Sports
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On Feb. 8, the winter baseball season ended in Venezuela when its league champion was defeated by Puerto Rico, 2-0, in the Caribbean World Series.
Four days later, conflict erupted in the country as anti-government protests ignited over food shortages, inflation, and charges of corruption by government officials. Two people died that first night, and at least 30 more since on both sides of the fighting, anti-government and pro-government.
Some believe it was no coincidence that when baseball stopped, the unrest started.
“You know how much people like baseball in Venezuela?” said Eddie Perez, the Atlanta Braves bullpen coach and a native of Venezuela. “One of the owners of the teams down there told me, ‘Eddie, the students don’t take to the streets until baseball is over.’
“That’s how much they like baseball. True story. They waited for baseball to end to protest and take to the streets.”
What soccer is to Brazil and other Latin countries, baseball is to Venezuela. It was the country with the second-highest total of players in Major League Baseball in 2013, with 63, compared to the Dominican Republic’s 89, according to the league.
There are Venezuelan baseball players also playing in Asia and Europe and throughout the minor league system in the U.S.
Hitting a ball, not kicking one is the national pastime.
The game was introduced to the country in the early 1900s when U.S. oil tycoons ventured south to strike deals. In 1941, when Venezuela stunned Cuba to win the Amateur Baseball Series, the game caught fire.
“The only games where the noise has been louder were maybe Dodger Stadium, more than 50,000 [fans], for the playoffs last year,” said Evan Gattis, the Braves catcher, who played winter ball in Venezuela in 2012. “The games in Venezuela were 10,000 to 20,000 people, which is less than half the people in Dodger Stadium, and they still made almost as much noise.
“The first preseason game down there was the most intense game I ever played in my life. I’m playing left field and it is like, ‘Holy s---, get Gladiator ready.’ Intense.”
Gattis said children would come scurrying onto the field between innings with baseballs for him to sign while he played left field. Security would muster and chase the kids, but they would hop back over the fence with the help of adults in the stands.
“It was like the fans versus the government,” Gattis said. “It was hilarious at a game there. I saw two fireworks shows in the middle of a game, once in the middle of an inning. That’s pretty different. Like a circus.”
Perez, 45, said the first time he went back to play baseball in Venezuela after he made it to the major leagues, he hit a home run his first at bat. The crowd roared. When he struck out his last at bat, there was no roar, just flying objects.
“This piece of ice comes this close to my head,” Perez said, holding his hands about a foot apart in front of his face.
“I have gotten the ice, but I also get the beer bottles thrown,” said Ernesto Mejia, a Venezuelan first baseman in the Braves organization. “The thing is in baseball you do bad 70 percent of the time, so they don’t like you 70 percent of the time. Sometimes it is maybe smart to wear a batting helmet out to the field.”
The late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was a baseball fan, Perez said, and would play in celebrity softball games, batting left-handed. He pitched and Perez caught.
There were many more baseball fields than soccer fields in Venezuela, even though baseball was more expensive. The more big-league players that were produced in Venezuela, the more equipment the major leaguers sent back to the country, and the sport mushroomed.
Now, the Venezuelan-born big league players are starting academies with their signing-bonus cash, just like the Dominican-born players did when they made it big in Major League Baseball.
“You see a player like Carlos Guillen, who played in the majors, he has a big academy,” Mejia said. “He sees the prospects, helps develop them, and when they sign for minor leagues, then he gets repaid his money.”
There is ongoing debate in Venezuela over Chavez’s legacy and the subsequent policies of his successor, President Nicolás Maduro. Chavez supporters, among them the country’s poorest citizens, credit the socialist leader for improving access to housing and education. Recent protests against Maduro’s administration have been prompted by the nation’s declining economy, marked by food shortages and a rise in crime.
Perez and several other Venezuelan-born major leaguers, however, peg the country’s relatively recent intense interest in baseball to what they see as a souring economy. While the sport had been vibrant there since the 1940s, it has been at a fever pitch in the late 1990s. From Perez’s point of view, oil fueled the country’s prosperity and created a solid middle class, but when Chavez took power in 1999, his policies led to stagnant wages, diminished earning power, and a dearth of jobs. Venezuelan government officials blamed U.S. sanctions for the economic downturn.
“For years we had a good economy, we lived OK, my dad was in the oil business,” Perez said. “I was ready to work out there in oil. Then the economy went bad, that’s why you see so many Venezuelans in baseball. It’s true. It started to happen in the late 1990s when the jobs started going away.
“It’s starting to happen now with soccer. It is getting bigger now and the kids are being taken to academies all over the world. We used to come to the United States for vacation, not to work.”
The only Venezuelan in the Baseball Hall of Fame is one-time Chicago White Sox shortstop Luis Aparicio. Perez came along in the late 1990s as a catcher for the Braves and was named the MVP of the National League Championship Series in 1999. Now the floodgates are open with a number of high-profile players hailing from Venezuela, including American League MVP Miguel Cabrera of the Tigers, Victor Martinez of the Tigers, Omar Infante of the Kansas City Royals, Pablo Sandoval of the San Francisco Giants, pitcher Felix Hernandez of the Seattle Mariners.
Longtime Cleveland Indians shortstop Omar Vizquel, who retired in 2012, is considered by many to be the best defensive shortstop who ever played the game. And the pipeline is now filled with skilled Venezuelan players at every position.
Jose Yepez, a catcher in the Braves organization, said teenage boys drop out of school to attend academies and try and build their skill.
“Our country is not doing very well right now, so baseball is a good job,” Yepez said, preferring not to discuss the unrest in Venezuela too much because his family is still there.
Major League Baseball has had its own security concerns in the country over the years. The league had 21 academies for developing talent in Venezuela in 2002, but all but a handful of teams shuttered their operations there in light of Chavez’s anti-U.S. rhetoric and the threat of kidnappings. Wilson Ramos, a catcher for the Washington Nationals, was kidnapped in 2011 but was rescued unharmed by Venezuelan police two days later.
In light of recent protests, some Venezuelan players in the major leagues — including Tigers’ star Cabrera, who Thursday signed a contract extension giving him a reportedly record salary of $292 million over the next 10 years — posted pictures to their Twitter accounts supporting the people in February, which angered the country’s administration.
“I want to go home and manage in the Venezuela league,” Perez said. “But if the situation is the same as it is right now, I can’t go. Guys here, players from Venezuela, are upset about what is happening there. It’s our country. It’s sad. If it stays like this they might have to suspend the league. It doesn’t seem possible because baseball is so big.”
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