Dominican Republic to host Tigers in Santa Domingo exhibitions ahead of World Baseball Classic

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — While announcing the Dominican Republic will host the Detroit Tigers for a pair of exhibitions on March 3 and 4 ahead of the World Baseball Classic, baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred maintains playing regular-season games on the island nation is currently unfeasible.

“I think the limiting factor on regular-season games is just the size of the facility,” Manfred said Monday at the winter meetings. “You know how the economics of those games work. We replace the gate that the home team’s given up, and it’s just very hard in a stadium of this size that we’re talking about to do a regular-season game.”

Santo Domingo’s Estadio Quisqueya Juan Marichal has a capacity of about 13,000.

Since 2017, MLB has played a regular-season game at Bowman Field in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, with a capacity of about 2,500. It also played a “Field of Dreams” game in 2021 and ’22 at Dyersville, Iowa, a ballpark that can hold about 7,800, and will have Minnesota and Philadelphia play there on Aug. 13.

Games in the Dominican Republic are more costly to stage than in the U.S.

“The expense side gets to be really big,” Manfred said.

The Dominican Republic opens the WBC on March 6 against Nicaragua, part of a group that also includes Israel, the Netherlands, Nicaragua and Venezuela. The exhibitions were sparked last offseason by a conversation between former big leaguer Nelson Cruz, the Dominican Republic’s general manager, and New York Yankees special assistant Omar Minaya, the former GM of the New York Mets and Montreal Expos.

MLB then decided to dedicate the games to the memory of the victims of the April 8 roof collapse at Santo Domingo’s Jet Set nightclub. Former big league pitcher Octavio Dotel and Cruz’s sister, Nelsy, were among the more than 200 people who died.

As part of the event, MLB and the promoter UEPA will donate to the Dominican Red Cross.

MLB has played four times in the Dominican Republic previously: exhibitions between the Mets and Expos (1999), Houston and Boston (2000), the Tigers and Twins (2020) and Tampa Bay and the Red Sox (2024). MLB is upgrading the field surface, as it did in 2024.

“Playing in the Dominican Republic again is an important step in our ongoing internationalization efforts, and equally important, it’s an opportunity for us to give back in the Dominican Republic where we have so many players that have entertained our fans for years,” Manfred said.

Cruz, a seven-time All-Star, attended the news conference along with three-time MVP Albert Pujols, the Dominican Republic’s manager.

“I was talking to my mom about it, eight months since the tragedy,” Cruz said. “Every 8th of every month, she’s down as she can get. I know she’s going to be pumped, and she’s going to be happy for this. And the people who lost a member on that day, as well, they’re going to be happy.”

Pujols had spoken with the Los Angeles Angels and San Diego about their manager openings but wasn’t offered either job.

“I didn’t have to make that tough decision,” he said.

Pujols is confident he will be an MLB manager at some point.

“My time will come,” he said.

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