Teams / Equipos
Often called la bermeja, from the crimson of its victory pennant, the Liga Betances is named after Ramón Emeterio Betances, a native of Cabo Rojo, without whose tireless advocacy on behalf of Puerto Ricans the Liga Nacional would never have come to exist.
It is the older of the two leagues—by mere seconds, as its deputy commissioner reached the stage and received his papers first. This has not stopped betanceños from proudly calling their league la distinguida, an epithet they far prefer to hostosianos tagging their circuit as la vieja.
The younger of the two leagues in the Liga Nacional—not that anyone, from the Deputy Commissioner to the most overlooked player in the entire league, is likely to admit it—draws its name from Eugenio María de Hostos of Mayagüez, who advocated for Puerto Rican and Cuban independence throughout the Western Hemisphere.
While hostosianos prefer to call their home league la ilustre, and betanceños often call them la niña, the league is most commonly known as la zarca, from the bright sky-blue of the pennant given to its champions.