24-year-old catcher kidnapped after finishing his rookie season



BY IAN JAMES AND JORGE RUEDA
updated 5:27 p.m. ET Nov. 10, 2011

CARACAS, Venezuela - The government sent top investigators Thursday to hunt for Washington Nationals catcher Wilson Ramos, whose abduction has shaken Venezuela's elite athletes and focused attention on the nation's sharp rise in kidnappings for ransom.

The 24-year-old player, who had returned to Venezuela after his rookie season, was just outside the front door at his home on Wednesday night when an SUV approached, armed men got out "and they took him away," said Ramos' agent, Gustavo Marcano.

It was the first known kidnapping of a Major League Baseball player in Venezuela, though the relatives of some ballplayers have previously been held captive for ransom.

Police found the kidnappers' vehicle abandoned in the nearby town of Bejuma on Thursday morning, Justice Minister Tareck El Aissami said. He said anti-kidnapping units led by "the best investigators we have" were dispatched to the area in central Carabobo state.

He vowed to rescue Ramos and capture his abductors.

HBT: What can MLB do about security in Venezuela?
"We're taking on this investigation with everything we've got," El Aissami said.

Major League Baseball and the Nationals said the leagues' Department of Investigations was working with authorities.

"Our foremost concern is with Wilson Ramos and his family and our thoughts are with them at this time," the team and the MLB said in a joint statement, adding there would be no further comment.

Ramos was outside with his father and two brothers in their working-class neighborhood of Santa Ines on the outskirts of Valencia when the SUV pulled up with four men inside, three of whom got out and seized the player, Marcano said.

"The abductors haven't made contact with the family or with anyone," said Domingo Alvarez, vice president of the Venezuelan Professional Baseball League. "We're worried."

Ramos is a key young player for the Nationals. As a rookie in 2011, he hit .267 with 15 home runs and 52 RBIs in 113 games. He also threw out 19 of 67 runners attempting to steal a base, a 28 percent success rate that ranked third among qualifying catchers in the National League.

Washington acquired Ramos from the Minnesota Twins in a trade for All-Star relief pitcher Matt Capps in July 2010.

He is one of dozens of Venezuelans in professional baseball, and security while at home has increasingly become a concern for the players and their families as a rising wave of kidnappings has hit the wealthy as well as the middle class.

Venezuelan police said 618 kidnappings were reported in 2009, and the numbers have grown rapidly in recent years. In 1998, when President Hugo Chavez was elected, just 52 kidnappings were reported. Security experts say the real number of kidnappings today is much higher because many cases aren't reported to authorities.

The wealthy have taken steps to protect themselves. Sales of armored cars have soared in the past several years. Bodyguards typically shadow major leaguers when they return to their homeland to play in the winter league.

"Every major league player has his own security, but we don't know if he had his security there at that time," Alvarez said.

Former Boston Red Sox slugger Tony Armas, who lives in Venezuela, said young players have been taking additional security measures due to the risk of kidnappings.

"But many of them are careless sometimes. No one seriously thinks that this can happen to us, and much less in a country like ours where people love baseball," Armas said in a telephone interview.

"Most of us came from humble families. We still have relatives who live in poor areas; we frequent those places and unfortunately the criminals are getting more soulless all the time," he said.

In November 2009, the 56-year-old mother of Victor Zambrano, who retired after a seven-year Major League career, was rescued in a commando-style operation three days after she was kidnapped. The former pitcher's cousin, Richard Mendez Zambrano, had been kidnapped a few days earlier, and was later killed.

In June 2009, Colorado Rockies catcher Yorvit Torrealba's 11-year-old son and brother-in-law were kidnapped and released a day later.

The mother of former player Ugueth Urbina, who was a two-time All-Star pitcher, spent more than five months in captivity until she was rescued in early 2005.

Venezuela has one of Latin America's highest murder rates, and violent crime has worsened in recent years. As ransom kidnapping has soared, the government passed a revised law in 2009 that stiffened prison sentences for kidnapping and also allows authorities to freeze the banks accounts of victims' families to prevent them from paying ransom.

Ramos had been training and planned to start playing with his Venezuelan team next week. Arizona Diamondbacks third baseman Melvin Mora, also a Venezuelan, proposed that the Venezuelan league ought to call off its games "until he appears."

But league president Jose Grasso said that won't happen. "Turning out the stadium lights isn't a solution," Grasso said, calling Ramos' abduction "an isolated event."

http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/45238841/ns/sports-baseball/

The man is screwed..................

Yeah, man like the socialists say: Capitalism is to blame for all the evil that men do...

I hope they remember that he is a chamo, un vale, un pana y le dan un break. Pobrecito!

From Mariano Castillo, CNN
updated 11:59 PM EST, Fri November 11, 2011


Wilson Ramos, a rising star for the Washington Nationals, was back in his native country to play in Venezuela's winter league.

(CNN) -- Major league catcher Wilson Ramos has been "found alive," two days after he was reported kidnapped by gunmen, Venezuelan state TV reported Friday.

