‘We used to have a lot of fans’: baseball in a slump amid Venezuela crisis

Venezuela is Latin America’s baseball powerhouse. Even Chávez used to play. But the economic meltdown is squeezing the country’s national sport

Juan Gutiérrez can tell something is wrong with baseball in Venezuela every time his team, the Caracas Lions, takes the field.

The Lions have won the championship 20 times since the Venezuelan Professional Baseball League was founded in 1945. But in a city of 2 million, only a handful bother to attend Lions games.