Victor Martinez
The Venezuelan contingent in the Detroit Tigers clubhouse is significant.
Katie Strang of ESPN.com describes it as a "strong brotherhood and a special kinship that is hard to replicate."
“There’s a familiarity with everything that makes it a lot easier,” slugger Victor Rodriguez tells ESPN.com. “Even if you haven’t met [a teammate], and you know he’s Venezuelan, you know what he wants, what he likes … The chemistry is easy for some reason.”
Katie Strang of ESPN.com writes:
The club has arguably the strongest Venezuelan contingent of any team -- not just by virtue of numbers but also by the sheer accomplishments among them. There is Cabrera, one of the most prolific hitters of all time, a former Triple Crown winner and two-time AL MVP with four batting titles in the past five years. There is (Victor) Martinez, a five-time All-Star and two-time Silver Slugger winner. On the pitching staff, there is Anibal Sanchez, who led the American League with the lowest ERA (2.57) of all starters in 2013, and closer Francisco Rodriguez, MLB’s active saves leader (393), acquired this offseason in a trade from the Milwaukee Brewers. Then, of course, there is Omar Vizquel, one of the all-time great Venezuelan shortstops, who serves as the club’s first-base coach.
Some of these players knew one another before joining forces in Detroit. Cabrera and Sanchez, who both hail from Maracay, a city on the northern coast, have known each other since they were kids. Cabrera goes way back with Rodriguez, a native of the nearby capital city Caracas, as well. The two played Little League against each other growing up. Martinez was raised in the south in a city called Ciudad Bolivar, an area much more agricultural than the industrial metropolises to the north. Geographical differences mean little to the men, though, because of all that they share: a love for their country, a love for baseball and a mutual understanding of the intersection between both.
