Stan Javier rides his bicycle on the stretch of road where Kansas City Royals pitcher Yordano Ventura crashed and died in the early morning hours Sunday. The Juan Adrian highway is a curvy, winding and hilly route where excessive speed or the slightest lapse of concentration can bring dire consequences. And it's more perilous at night, when a combination of darkness and fog can seriously impede visibility.
Moises Alou has also traveled the highway and regards it as "tricky." The challenges aren't unlike what he has seen on many roads in his native Dominican Republic. For his first few seasons as general manager of Leones Del Escogido in the Dominican winter league, Alou would routinely hop in his car and accompany the team on road trips. For the past two or three years, he has taken a more cautious approach and confined his travel to home games and the short drive to Estadio Quisqueya.
Off the top of his head, Alou reels off a lengthy inventory of motor vehicle hazards in his homeland. He has seen trucks and motorcycles driving with no lights and vehicles parked in the middle of the road, in the dark, for no apparent reason. It's not uncommon for pedestrians to cross busy highways with livestock in tow or for motorists to take shortcuts the wrong way down one-way streets. The advent of drive-through bars several years ago was not a helpful development for the cause of public safety.
"People drive so bad here,"' Alou said by phone from his home in Santo Domingo. "The roads are dark in places where they're not supposed to be dark. You'll see vehicles with no brake lights. It's like an adventure, a challenge. You have to anticipate what the other guy is going to do and how he'll mess up.
"I always talk to my family and friends, and I tell them, 'You know how people pray when they get on a plane when they're afraid to fly? Well, we should be afraid to drive in the Dominican.' When we go to the beach as a family or take the roads somewhere far, we all pray. My daughter. My wife. The nanny. We know it's not safe."
The deaths of Ventura and former big league infielder Andy Marte in separate automobile accidents on Sunday morning generated lots of introspection in Major League Baseball circles. A mere four months after Miami Marlins pitcher Jose Fernandez died in a boating accident, MLB teams are asking themselves if they're doing enough to safeguard the welfare of young athletes off the field.
As Dominican natives who have seen too many friends die behind the wheel, Javier and Alou are living the pain and sense of loss on a more intimate basis.
Alou learned of Marte's death on the Internet and was informed of Ventura's fatal accident in a phone call from a friend with the police department. The following day, Alou went on a fishing trip, and the losses dominated his thoughts.
"I don't know if I was scared or nervous or what," Alou said. "I felt so bad, I got goosebumps. For this to happen to two well-known baseball players, the country is really sad."
Too much heartache
Alou, a six-time All-Star in 17 seasons with the Montreal Expos, Chicago Cubs and five other teams, was Marte's offseason workout partner 10 years ago, when Marte was still a highly regarded prospect in the Cleveland Indians' chain. Javier, who spent 17 years in the majors as an outfielder with Oakland, San Francisco and six other clubs, was running the Aguilas team in the Dominican winter league in 2014 when he signed Marte to play third base.
"Andy Marte was a good man -- very quiet and likeable," Javier said. "People from his area of the country are very relaxed and authentic. I'm so sad this thing happened to both of them."
When news of the two deaths broke Sunday, the Dominican baseball community experienced a series of flashbacks. In December 1997, St. Louis Cardinals third baseman Jose Oliva died when his car overturned on the San Cristobal Highway. Three years later, former Houston Astros infielder Andujar Cedeno was driving his Mercedes-Benz when he collided with a truck, killing him instantly. In 2006, former San Francisco Giants shortstop Jose Uribe died when he crashed his sport utility vehicle on a highway about 30 miles from the capital city of Santo Domingo.
Tragedy has also touched the families of famous ballplayers. David Ortiz's mother, Angela Rosa Arias, was 46 years old when she died in a car accident in January 2002.
In some respects, it's unfair to single out the Dominican Republic as an especially hazardous place for players in the offseason. Fernandez was finishing up the season in Miami when his boat crashed off the south Florida coast in September. In November 2011, then-Washington Nationals catcher Wilson Ramos was seized at gunpoint in his native Venezuela and held for two days before being released by his kidnappers. Many MLB clubs, mindful of the political strife and rampant crime in Venezuela, have begun paring back their scouting presence in the country in recent years.
