Venezuelan MLB players voice anguish amid turmoil back home

They wanted to show the old seven-starred flag from their homeland. And when the Venezuelan players from the Pirates finally found one on Amazon, they promptly held it upside down.

“When you carry it reversed, that’s a symbol of protest,” Pirates catcher Francisco Cervelli said about the display before a game in Arizona in May.

Their rejection of the Venezuelan authorities becomes emboldened with those seven stars, instead of the eight that now appear after one was added by the late President Hugo Chavez’s government.

Amid three months of often-violent confrontations and economic turmoil in their country, an increasing number of Venezuelan players in Major League Baseball are speaking out against the government and showing solidarity with their compatriots protesting in the streets.

“Our country needs help and we want to show that we’re supporting them,” Cervelli said.

Detroit Tigers star Miguel Cabrera, the most famous baseball player from Venezuela, has rejected the violence in videos posted on social media. The two-time American League MVP appeared with other Venezuelan players from the Tigers and the Texas Rangers.

“We want a better country, we want a solution. We want to have someone that steps up and stop this because we cannot continue living like this, killing, and fighting for something not worth,” Cabrera said in Spanish during an ESPN “Sunday Night Baseball” broadcast.

One of the gestures of disapproval against President Nicolas Maduro’s government is the use of the upside-down flag, something that started with another wave of protests in 2014.

Cervelli posed with that flag alongside reliever Felipe Rivero, outfielder Jose Osuna and bullpen catcher Heberto Andrade, all from Venezuela. They wanted to make sure that the flag didn’t have the eighth star added by Chavez, so Rivero went shopping online to find that particular emblem.

The almost-daily protests have left at least 90 people dead and hundreds injured. The protests have been fueled by widespread discontent over shortages of basic goods, runaway inflation and allegations that Maduro is undermining democracy in the country.

Venezuela is the secondbiggest exporter of foreign players in the majors, behind the Dominican Republic. The 76 Venezuelan players on the 25-man rosters of the 30 MLB teams was a record at the start of the season.

NAM Y. HUH — ASSOCIATED PRESS Amid three months of often-violent confrontations and economic turmoil in their country, an increasing number of Venezuelan players in Major League Baseball, including the Pirates’ Francisco Cervelli, are speaking out against the government.