Unsafe at home: MLB's Venezuelan stars fleeing country

Jorge L. Ortiz | USA TODAY

Chicago Cubs catcher Miguel Montero, who has made his home in the Phoenix area since 2007, returned this past offseason to Venezuela, where most of his relatives still live.

He lasted there five days.

Uncomfortable with the rampant crime in the country with the second-highest homicide rate in the world last year, Montero renewed his passport in his native Caracas and hurried back to the USA, feeling terrible for the family members and countrymen he left behind.

"I would go from the place where I was trying to get my passport to the house and back. That's it,'' Montero said. "You want to go to your country to relax and have a good time, not to be shut inside your house because you're afraid to go out. … There are safety concerns anywhere in the world, but you watch the news about Venezuela and more people have been killed there than in Afghanistan.''

Montero, who has two kids and will request U.S. citizenship this year, was at the forefront of what has become a wave of Venezuelan major leaguers moving their families stateside, largely over safety concerns.

Felix Hernandez, Miguel Cabrera, Carlos Gonzalez and Victor Martinez are a few of the prominent Venezuelans to establish permanent roots in the U.S., but it's not just star players pulling up stakes. San Francisco Giants teammates Gregor Blanco and Guillermo Quiroz have moved to Miami, a favorite destination among expatriates.

Chicago White Sox outfielder Avisail Garcia and San Diego Padres teammates Alex Torres and Yangervis Solarte are among those seeking permanent residency.

In the midst of this migration, tensions continue to escalate between Venezuela's socialist government of President Nicolas Maduro and the United States.

In December, the U.S. government officially deemed the situation in Venezuela, where a crackdown on anti-government protesters last year left more than 40 people dead, a national emergency.' Maduro responded by calling such a declaration an "act of aggression.''

Earlier this month, President Obama issued an executive order sanctioning seven Venezuelan officials considered responsible for the crackdown. For his part, Maduro has ordered the U.S. embassy staff in Venezuela to be reduced from 100 to 17 and announced that Americans would now require visas to travel to the South American country.

While ballplayers publicly tend to steer away from politics, several Venezuelan major leaguers say the country's combination of safety problems and economic distress – the inflation rate surpasses 60% – has prompted them to seek a future for their families elsewhere.

"I never thought of moving here to live,'' said Blanco, who has a 4-year-old son with his wife and a 9-year-old from a previous relationship. "The United States is a beautiful country with lots of great things, but it's hard to move from your country to a different one. You're used to your culture, your country, your people. Everything changed overnight when I realized, 'Wow, I have to look out for my sons' safety.' That's why I made that decision.''

It was validated when Blanco spent three weeks in the offseason in Los Valles del Tuy, the suburb where he grew up outside Caracas. Blanco remembers it as pleasant and tranquil. It was no longer.

Shortages of food and basic goods such as toilet paper, diapers and medicines – leading to endless lines – made life difficult. Blanco had been trying for five years to build a house back home but couldn't find appliances to buy.

Worse than that, a feeling of lawlessness permeated the area.

"You're always worried that something bad might happen,'' Blanco said. "When you're asleep, any noise makes you think about the worst consequences. It's hard to live with that stress every day.''

'It saddens me we have to abandon our country'

Such is the pull of the homeland that Washington Nationals catcher Wilson Ramos kept going back to Venezuela – playing winter ball this past offseason – even after being kidnapped by armed gunmen outside his family's house 3½ years ago in an incident that made international news.

Now, Ramos is reconsidering and has begun filing the paperwork to remain stateside permanently.

"It saddens me that we have to abandon our country, which you love so much, for safety reasons,'' Ramos said, "but you have to do what's best for your well-being.''

Quiroz, a fellow catcher, said players feel like they're a target because of their celebrity and well-known high salaries. Some hire bodyguards while others eschew them for fear of drawing attention.

And even while finding tranquility by moving to the U.S., as Quiroz and his wife did two years ago in anticipation of having their first child, they fret over their relatives back home.

"Every day I think about them,'' Quiroz said. "It's really hard to be here and be able to live a peaceful life knowing your family back there doesn't have enough of the necessities, that they might have to pay an absurd price for food, and you can hardly do anything to help them. They can come over and visit for a month or two, but ultimately they have to return to that harsh reality.''

Many major leaguers have the means to bring their extended families stateside, but it's not an easy undertaking. Besides the legal hurdles of relocating permanently to a new country, players often find their relatives reluctant to leave behind the lives they've built at home. The language and cultural differences present obstacles as well.

Miami Marlins third baseman Martin Prado used to get headaches pondering what he could do to improve his relatives' quality of life in Maracay, near the northern coast. He finally turned to religious faith to deal with his anguish.

"I had a lot of questions that I couldn't find answers to because I wanted to resolve everything at once,'' said Prado, who lives in Orlando. "Now I'm trying to remove those thoughts from my mind and leave it up to God.''

MLB teams pulling up stakes

The unrest in Venezuela has been one of the factors behind the dwindling number of baseball academies run by major league teams in the country, which at one point in the late 1990s added up to 22. With the Seattle Mariners closing shop next month and relocating their players to the Dominican Republic, a move several other teams have made, that figure is down to four, barely enough for the Venezuelan Summer League to continue operating.

Legendary scout Andres Reiner, whose efforts led the Houston Astros to establish the first baseball academy in Venezuela in 1989, is convinced the country's prolific production of players – second only to the Dominican in foreign-born major leaguers – will continue uninterrupted.

He points out the youth baseball programs in the country of 30 million people have more than 1.5 million participants.

But Reiner acknowledges the task of evaluating and signing prospects will be complicated by the requirement of a visa, which must be requested 90 days in advance of traveling.

And those who do go are finding a more dangerous, inhospitable environment than ever before. Torres, a lefty reliever who pitched for Aguilas de Zulia this past winter ball season, said he had come to expect corruption and safety issues.

The extent of the shortage of goods – brought on partly by falling oil prices and what some deem as government mismanagement – was an unwelcome wrinkle.

"Everywhere you go in Venezuela there's scarcity,'' Torres said. "You feel bad saying that about your country, but it's the reality we're living. I'd love to see things resolved. We have a beautiful country, and it's sad that we're going through this situation when our country has such riches, especially the oil. We shouldn't be going through this.''

Ortiz reported from Arizona and Florida.

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