A World Series With a Venezuelan Accent CARACAS, Venezuela - As Marco Scutaro stared into the falling rain and prepared to glove the pop-up that would be the last out of the National League Championship Series on Monday night, the television announcer here crowed, "It had to be a Venezuelan!" When Scutaro was named the most valuable player of the N.L.C.S. a short time later, it was merely the latest milestone in what has been a banner year for Venezuelan-born ballplayers in the major leagues. There are a total of nine Venezuelan-born players on the two teams in the World Series, the San Francisco Giants and the Detroit Tigers, which newspapers here said was a record number. "It's going to be a very Venezuelan Series," said Francisco Suniaga, a novelist and Giants fan who lives in Caracas and who sometimes writes about baseball. He recalled the years of his childhood when Luis Aparicio, the White Sox shortstop, was his country's big star in the major leagues. "It was lucky if a Series would have one Venezuelan," he said. Now there are nine. Venezuelans make up the second largest group of foreign-born players in the big leagues, after players from the Dominican Republic, and this year some of the sport's biggest feats had a Venezuelan accent. Miguel Cabrera, of the Tigers, became the first player in nearly half a century to win the triple crown, leading the American League in batting average, home runs and runs batted in. Felix Hernandez became the first Venezuelan-born player to throw a perfect game, in August, for the Seattle Mariners. Johan Santana became the first Mets pitcher and the fourth Venezuelan to throw a no-hitter. And Omar Vizquel was a fixture in the sports pages here as he wound up his long career as one of the game's greatest shortstops. Cabrera is joined on the Tigers by his fellow Venezuelans Anibal Sanchez, Avisail Garcia and Omar Infante. The Giants who come from Venezuela are Scutaro, Pablo Sandoval, Hector Sanchez, Jose Mijares and Gregor Blanco. Two other Venezuelans were possible inclusions on the World Series rosters, one for each team. This is a baseball-loving country and the sports pages here closely follow the Venezuelans playing in the major leagues, regularly printing their statistics and featuring their highlights. Scutaro was on the cover of the country's two major sports dailies Tuesday, raising his M.V.P. trophy over his head in the rain. "Venezuela Becomes Giant," said the headline in Meridiano, the largest sports daily. "I was saying on my radio show this morning that Venezuelan fans and journalists have to thank the gods for the great year our baseball players have had in the big leagues," said Humberto Acosta, who hosts a radio show and writes a newspaper column about baseball. He said the success of Venezuelan ballplayers was not a matter of chance. It's a product of the turn that the big-league organizations have made toward Latin America and Venezuela in particular, because this is a baseball country. Several major league teams have academies to develop young players in Venezuela, although the number of academies has been shrinking in recent years in response to the violence and unsettled economic climate in the country. Many major league players return here each fall to play in the Venezuelan league, whose season started this month. Venezuela's socialist president, Hugo Chavez, is an avid baseball fan, as is his mentor, Fidel Castro, the former president of Cuba. Suniaga, the novelist, recalled listening to the World Series on the radio as a child. He remembered Willie Mays, the Giants star, coming to Venezuela to play in the Caribbean championship series in the late 1950s. It felt like a very long time ago.