Tragedy strikes baseball again
KANSAS CITY – On Saturday morning, I flew back to this Midwestern city to see some doctors – naturally wearing my sweatshirt that said: “Kansas City Royals, 2015 World Series Champions.”
On Sunday morning, I woke to discover that one of the most exciting and passionate members of that team, 25-year-old pitcher Yordano Ventura, was dead – killed in a car accident in his native Dominican Republic.
To say that this community, which has been baseball crazy these past several years, had fallen in some kind of deep shock would be…
Well, a huge understatement.
Ventura, who predictably was nicknamed “Ace” (both for his electric stuff and as a laugh over the Jim Carrey movie “Ace Ventura, Pet Detective”) was combative and occasionally puzzling on the mound, but always grinning off it.
The skinny kid with the 100-mph fastball was loved by the fans and unanimously by his teammates.
In three full seasons with the Royals, he won 38 games — and also tossed in outstanding outings in the playoffs and World Series in 2014 and 2015 — but more memorably, he also won a million hearts.
THIS is a metropolitan area of 1.9 million, so it tells you plenty that the Royals drew 2.6 million fans to Kauffman Stadium last season.
When the Royals won the Series two years ago, they assumed there would be a crowd at the victory parade and then a team appearance at Union Station.
They did not expect the 800,000 who turned up.
More than in most cities, the players here become locals. You see them in
restaurants and stores, and they always seem happy to shake hands or sign your kid’s cap.
This is all a way to explain that the news of Ventura’s death brought Kansas City to its knees.
Several hundred everyday folk gathered at the stadium to lay flowers outside.
The gigantic outfield video board at “The K” — which is visible from most points around the area — displayed a photo of Ventura on the mound, finger aimed toward the sky, with the words: “In Loving Memory.”
Meanwhile, several players had turned up that morning for off-season workouts, heard the news and wound up going out to hug and comfort the fans.
Pitcher Danny Duffy asked people: “Will you be OK?” Infielder Christian Colon cried along with dozens of supporters.
Finally, reality was sinking in that this shooting star – the lovable, smiling kid - who blazed so brightly across the Royals’ horizon, had indeed been suddenly extinguished.
VENTURA’S death continued a horrible theme for big-league baseball.
Last summer, the Miami Marlins’ magnificent pitcher Jose Fernandez was killed in a boating accident.
In October of ‘14, Cardinals rookie outfielder Oscar Tavares died – also in a Dominican auto accident – and ironically, his longtime friend Ventura pitched one of his most brilliant games that night. Yordano wore Tavares’ initials and number on his cap while shutting out San Francisco for seven innings in Game 6 of the World Series.
And a final, tragic note: Longtime major leaguer Andy Marte, who retired in 2014, died the same day as Ventura – in yet another Dominican car crash.
Life will go on, of course, here in Kansas City and everywhere else.
So will baseball.
But after the stunning news and then the mourning, there are messages here for all of us.
Athletes are human: no matter how gifted, how famous or how rich.
And finally, as Royals General Manager Dayton Moore told a somber Sunday press conference: “Tomorrow isn’t promised to anyone. You can’t hug the people you love often enough.”
Amen.
Steve Cameron is a special assignment reporter for The Press who has covered sports at all levels for more than three decades. Reach Steve at [email protected].