In most ways that matter, the headline says it all.
According to multiple reports out of the Dominican Republic, 25-year-old Kansas City Royals pitcher Yordano Ventura has died in a car accident.
As it was with Oscar Tavares and, more recently, Jose Fernandez, it’s hard to immediately process the sudden deaths of young people whom we know only through the context of baseball. For his family, his friends, and for the Kansas City organization, I am very sad this morning.
I’m taken back to that place I was – also on a Sunday morning – in September when I learned that Fernandez had died. While Ventura’s presence in the game at large may not have been as prominent as that of Fernandez, he was a fully-formed person who gave his public life to baseball fans. And now he’s gone. It will take me, and much of the baseball community, a while to fully get my head around another young baseball life simply gone.
Again, to Ventura’s family, friends, and organization, I sincerely express my condolences. Theirs is the loss to keep in your thoughts and prayers today.
UPDATE: Reports also indicate that former big leaguer Andy Marte also died in a car accident in the Dominican Republic. It’s not immediately clear if it was the same accident, or just a terrible coincidence. Either way, horrible news.
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