Carlos Narváez typically glides across the fields of Fenway South, the Red Sox spring training facility here in Fort Myers, Florida, with a Cheshire cat’s grin, as if holding onto some grand baseball secret.
But on this February day, the 27-year-old catcher is sitting at a picnic table, his voice wavering as he shares a history he hasn’t previously revealed.
In 2022 — long before his breakout rookie performance last season — Narváez had reached a crossroads. After a long slog through the Yankees’ farm system, he was a minor-league free agent — in practical terms, unemployed.
Back in Venezuela, both his parents had lost their jobs amid the country’s economic collapse. Long gone was the $50,000 bonus he received when he first signed with New York more than seven years earlier.
He had been sending home whatever he could, $400 on a good month. But now, he had $1,000 left to his name, no income from baseball, no certainty about his future.
Most players focus solely on training during the offseason. Narváez didn’t have the luxury.
“I had to work in construction, I had to work as a delivery guy, I had to work cleaning houses and nightclubs. I never talked about this before,” Narváez says, wiping away tears. “The reality was, it was the only way. I did what I needed to do for myself, of course, to have a better future, and for my family too.”
Narváez is one of five Red Sox players from Venezuela, a country that has produced some of the best players of the 21st century, including former MVPs Miguel Cabrera and Ronald Acuña Jr. Despite this success, the difficult path Venezuelans take to reach the majors — one made harder by geopolitics and economic hardship — is rarely discussed.
In addition to Narváez, the Red Sox contingent includes Wilyer Abreu, a gifted young outfielder; pitcher Ranger Suarez and first baseman Willson Contreras, both former All-Stars acquired this offseason; and Andruw Monasterio, a utility infielder who is expected to play a valuable complementary role. (Venezuelan baseball has been in the spotlight this month amid an inspiring run by the country’s national team — including Abreu, Suarez, and Contreras — at the World Baseball Classic.)
Boston has never had five Venezuelans on the Opening Day roster. That’s likely to change this year, reflecting the most notable ensemble of players from Venezuela on any single team in Red Sox history.
“They’re really freaking good,” manager Alex Cora says.
And with their baseball-obsessed country in the early stages of a potentially monumental transition, their performances will be felt well beyond Fenway Park.
Even before the US military operation early this year that resulted in then-President Nicolás Maduro’s arrest, Venezuelan players have straddled two very different situations: political and economic turmoil in their native land, and a professional home that celebrates their talents but offers regular reminders of their foreignness.
“You live a double life,” says Abreu, through a translator. “A life inside the ballpark, inside the lines, that everybody gets to see, and then you live this other life, the one that is away from the field.”
Here in Fort Myers, those tensions aren’t immediately visible.
Whether it’s the self-assured swagger of Contreras, the veteran acquired from the St. Louis Cardinals in a trade; the palpable joy that emanates from Suarez, who signed a five-year, $130 million deal this winter to help anchor the rotation; or Abreu’s soft-spoken pursuit of stardom, the group’s presence permeates the clubhouse. (All five speak fluent English and converse comfortably with teammates, regardless of nationality, though Abreu and Suarez sometimes speak to the media through Carlos Villoria-Benítez, a translator for the Sox.)
Despite ranging in age and coming from different parts of their homeland, the players all grew up ensconced in the game.
“Our culture in Venezuela has deep roots in baseball,” says Villoria-Benítez, the translator, who left Caracas as a teenager to play baseball at the University of Maine at Presque Isle. “Baseball is in our blood.”
Venezuela’s baseball history stretches back to the late 1800s. Interest in the sport spread in the early 20th century, accelerated in part by foreign oil companies that helped develop the country’s baseball infrastructure.
By 1939, the country had its first major leaguer, pitcher Alejandro Carrasquel — whose entry into the United States to play for the Washington Senators was delayed briefly by immigration restrictions. Two years later, Venezuela’s shocking win over Cuba in an international amateur tournament made heroes of the players and inspired a national holiday.
