While the baseball world is mourning the death of Kansas City Royals pitcher Yordano Ventura, investigators are still trying to figure out exactly what happened. One report of the early details is highly troubling, though, suggesting that Ventura was in a car crash, but was still alive afterwards, and that looters came by, assaulted him and stole his World Series ring instead of trying to help him.
This report initially comes from Dominican journalist Euri Cabral, and a Spanish report referencing Cabral’s story can be found here. It should be emphasized that this is an unconfirmed report at this point; outlets such as the Kansas City Star have confirmed that Ventura’s death was related to a car crash, but no one else appears to have reported these allegations of a post-crash assault on Ventura. However, this report was given wide play by former MLB pitcher and current TBS studio analyst Pedro Martinez, who tweeted about the incident.
https://twitter.com/45PedroMartinez/status/823746467785478144
https://twitter.com/45PedroMartinez/status/823748571258322944
https://twitter.com/45PedroMartinez/status/823749143847993344
Here’s a translation of what Martinez had to say.
https://twitter.com/notcodyk/status/823751711651151876
Once again, it’s imperative to remember that this is an unconfirmed report. We will hopefully get some resolution on this particular report soon, but it’s likely we won’t know the full details around Ventura’s death for a few weeks, especially as there is still a toxicology report to run. In any case, this story is extremely sad. We’ve lost yet another young baseball player much too soon.
