{"id":395844,"date":"2026-07-12T18:53:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-12T18:53:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/395844\/"},"modified":"2026-07-12T18:53:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-12T18:53:10","slug":"padres-reliever-bradgley-rodriguez-honors-venezuela-earthquake-victims-with-words-cleats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/395844\/","title":{"rendered":"Padres reliever Bradgley Rodriguez honors Venezuela earthquake victims with words, cleats"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Thursday, Padres reliever Bradgley Rodriguez took the mound wearing a pair of yellow, red and blue cleats.<\/p>\n

Inscribed on the right toe is the word \u201cPetare\u201d \u2014 the Venezuelan city where he was born \u2014 with multicolored buildings reminiscent of the neighborhood he remembers from childhood along the side.<\/p>\n

The left cleat pays tribute to Guarenas, where he grew up, featuring artwork of The Noria of Hacienda La Concepci\u00f3n \u2014 a preserved 1869 hydraulic waterwheel and sugarcane mill \u2014 near the heel.<\/p>\n

The stars of the Venezuelan flag hug the arches of his feet.<\/p>\n

Rodriguez\u2019s home country is always top of mind, but even more so since two devastating magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 earthquakes hit the area in late June, causing 4,000-plus fatalities to date and thousands more injuries.<\/p>\n

Rodriguez immediately checked on his family, which lives within 45 minutes of the epicenter.<\/p>\n

\u201cLuckily, everyone is OK,\u201d Rodriguez said through Padres interpreter Jorge Merlos. \u201cEveryone\u2019s all right. The only person that lost their house is my grandmother, and she pretty much lost all of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"PadresPadres reliever Bradgley Rodriguez walks off the mound in the seventh inning of a game against the Phillies on May 26, 2026. (Meg McLaughlin \/ The San Diego Union-Tribune)<\/p>\n

Rodriguez\u2019s abuela is living with his mom for now, though Rodriguez is focused on eventually buying her a new house. He knows things could have been much, much worse.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously I wasn\u2019t solely affected, but my friends were looking for their parents and trying to figure out where they were,\u201d he said. \u201cI know their families as well, so it affected me so much. I kept staying up late at night just thinking about them and not knowing what else to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are currently more than 80 Venezuelan-born players active in MLB this season, including Rodriguez and Padres teammates Freddy Fermin, Luis Rengifo and Germ\u00e1n M\u00e1rquez.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy whole family is safe, and they are good,\u201d Marquez said. \u201cBut everybody is still sad because there were too many lives (taken). My heart breaks because it\u2019s my country, it\u2019s my people \u2026 It\u2019s hard, and we kind of find a way to help them out. I feel like every player from Venezuela has been, you know, giving just a little to help.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Annie Heilbrunn<\/p>\n

A closer look at Padres reliever Bradgley Rodriguez\u2019s cleats. (Annie Heilbrunn)<\/p>\n

The Padres Foundation has donated $100,000 to the American Red Cross\u2019 dedicated Venezuelan Earthquake Relief Fund. Fernando Tatis Jr., through his Fernando Tatis Full Count Foundation, also donated $100,000 and encouraged teams, players and organizations to give what they can.<\/p>\n

The days immediately after the earthquakes were the hardest, Rodriguez said, as uncertainty hung over every message and phone call.<\/p>\n

Since then, things have become a little easier \u2014 though they\u2019re far from settled.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously it\u2019s very, very sad,\u201d he said, \u201cand it\u2019s super difficult to be part of that and to be here and see what\u2019s happening.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Thursday, Padres reliever Bradgley Rodriguez took the mound wearing a pair of yellow, red and blue cleats.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":395845,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[181,1334,74,76,75,2611,127],"class_list":["post-395844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-latest-headlines","tag-mlb","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-san-diego-padres","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=395844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395844\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/395845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}