However, baseball fans in both countries fear that President Chávez may deprive the American game of one of its prime assets — the flow of rich talent from Venezuela.

At stake are millions of dollars invested by some of the biggest American teams in training academies in Venezuela and the thwarted ambitions of youngsters.

Venezuelans go to the polls next month with Mr Chávez, who models himself on Fidel Castro, another baseball obsessive, in pole position to win another six-year term.

One of the greatest concerns among the middle class, who increasingly steer their sons towards baseball academies rather than academic college, is that Mr Chávez will close the domestic professional league and restrict the rights of sportsmen to play in America. Ron Rizzi, a scout for the Los Angeles Dodgers, has served the game for 39 years and has been coming to Venezuela to watch players for the past decade. He said: “Chávez is so anti-US that he may inhibit players’ ability to get there. If he wins the election they might have to come out on a boat.”

The saying goes that the Venezuelan baseball league is a league for men, and that those who thrive in its hostile stadiums can satisfy the tough crowds of New York City, Boston or Chicago. Venezuelans have certainly made their mark there.

The turning point came in 1989, a time of economic slump and oil price collapse, when the Houston Astros opened an academy in Guaraca, 20 miles from the industrial city of Valencia, to find and nurture local talent. In a modern, two-storey brick complex surrounded by factories, 35 teenagers are taught baseball, English, nutrition, sports psychology and how to resist the temptations of sex, drink and drugs that come with a professional athlete’s lifestyle in the US.

The Astros’ plan has been copied by eight other Major League clubs as part of a strategy to find the Latin American players who now dominate the sport.

Venezuelan baseball has had a breakthrough year. In October 2005, Ozzie Guillén became the first of his countrymen to manage a World Series winner, leading the Chicago White Sox to the title.

Yet there is pessimism, typified by Alfredo Villasmil, a reporter with Últimas Noticias, the country’s bestselling newspaper. “Baseball is our religion. We don’t care about politics. We want to live in peace and be left alone to work.”

Ballpark figures

The best pitcher is Johan Santana, 27, who earned $9 million with the Minnesota Twins in 2006, the second in a four-year contract worth $40 million

Sources: mlbcontracts.blogspot.com, www.lvbp.com

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