms of the city of Caracas.
Los Leones del Caracas is a very popular team in Venezuela, and is the team with the most titles (21), and has runners-up (17), played finals (34), played post-seasons (3&). Second highest win percentage in the LVBP in regular season: (D-D 2187-2100 51%), post-season: (D-D 206-178 55.0%), finals (D-D 97-78 55.4%).
The team's colors are dark blue and gold and the crest features a lion, a symbol of the city of Caracas since 1591.
History
Cervecería Caracas was founded in 1942, after Cervecería Princesa, an early team, was bought and transformed into Caracas. At first, the team played its home games at the old Estadio Cerveza Caracas, which was located in the capital city of Caracas. The team was founded by Martín Tovar Lange and managed by big leaguer Alejandro Carrasquel.
The Princesa team played its last game on May 7, 1942. Then, Caracas debuted four days later with a 7–3 victory over the Criollos (English: Creoles). The game was played in Puerto Cabello, a city on the north coast of Venezuela. Caracas faced its later nemesis, the Navegantes del Magallanes for the first time on December 27 of that year, winning this now historic game by a 3–0 score.
In its first stage, the team won two championship titles before moving to the Venezuelan Professional Baseball League in January 1946.
Since its inception, the Caracas team was characterized by having only Venezuelan players on their roster. The club changed its policy in 1950, after signing catcher Lester Fusselman and outfielder Maurice Mozzali, two St. Louis Cardinals prospects.
In 1952, the franchise was bought by the publicist and sport commentator Pablo Morales and christened Leones del Caracas as a new franchise. Since then, the team plays its home games at the Estadio Universitario in Caracas. Later, businessman Oscar Prieto Ortiz joined Morales as a legal partner.
Pete Rose was benched after a slump late in the 1964 MLB season, finishing with a .269 average, but continued to play winter ball in Venezuela with the Leones del Caracas team during the 1964–1965 season to improve his batting.
By 2001, the descendants of Morales and Prieto sold their shares to the Grupo Cisneros, giving it majority control of the team.
Through 2024, the Caracas team has won 21 championship titles (3 as Cervecería Caracas and 18 as Leones del Caracas), more than any other team in Venezuelan Professional Baseball League history.
In the 2015-16 season, they became the club with the highest average home attendance in the league, with an average of 10,845. The next season, the average attendance was 6,539.