NEW YORK (AP) They wanted to show the old seven-starred flag from their homeland. And when the Venezuelan players from the Pittsburgh 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.