Yordano Ventura's grieving mother a pillar of strength during Royals' emotional ceremony
KANSAS CITY – The grieving mom walked in front of 40,000 strangers, stood the one place her late son felt safest in this world, bent over at the waist and started to scrawl a message in the dirt. The first letter was a capital D, followed by a lowercase i and lowercase o. She ran out of room, the pitcher’s mound at Kauffman Stadium getting in the way, so the final letter, a lowercase s, was, like her world these last few months, sideways.
Dios. God. That’s why she was here, in body and in mind. Marisol Hernandez, mother of Yordano Ventura, didn’t need to show up for the Kansas City Royals’ home opener, but she had to. She had to return to the place of her son’s greatest triumphs, where his closest friends spent every day laughing with him and shaking their heads at him and praying he would grow up into the man they all believed he could be.
“Through my pain and all my suffering, I knew I had to come and do this,” Hernandez said, “and because what happened to my son I know many people will know God is the only way.”
Dios. That’s the only explanation. If Yordano Ventura was going to die at 25 years old in a one-car crash on a Dominican road, it was going to be God’s will, because anything else would’ve broken her. This day did not manage that, either. As the Royals wept, as that stadium of strangers fought back tears, as the first of another 81 home games readied to begin, Marisol Hernandez stood on the mound, stoic, and threw a two-bounce first pitch to Salvador Perez, who hugged her and didn’t want to let go.
Hours earlier, Hernandez was at the home of Perez, eating arepas, smiling, talking with the Royals’ franchise catcher’s mom until 1 a.m. Perez saw her as a pillar. He wants to be the same, and maybe he will be in time, but for now he can’t avert his eyes from the monument that rekindles every emotion.
“Every day we come to this clubhouse and see that,” Perez said.
He pointed across the room.
“That locker right there.”
On the left side of the clubhouse, sandwiched between Matt Strahm and Kelvin Herrera, is an empty locker. Inside is a plaque. Photographs of Ventura ring the showpiece in the middle: a jersey with a KC logo on the left sleeve, a World Series Champions patch on the right sleeve and the No. 30 and VENTURA in capital letters on the back.
“It’s there every day,” Perez said. “For the rest of my life here, if I’m in Kansas City for 20 years, every time I look over there, no matter who has that locker, it’s going to remind me of Yordano.”
The burden of grief remains too mighty for some of the Royals to comprehend. Christian Colon wants to believe Ventura will walk through the clubhouse door and laugh at the prank he pulled. The Royals want to think the tarp covering their pitcher’s mound every night that says ACE 30 is a put-on, that the black-and-white patches they’ll wear on their jerseys all year are temporary. Eric Hosmer wants it all to end, and not because his friend deserves any less but because he doesn’t know if he’s strong enough to take this much.
The ceremony that preceded Hernandez’s pitch tested all of them. A photo of Ventura appeared on the massive center-field video board, overlaid by the words:
IN LOVING MEMORY
YORDANO VENTURA
1991-2017
Hundreds of balloons, blue and gold and white, cascaded into the sky, blowing northeast, the same direction in which Ventura was traveling when his Jeep careened off a highway near the small town of Juan Adrian in January. Baseball mourned the loss of a colossal talent, an intemperate hothead, a walking struggle: The kid whose livelihood on the field depended on control grappling with it on and off the field.
In no way did that lessen his bond with his team or his city. The outpouring for Ventura was immediate and overwhelming. Fans shipped memorabilia to pitcher Danny Duffy so he could send it to Hernandez. Ventura was a vital piece of the resurgent Royals teams that made back-to-back World Series and won the 2015 title. He would forever be part of Kansas City.
The ceremony Monday was just the right kind of understated. A saxophonist named Michael Phillips played “Amazing Grace” as the scoreboard showed photos of Ventura pitching and laughing and posing with teammates and pumping his fist and following through with his whirling leg kick and visiting with a sick child and standing next to the World Series trophy he helped win and looking so happy.
“It just hits you when you see all the pictures, all the good times,” Hosmer said, “and you realize he’s not coming back.”
After 10 of Ventura’s teammates stood over the mound with a flag that said ACE 30, Hosmer took a microphone and freestyled a speech that was simple and captured the moment.
“There’s no place that felt more like home,” Hosmer said, “than on that mound in front of all of you guys.”
Then came Marisol Hernandez’s moment. She walked straight to the mound, threw the pitch, embraced Perez, didn’t shed a tear. Manager Ned Yost hugged her – “She doesn’t speak much English,” he said, “but it’s the universal hug that’s understanding both ways” – and others followed.
“I don’t even know how she’s doing it,” Colon said. “I gave her a huge hug. She seemed fine. She did better than a lot of us today. She’s a strong woman.”
Colon marveled at the day. The Royals lost 2-0, three-hit by the Oakland A’s, given opportunity after opportunity to fill in the narrative – they did it for Ace – but never managing to do so. Still, it was an afternoon Colon won’t soon forget. He hadn’t gone to Ventura’s funeral in the Dominican Republic, so when he leaned in and wrapped his arms around Hernandez, he delivered a message, one every grieving mother should hear from the brothers of her son, one of which a most benevolent God would approve.
“I’m your son, too,” Colon said. “We all are.”
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