Marketing value of the 'Regular Season Total Save Stat' deep in US and Venezuelan psyche

(MLB.com, 9/29/08): "(Frankie) Rodriguez was made aware by family members and friends of how much the record meant back home (in Venezuela).

• "A lot of people back home have been rooting for me to break the record," said Rodriguez, who has risen from poverty and harsh beginnings to become a national figure in his Venezuelan homeland.

• "It's very important for my people,
• my country, to get that record."

(Photos, Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez with President of the Islamic Republic of Iran (top), and with Fidel Castro, bottom).

• (7/19/07): "While the Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez is staking out strong anti-American policies, he is a professed lover of the yanquis’ game...

It is odd that Chavez, who often gives hour-long speeches railing against what he sees as American imperialism, is, like many Venezuelans, a huge baseball fan. Chavez sees American hegemony in multinational institutions like the World Bank (see his attempts to set up a regional bank doing similar work) and its media (and has created his own TV station to counteract its influence), but doesn’t mind playing the hegemon’s sport. Chavez would never be seen with a Big Mac in his hand, but he loves to pick up a bat.

• How is it that baseball is not seen by Chavez and other Venezuelans as a negative influence of the American imperialists? Perhaps because, since the time it was brought to the country, the game has undergone a transformation so that it now has a uniquely Venezuelan flavor.

Baseball games in Venezuela are very different from what people think of as America’s pastime.

• Far from a laid-back afternoon of cracking peanut shells and singing “Take me out to the Ballgame,” games in Venezuela consist of

• “stadium disc jockeys blast[ing] popular merengue or reggaeton songs as fans and sparsely dressed cheerleaders turn commercial breaks into dance parties."

(Publicity across MLB platforms on Krod's behalf must please the dictator and his MLB sponsor,

• the Citgo Corporation). sm

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