Washington Nationals Player Kidnapped by Armed Gunmen While Visiting Venezuela

(Washington Post) Wilson Ramos, one of the Washington Nationals’ most promising young baseball players, was kidnapped at gunpoint Wednesday night from his family’s home in Venezuela, leaving the team in a state of shock and raising questions about the safety of playing in a country ravaged in recent years by kidnappings and street crime.

The 24-year-old Ramos, the starting catcher for the Nationals, had returned to his native country for the winter and planned to participate in roughly 10 games for his Venezuelan winter league team, the Aragua Tigers, starting Thursday.

 Wilson Ramos’ Venezuelan winter league team reports that he has been kidnapped in his hometown of Valencia, Venezuela.

He is one of the Nationals’ best players, a rookie this past season who supplanted likely future Hall of Famer Ivan Rodriguez, his childhood idol, as the Nationals’ regular catcher.

Wednesday evening, four armed men arrived at Ramos’s mother’s house in the Santa Ines sector of the central city of Valencia, and took Ramos away, according to multiple news reports out of Venezuela.