The country’s own professional league — a winter league that drew players from around the world during the Major League Baseball offseason — started play in 1946 and deepened the country’s infatuation. To this day, the league remains renowned for the zeal of its fans.
“There’s even more pressure playing there than here,” says Monasterio, who has played in the league five times.
By the late-1990s, a number of teams had established a presence in the country by opening academies or, as was the case with the Red Sox, renting fields for scouting and player development. Eventually, an official MLB-affiliated minor league — the Venezuelan Summer League — was formed, the lowest rung on a long ladder to the majors. At its peak, the league had 12 teams.
The allure of professional baseball — though open to only a select few — grew as economic hardship and political repression took hold under the regime of Hugo Chávez.
Willson Contreras was 6 years old when Chávez was elected in 1998. In the following years, price-fixing, currency controls, the nationalization of industries, and debt-induced inflation began to strain the country.
Contreras was a good student and considered a career in engineering. But as fissures widened across the economy, he began to focus on baseball.
“That’s the advantage and blessing that the USA system has,” says Contreras. “You can go to school and also play baseball at the same time. In Venezuela, you have to pick one of those.
“I knew the direction Venezuela was going, and I just told my dad, ‘I don’t want to go to school or college anymore. I just want to play baseball.’”
Contreras left home to work with a trainer before signing with the Chicago Cubs as a 17-year-old in 2009, at which point he was sent to play at the team’s academy in the Dominican Republic.
His path followed a template for Venezuelan ballplayers: Long stints away from home as a teenager, bearing the responsibility of helping family.
“I always wanted to be the best, to give my mom and dad the best. I always was a guy that carried that weight on my shoulders,” he says.
That aspiration came with jarring complications. Amid financial desperation, it became increasingly common for players’ families to be threatened with kidnapping. Sometimes, the players themselves became targets. In 2011, Washington Nationals catcher Wilson Ramos was abducted at gunpoint while visiting his mother in Venezuela, and rescued by police under heavy fire.
The situation worsened under Maduro, who succeeded Chávez in 2013. Basic goods became scarce. Hyperinflation rendered any supplies that could be found unaffordable. Poverty became widespread, government corruption commonplace.
Millions left the country in search of an escape. Though scouts remained, teams began pulling out of the summer league, which was forced to shutter in 2016. For Venezuelan players abroad, home felt ever more distant.
“I can’t imagine being a young kid at 16 or 17 years … being away from home, and having some of these issues [at the] front of mind,” says Eddie Romero, a Red Sox assistant general manager who oversaw the team’s international scouting efforts for more than a decade.
“You’re worried about the situation back home and the safety of your family while also trying to develop and compete and win a job, and trying to get a promotion. It’s a huge stressor.”
In 2017, five years into his professional career with the Philadelphia Phillies, Ranger Suarez was about to become a father.
After signing with the club at 16, he’d spent the next three years honing his pitching skills at its training facility in Venezuela. Then it was off to the United States, where he spent two years bouncing around the bottom of the minors.
Suarez hit his stride that season, putting together a 2.27 ERA in more than 120 innings across two levels of A-ball. His momentum was surging — just as it came time for Sofia to arrive in August.
He was torn, knowing he needed to support his family by advancing his career and that difficult travel logistics made it unfeasible to get to Venezuela and back before the end of the minor league season.
Suarez missed the birth.
“I stayed here to play and got my daughter whatever she needed,” says Suarez, who made it to the big leagues the following year. (He also missed the birth of his son in the spring of 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic shut down travel and made a trip to Venezuela impossible. Unable to leave the States, Suarez couldn’t get home to meet Dominick until that December. “There was nothing I could do,” he recalls.)
His predicament is familiar for Venezuelan players, who are often separated from family by circumstance — and it doesn’t necessarily get easier as a player rises through the ranks.
Abreu recalls a bittersweet video call with his parents when he was called up to the majors by the Red Sox as a 24-year-old in 2023, a goal he’d relentlessly pursued since childhood. The joyous occasion remained incomplete: There was no way his parents could see him play in person.