But from anecdotal evidence and all the available data, driving in the Dominican is a world unto itself. According to the World Health Organization's Global Status Report on Road Safety, 29 of every 100,000 people in the Dominican died in road accidents in 2015. That made the Dominican the most dangerous place to drive in the Western Hemisphere and established the Caribbean nation as 15th worst in the world. The majority of the road fatalities -- about 63 percent -- involved motorcycles.
Baseball people who travel to the Dominican frequently return with white-knuckle stories to share. New York Mets general manager Sandy Alderson first visited the country in the mid-1980s. During a recent trip, he was impressed with many of the highway upgrades, new overpasses and infrastructure improvements around Santo Domingo. But Alderson knows from experience that things are different in the countryside.
"I can remember years ago, on a trip from Santiago to Santo Domingo, seeing all of the things that can interrupt a trip -- from animals to people on foot to cement trucks that people try to pass in the dark with poor lighting," Alderson said. "The conditions there are conducive to these types of accidents, unfortunately."
Driving home the lessons
Alcohol contributes to the sense of chaos. In October 2014, Cardinals outfielder Oscar Taveras and his girlfriend, Edilia Arvelo, were killed when his red Chevrolet Camaro ran off the road and struck a tree in the city of Puerto Plata. Taveras' blood alcohol content at the time of the accident was .287 -- almost six times the legal limit.
Although toxicology reports on Marte and Ventura are pending, the initial police report said Ventura was speeding and wasn't wearing a seat belt when he lost control of his Jeep.
From a big-picture standpoint, Taveras, Ventura and Fernandez appear to fit the same profile: They were talented, young athletes who came from meager backgrounds before being thrown into a new world of fame, adulation and potentially great wealth.
Javier, 53, knows the drill. He grew up as a baseball royalty of sorts in the 1960s and '70s as the son of Cardinals All-Star second baseman Julian Javier. Many of his friends' fathers worked in the fields or held jobs as drivers or security guards. Their mothers did laundry or worked as housekeepers.
"The majority of these kids live below the poverty line," Javier said. "They come from families where they want the lifestyle and the new cars. Then they get to the big leagues and it's like they won the lottery. And a lot of times, their buddies make them do a lot of stuff. Their friends didn't make it. They feel poor and they want to have a good time."
Javier was married at a young age and played winter ball as a young major leaguer. He thinks the experience might provide welcome structure for Dominicans who have too much time on their hands in the offseason. Ventura threw a career-high 186 innings for Kansas City in 2016, and the offseason is typically a time for young players to relax and recharge.
Javier pauses to collect his thoughts when asked if MLB or its 30 teams can do more to educate young players on the importance of toning down their lifestyles over the winter.
"That's a hard question," he said. "We're only thinking about Dominican baseball players, but these things happen in the States, and Japan, and Venezuela. It happens everywhere. When you're in the big leagues, you're an adult and you have to behave as an adult. But we all make mistakes when we're young.
"If you tell me I have to drive at 2 or 3 in the morning now, I would say, 'Let's wait until tomorrow.' When I was young I didn't wait, because I thought I was indestructible. We can look back at what happened to Oscar Taveras and say, 'Maybe they'll learn.' But they don't. There's nothing you can do."
Amid the sense of loss and despair, the older generation tries to speak from the heart and define what's at stake. Each winter when Alou addresses players on the Escogido roster, he reminds them of their responsibility as the main income source for their families and the importance of thinking about the future. He tells them there's no shame in taking the bus.
"I was the same as these kids," Alou said. "I had my car and I wanted to drive it. But now I'm 50, and you know what? I thank the Lord for taking care of me. We were all young and wild, and we all did stupid things. I got away with it, and I'm here now trying to help these younger guys to be good citizens and take care of themselves.
"It's tough. You can't put a leash on these guys. Unfortunately, we live in a country where there aren't too many rules."