Five years after he was kidnapped in his native Venezuela, Wilson Ramos, a catcher for the Tampa Bay Rays, finally secured the paperwork necessary for his family to live with him in the United States. Carlos Carrasco, a pitcher for the Cleveland Indians who was born in Venezuela, passed his U.S. citizenship test in August and has not returned to his birthplace for years.

Carlos Gonzalez, an outfielder for the Colorado Rockies, felt uneasy visiting his family and friends in Venezuela before the 2016 season, after an absence of three years, because for the first time he needed an armed security guard. Jose Lobaton, a catcher for the Washington Nationals, lives in Orlando, Florida, and worries constantly about whether his family and friends in Venezuela have enough food.

“We know how beautiful Venezuela is and how poorly it’s been treated,” Chicago Cubs catcher Miguel Montero said in Spanish. “As a Venezuelan, it hurts because you have family there and you have your childhood friends, and you can’t see them or go there. Luckily, we’re blessed to have made our money here in baseball, but many don’t have the same luck.”

The growing economic and political chaos in Venezuela has affected everything associated with the country, including baseball, a primary source of its pride. Although some of the best Venezuelan players have suited up in their country’s uniform this month to play in the World Baseball Classic, the players, as a whole, have intensely bittersweet emotions about their homeland.

And baseball itself has suffered in Venezuela. In the wake of deteriorating relations with the U.S., President Nicolás Maduro mandated in 2015 that Americans apply for a visa before entering Venezuela, making travel more difficult for major league scouts and complicating what had been a reliable fount of talent.

The Venezuelan Summer League, where newly signed major league prospects played, shut down last year when the number of participating major league teams dropped to three. And only four major league teams still maintain academies in the country, a reflection of the deteriorating conditions.

The players who talked about Venezuela did so in a series of interviews in recent months. Some declined to comment, leery of being perceived as taking sides in the country’s tense politics.

Venezuelan major leaguers find ways to send money and supplies to family and friends back home, sometimes using people traveling there to transport items. Still, traveling can be fraught. Even Venezuelan citizens have encountered complications entering and leaving the country. Kidnappings, too, remain a threat.

Ramos was seized at gunpoint at his family’s home in Valencia in November 2011 and was then freed about 50 hours later by the police. He returned to Venezuela in subsequent offseasons to see relatives and play winter ball, but memories of the episode were still vivid. After his wife, Yely, had their first child in 2014, Ramos decided the U.S. would be a safer place to raise a family and a better place to train in the offseason.

Ramos bought a house in Davie, Florida, near the end of the 2015 season. With the help of his team at the time, the Nationals, and an immigration lawyer, Ramos secured permanent residency for himself and his wife and tourist visas for members of his family and his wife’s family.

Ramos, who signed with the Rays this winter, said he wanted to move more family members permanently to the U.S., adding that “bringing everyone would be really hard.”

He still makes short visits to his family in Venezuela. He said his family had security guards, as he did when he returned for longer stays. It was necessary, Ramos said, but it made him feel as if he was not free in his own country.

And yet despite the crime, the corruption, the shortages of food and the intense standoff between Maduro’s loyalists and his opponents, Venezuela remains fertile ground for baseball, with more than 500 prospects signed by major league teams in the past two years.

According to Baseball Reference, 358 Venezuelan players have appeared in the major leagues, trailing only the Dominican Republic’s 669 for the most players from any country outside the U.S. In 2016, 102 players born in Venezuela appeared on major league rosters.

The Houston Astros opened the first academy to develop young Venezuelan players in 1989, and by the middle of the last decade, 13 major league teams had a presence in Venezuela. The country seemed ready to overtake the Dominican Republic as the biggest pipeline of foreign talent to the major leagues.

But that assessment changed as Venezuela fell into disarray. Major league teams began shuttering their academies, and only the Cubs, the Rays, the Detroit Tigers and the Philadelphia Phillies remain.

“There’s plenty of talent,” said Johnny DiPuglia, who heads international operations for the Nationals, who have never had an academy in Venezuela.

“But you worry about sending the kids home,” he added. “There is a shortage of food. They don’t go out at night because it’s dangerous. They don’t have the means of going where they want to go work out because we don’t have academies.”

The Seattle Mariners closed their academy in 2015, the most recent closure. The team had built a $7 million academy in the Dominican Republic and decided it was better to send their Venezuelan players there to train, said Jack Zduriencik, the Mariners’ general manager at the time.

“A lot of it was logistics,” Zduriencik said. “But everybody is aware of anything going on in Venezuela.”

The Tigers, who have a significant contingent of Venezuelan players, still have their academy in Venezuela, and Al Avila, the Tigers’ general manager, said he did not urge his players to avoid the country in the offseason.

“That’s their personal situation, as far as where they want to live and the security they get,” Avila said.

The Tigers’ first-base coach, Omar Vizquel, was a longtime fixture at shortstop in the major leagues and is the manager of the Venezuelan team in the WBC. During the offseason, Vizquel said, he stays in touch with first baseman Miguel Cabrera and designated hitter Victor Martinez, both Florida residents who play for the Tigers and the WBC team, about their safety when they return to Venezuela.

“We all talk about what could happen and tell each other to be careful,” said Vizquel, who often visits Caracas, his hometown. “Among us Venezuelans, there’s a lot of shared experience and we talk about it.”

Some players have tried to make a difference. Last fall, Carrasco’s charity collected medical supplies — in addition to school and baseball equipment — to send to Venezuela. Lobaton would love one day to live in his native country again and host baseball clinics for children, as he has seen American teammates do when they return to their hometowns in the offseason.

“I have faith, like all Venezuelans, that things will change,” he said.

And for now, the Venezuelans on the WBC team will try to win the championship for a country they love — but often from a distance.