When Royals catcher Sal Perez flew into Santo Domingo on Monday night, he couldn’t yet admit to himself that teammate Yordano Ventura had died in a car accident early Sunday morning.
Never mind that he had been reliably told and seen irrefutable reports, and had called first baseman Eric Hosmer to break the news, and heard Hosmer immediately burst into tears and shout, “No, no, no! Why? why?!”
With Ventura’s funeral scheduled Tuesday, Perez was restless all of Monday night, at one point thinking to himself, “Ventura, come on, let me sleep.”
“When I see him,” he said during a three-hour bus ride to services for the 25-year-old Ventura, “I’m going to sleep better.