PITTSBURGH – Cincinnati Reds slugger Eugenio Suárez spent much of the team’s off day this week checking with loved ones in Venezuela after a pair of historically powerful earthquakes devastated a northern region of the country near the capital of Caracas.
By the time Suárez got to the ballpark the next day for the Reds’ series opener against the Pirates, he’d received good news about family but was in no frame of mind to talk much about it.
“I don’t want to talk about Venezuela,” he said before a question could be asked. “It breaks my heart, and I don’t want to cry.
“My friends and family are good. They’re safe,” he said. “But my heart, it feels bad. So I don’t want to talk about it.”
Venezuelan players and staff across MLB have mobilized to send relief to the South American country that has been overwhelmed by a massive search and rescue effort that could take months to complete – as the reported death toll rose to more than 900 in less than the first 48 hours since the back-to-back earthquakes struck late Wednesday.
Reds trainer Tomas Vera, a Venezuela native who served as the athletic trainer for Team Venezuela during its World Baseball Classic championship run in March, said players and staff associated with that team have come together on a WhatsApp chain to coordinate relief efforts, with Team Venezuela bench coach Robinson Chirinos leading the effort through his Venezuelan-based charitable foundation.
Suárez was one of the more prominent players on that championship team.
Vera, who has a sister who lives less than an hour from the center of the most devastated area, said his family and closest friends seem to be OK. Like Suárez, most of Vera’s immediate family is now in the United States.
“My family’s fine,” he said. “But it doesn’t mean I’m not sad and heartbroken about what happened in my motherland. It’s incredible. I can’t explain it to you.
“Right now I’m trying to see how I can help from here. What can I actually do? It’s frustrating.”
The Reds, on behalf of Suárez, Vera and Venezuelan bullpen catcher Jose Duarte, are committing resources from the Reds Community Fund toward relief effort, Vera said. That’s expected to be through helping Doctors Without Borders deploy more medical staff to the impacted areas.
As personal as the crisis is for those in the clubhouse from Venezuela, it’s become personal and emotional to many more across the clubhouse, too.
After the Reds opened the series in Pittsburgh with a late-inning victory, Noelvi Marte talked about Venezuela unsolicited after he was asked about his eighth-inning home run to win the game.
“Everybody in this locker room, everybody, played for them,” said Marte, who’s from the Dominican Republic. “Even myself, I wore a yellow (sleeve) on my left arm because I was honoring my Venezuelan friends.
“I know the hard situation they’re going through right now,” he added. “And I want to make sure that they know that we’re praying for them and we hope for the best outcome from this.”
He spoke alongside, and through, Vera, who doubles as the team’s Spanish-English interpretor.
Hundreds of rescue professionals and medical personnel from more than a dozen countries reportedly traveled to Venezuela to help in the first 24 hours after the 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude quakes struck the region less than a minute apart.
Vera said friends sent him images of 45 residential buildings that collapsed in the city of La Guaira, the coastal city just north of Caracas that suffered the greatest damage.
“Imagine that,” he said. “Forty-five apartment buildings that are 20-, 30-, 15 stories high, collapsed at the same time.
“It doesn’t matter what kind of machines you have, what kind of rescue (ability). How can you be ready for that amount of disaster? And that’s only one area.”
Venezuela is not known for powerful earthquakes, Vera said. But he knows for very personal reasons when the last one close to this magnitude hit the country.
“Fifty-nine years ago, actually,” Vera said. “My mom was 6-months pregnant with me the last time it happened, and I’m 58. I remember her always talking about that moment when she had to protect her belly.
“She protected me when that earthquake happened in 1967,” he said. “But at this magnitude (of damage), it never happened. It’s a shocking situation.”
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Reds, MLB mobilize amid Venezuela ‘heartbreak’ for earthquake victims
Reporting by Gordon Wittenmyer, Cincinnati Enquirer / Cincinnati Enquirer
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Gordon Wittenmyer, Cincinnati Enquirer | USA TODAY Network