Ramos was found by security forces in Montalban, a mountainous region about 60 miles from the north central Venezuelan town where he was last seen, according to a tweet posted late Friday by Communications Minister Andres Izarra.

Ramos was reported by state-run VTV to be healthy and unharmed.

Ramos, a rising star for the Washington Nationals as a rookie this past year, had returned to his native country to play in Venezuela's winter league.

But before his first game with the Aragua Tigers, gunmen kidnapped him Wednesday night from his mother's home in Santa Ines in Carabobo state, a team spokeswoman said.

On Thursday, authorities said that they had found the SUV they believe was used in the kidnapping and had created sketches of two of the gunmen.

Prior to his release Friday, news about the federal investigation was tightly guarded.

"It's understandable that everyone wants to know what is happening with Wilson and how the investigation goes, but remember that, in these cases, patience is key," Tigers spokeswoman Kathe Vilera said on her Twitter account. She added that keeping the details sealed could help the investigation.

"It has all the earmarks as a targeted kidnapping: selected victim, selected location, selected time," said Chris Voss, a kidnapping specialist for Insite Security who has handled six cases involving Venezuela and who worked for the FBI for 26 years. "There's an outside possibility that they thought they were grabbing another member of the family, but that's extremely unlikely."

Kidnapping as an industry has crossed the border from Colombia into Venezuela, Voss said. "When criminals next door show you a model of how to make money easily -- and kidnapping is usually pretty easy money -- then other kidnappers will simply ape it."

But targeting athletes and other celebrities can be a mistake, he said. "It's going to bring too much law enforcement scrutiny down on them; too much international scrutiny. And media attention and scrutiny from law enforcement worldwide is bad for business."

Ramos, 24, emerged as the Nationals' top catcher this past season. He had a .267 batting average with 15 home runs and 52 runs batted in.

Though soccer reigns in most Latin American countries, it is baseball that rules in Venezuela, which routinely feeds players to major league teams in the United States.

That pipeline has been transformed in recent years because of violence.

As Venezuela's economy has stagnated in recent years, crimes such as kidnapping and murder have risen. According to the National Institute of Statistics, 16,917 people were kidnapped between July 2008 and July 2010, or about 23 kidnappings a day.

Baseball players who play professionally in the United States, whether in the major or minor leagues, are typically targeted for their money, though Ramos' case is the first time a player himself has been snatched. Usually, a family member is held for ransom.

"Government, please do something because Venezuela is crumbling with so much insecurity while you say that Venezuela is safe," Venezuelan baseball player Jose Castillo wrote on his Twitter account.

Melvin Dorta, a Venezuelan playing professionally in the U.S. Atlantic Independent League, told CNN that there are lots of opportunities in Venezuela, but also pitfalls.

Dorta has played for the Aragua Tigers and is a friend and former teammate of Ramos.

"Venezuela does have one of the best winter leagues, but it is one of the leagues where the Americans ask before going because of the insecurity and the dangers that one faces," he said.

Those dangers have led many American teams to abandon their baseball academies in Venezuela, said Arturo Marcano, a lawyer and sports columnist who co-authored a book about the recruitment of players from Venezuela.

When major league teams noticed the talent sitting in places like the Dominican Republic and Venezuela, they increased their investment in the region. Instead of relying on scouts to find players, they instituted the academies to find, train and sign players, Marcano said.

"The goal is to identify the players and sign the players, and if you can do it as cheaply as possible, all the better," he told CNN.

As crime in Venezuela increased, however, operating the academies became dangerous for their managers and scouts.

"All of a sudden, with these safety issues, teams started to leave," Marcano said.

At its peak, about 16 major league teams operated baseball academies in Venezuela, he said. Today, that number is only five or six. Teams have returned to the practice of sending only scouts, and then sending promising players to academies in the Dominican Republic.

Venezuelans who make it to the big leagues in the United States and return home become targets because there is a perception that they all make a lot of money, Marcano said. But for the minor leaguers and nonsuperstars in their first major league years, that is not necessarily the case.

Another aspect that may have influenced the Ramos kidnapping is that players from humble backgrounds who make money in the pros often return to the rough neighborhoods where their families live. Working-class families often don't want to leave their neighborhoods and their friends; they may feel they don't belong in middle- and upper-class neighborhoods. For example, Ramos was kidnapped from the home of his relatives, who had stayed in a tough area despite his success.


http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/11/world/americas/venezuela-mlb-player-kidnapped/?hpt=hp_t1

What is the lastest update? I heard he was rescued by Venuzuelan police. Is this true?

Yeah it was a fantastic rescue?

(CNN) -- Major league catcher Wilson Ramos has been "found alive," two days after he was reported kidnapped by gunmen, Venezuelan state TV reported Friday.

Ramos was found by security forces in Montalban, a mountainous region about 60 miles from the north central Venezuelan town where he was last seen, according to a tweet posted late Friday by Communications Minister Andres Izarra.

Ramos was reported by state-run VTV to be healthy and unharmed.