Baseball is the national game of Nicaragua, it is the most popular sport in the country. Nicaragua has a professional baseball league, the Nicaraguan Professional Baseball League, consisting of five teams, playing in the winter, and a semiprofessional league, the Germán Pomares Championship, playing in spring and summer. The national baseball team has been successful in the past, mainly throughout the 1970s. Nicaragua and near-by Panama are two countries who have baseball as their national sport, rather than soccer, the national sport of many Central American countries.