“It was a very emotional call, with tears,” he says. “I’ll never forget the face that my parents had when I gave them the news.”
International players come here on P-1A visas procured by a team. Spouses and children are also eligible for visas, though in Suarez’s case, his now-wife and children couldn’t come until 2024, after he married. There’s no similar mechanism for parents, and US travel restrictions placed on Venezuelans make it exceedingly challenging for them to obtain visas to see their children play.
It does happen on occasion, however: Narváez’s parents obtained visas in 2022, allowing them to reunite with their son for the first time in three years and eventually attend his big league debut in 2024. Monasterio’s parents secured their first visas to see their son play in 2025 — his 11th year in the United States.
Contreras’s parents were not able to attend his big league debut in 2016 with the Cubs. But when Illinois Senator Dick Durbin caught wind of this during the playoffs that year, he hastily arranged for them to gain passage to the United States, just in time to see their son earn a World Series ring as the Cubs’ starting catcher.
“Having my mom and dad in the crowd… it was hard to describe,” says Contreras. “You feel a lot of things that you’ve never felt before.”
For years, Venezuelan players would be granted a petition that would allow them to travel between the countries for up to five years. But starting in 2019, when the United States and Venezuela severed diplomatic relations, travel has become steadily more complicated.
Players have had to route through other countries — Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Brazil — to acquire the necessary visas. And even for players on multi-year visas, a lack of direct flights has made routine travel nearly impossible.
When Abreu’s grandmother passed away in 2024, the multiple days that would have been needed to get to Venezuela and back made it impossible for him to consider attending the funeral.
The next day, Abreu hit two homers in a game against the Texas Rangers — and was reduced to tears in the dugout and while playing in the outfield during the contest.
“It was one of the most difficult times in my life,” he says. “Not being able to be there with my family, supporting them, and sharing the pain of such a tough loss, it was very sad for me. I didn’t know how to handle that news.”
Things got more challenging last December, when the Trump administration included Venezuela among countries subject to broadened travel restrictions. Now, newly issued P-1A visas are only good for a single entry to the United States, and players must enter the country within three months of approval.
As a result, if a Venezuelan player with a newly issued visa were to go home mid-season for a family emergency, he might need weeks to meet the requirements of returning to the United States, potentially derailing a season.
And there are new stresses borne of the US government’s massive deportation efforts.
Last year, in the face of increased Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations, players with green cards and visas were advised by the MLB Players Association to carry immigration documentation with them at all times. As of early February, according to industry sources, there were no known instances of players having been detained by ICE — but the fear remains.
Though in the United States legally, players have encountered anxiety about routine appointments for government and legal services. A meeting with an immigration lawyer to deal with a visa request for a spouse, for instance, might be accompanied by the thought: What if ICE is sitting in the parking lot?
The Players Association said in a statement it is “available to all players and agents around the clock,” including on issues of travel and security. In one organization, foreign-born minor leaguers have been taught how to say in English that they are professional baseball players and advised to memorize the phone numbers of contacts with the team in case of an emergency.
“It’s sad, but it’s the reality,” one major league source says.
The greatest anxiety surrounds foreign-born players in the lower minor leagues, given potential cultural and language challenges in an unfamiliar country. But the Sox’ Venezuelans in the big leagues — both players and support staff — describe the precautions to prove documented status mostly as an inconvenience rather than an ongoing source of fear.
“Of course it’s difficult. I always have [those documents] on me,” says Narváez. “It’s different as a Latin guy or Venezuelan. There’s different things that you’ve got to do. But you don’t think about that. You just do it.”
Narváez lives in Miami during the offseason and is hoping to establish residency in the United States this year while pursuing eventual citizenship.
“I’m so proud of being here,” he says. “It’s a beautiful country.”
But he has also lived and worked alongside Venezuelans who came to the United States to support their families, and finds the topic of deportation difficult to discuss.
“There’s a lot of Venezuelan people [in the United States] who just want to do the right thing,” he says. “I don’t want to talk [deeper] about that. I know it’s tough. I know there’s a lot of people living [through] bad moments right now.”
