Ezequiel Tovar was a budding baseball prodigy when he left his hometown of Maracay, Venezuela, hopped on an airplane for the first time and flew to Margarita Island.
That’s where he attended the Roberto Vahlis Baseball Academy — one of Venezuela’s premier youth baseball training grounds.
Tovar was all of 12 years old.
At 13, as political and economic turmoil erupted in Venezuela, Tovar flew 1,200 miles from home to live and train at Vahlis’ new academy in the Dominican Republic, hoping to be seen and evaluated by major league scouts. Now the gifted player, mature well beyond his 21 years, is poised to lead a wave of young talent the Rockies hope will transform them into contenders in the coming years.