A baseball title unleashes the happiness Venezuelans kept bottled up for years

Venezuelans pour into the streets in a rare, loud release of joy after their team wins the World Baseball Classic

CARACAS, Venezuela -- There’s happiness, and then there’s Venezuelan happiness. It feels sweeter. Louder. Deeper.

Maybe because it doesn't arrive as often. Or because it has been repressed by security forces and self-censored to avoid jail. Or because it seems collectively and individually unattainable.

But the nation felt it Wednesday. Its people cried, yelled, danced, hugged and drank after Venezuela’s 3-2 victory over the United States in the World Baseball Classic final the previous night brought out the emotion.

“We hadn’t expressed this happiness that we want to shout,” hairdresser Deyanira Machado said outside a beauty salon in Caracas, the capital.

Unlike so much here, the score on televisions across the country was final. It was not going to change in the coming minutes or days. It was not subject to interpretation. And the young and old, politically active or not, rich and poor, exhaled after holding their breath for years.