The political situation in Venezuela after Maduro’s ouster is also a sensitive topic. The history of threats and kidnappings back home can make it hard to speak out, explains Villoria-Benítez, the translator.
“It’s not that we don’t want to talk,” he says. “It’s just sometimes we’re trying to protect our families as well.”
And so there is caution among the players — but also palpable hope. Diplomatic relations were restored between the United States and Venezuela earlier this month. If, as expected, the return of consular services and direct flights follows, visits by loved ones could potentially get much easier.
Abreu glows at the thought of having his parents see him play for the first time.
“The hope increases every day,” he says.
Contreras — along with his brother William, the Milwaukee Brewers’ All-Star catcher — has been active in charitable work, including distributing meals in his hometown, Puerto Cabello. He hopes the frustrating logistics of getting supplies into the country will get smoother, making it possible for the brothers to expand the efforts — which he thinks of as a responsibility.
“I know where I came from,” says Contreras, who has been one of the more vocal players in discussing the humanitarian crisis back home. “It would be really selfish to say, ‘You have what you have — don’t go back to Venezuela, don’t have empathy for the Venezuelan people.’”
In early March, the clubhouse at Fenway South is decorated with national colors ahead of the World Baseball Classic, the international tournament being held for the sixth time since its creation in 2006. Flags are draped over 13 lockers, identifying the players who have left camp to represent international teams in games in Houston, Miami, Puerto Rico, and Japan.
With Contreras, Suarez, and Abreu all playing in the tournament, Team Venezuela has the largest Sox contingent in the WBC. “It makes my heart go crazy. That’s something I always wanted to do — have Venezuela on my chest,” Abreu says. “To be able to do it here and to represent my family and the Venezuelan people on the biggest stage is a dream come true.
“We want to show how much we love our country, how much we love each other, and also, we’re going to show that it doesn’t matter the situation that is going on in our country,” he continues. “We’re going to be playing with love and enjoy playing the game that we all grew up loving.”
(On Sunday, Abreu’s three-run home run against Japan, the defending champion, propelled Venezuela to the WBC semifinals, a win that also clinched a spot in the 2028 Olympics, the country’s first-ever baseball berth. After Abreu connected with the pitch, he heaved his bat toward the heavens as his teammates rejoiced – a celebration unlike any previously seen from him on a baseball field.)
The players recognize the rarity of their situation on the Red Sox: the chance to experience the season together, absorb and reflect on all that’s happening back in Venezuela, to strive with a shared sense of purpose both on and off the field.
“Obviously, we’re going through a hard situation,” Suarez says. “But we can talk to each other and see how we can be a better Venezuela — how we can help people in Venezuela become better Venezuelans, or help them to be successful.”
On the field, the group’s performance will be integral to team success. Contreras and Abreu are tasked with supplying home run power in the middle of the lineup, as well as excellent defense at first base and in the outfield, respectively. From behind the plate, Narváez is expected to guide a potentially dominant group of pitchers. Among the arms he’ll work with is Suarez, whose pedigree as one of the best playoff pitchers this decade was seen by the team this winter as worthy of the nine-figure expenditure. Monasterio is a versatile puzzle piece capable of offering infield depth.
The quintet recognizes the chance to propel the Red Sox, and in doing so, to offer hope and pride to Venezuela at a pivotal time.
“For us to be able to have a successful year will bring back a lot of joy for Venezuelans,” Suarez says.
Narváez knows that his struggles before the major leagues — when he was scraping the bottom of his bank account with his family depending on him — is one to which many Venezuelans can relate.
He also hopes his story — especially if amplified by the success of the 2026 Red Sox — can shed light on the Venezuelan people and their determination to realize their dreams.
“We’re a beautiful people with a good culture,” he says. “We just want to go on our own path, live a good life, have good friends, have good relationships — just trying to make a shining future with all of our loved ones.”
Alex Speier can be reached at alex.speier@globe.com. Follow him @alexspeier.