WASHINGTON — Redemption stories are the fuel that professional sports burn to keep us feeling warm and good, to block out the social and monetary distractions of our lives, and even those within sports themselves. Our deep human yearning to witness others overcome obstacles through the world of sports leads to plenty of unnecessary, overwrought attempts at redemption, tries to construct narrative where one doesn’t deserve to exist.
And then there’s Wilson Ramos’ story.
“Throughout my career, I’ve had some very bad luck so it’s very exciting to finally get this announcement,” Ramos said last week after finding out of his first All-Star selection.
For a man whose calm, levelheaded demeanor could well be described as understated, this was still a massive understatement.
One evening in Nov. 2011, when he was just 24, Ramos was home in his native Venezuela visiting his mother. Standing just outside his house, he was grabbed at gunpoint by four men, shoved into the back of an SUV and driven to a remote mountain outpost where he was held for more than 48 hours.
The Venezuelan government dispatched some 200 police and National Guardsmen to track him down. A rescue operation of roughly 30 stormed the house where he was being held in the Montalban mountains, guns literally blazing.
“I didn’t know if I was going to get out of it alive,” he told reporters the day after his escape.
After a 15 minute firefight, the rescue team arrived and took Ramos with them, arresting four of the kidnappers as well. Remarkably, he walked away from the incident without injury, but even he admitted the incident left a lasting mark.
“They didn’t physically harm me, but psychologically I underwent very great harm,” he said.
Ramos returned to baseball the next year, but ran into a different stroke of bad luck. Just over a month into the 2012 season, his body let him down. On a rainy night in Cincinnati, with the tying run at first base in the bottom of the seventh, a Jordan Zimmermann fastball ticked off Ramos’s mitt and trickled away behind him to his right. He scrambled to his feet on the dirt, took one long stride to plant his foot on the wet grass to reach down for the ball, and when his second foot planted, everything went wrong.
His knee buckled and he collapsed, writhing in pain. He might not have known it yet, but his season was already over.
Ramos played only 25 games in 2012, just 78 in 2013 and 88 in 2014, losing time to the disabled list each season. He finally reached 500 plate appearances for the first time in his career last season, but put up the worst offensive numbers of his career, batting just .229 with a .258 on-base percentage. He swatted 15 home runs, but drew just 21 walks while striking out 101 times.
All of this makes what he has accomplished this year so much more impressive. Ramos hits the All-Star break batting .330, miles above his previous high of .267. He’s pacing at career marks in on-base percentage (.382) and slugging percentage (.536) as well, all of which are best among qualifying MLB catcher. He’s already hit 13 home runs, within striking distance of his career high of 16, with 72 games still to play.
While some players turn down the opportunity to play in the All-Star Game, when you’ve been through all that Wilson Ramos has, the honor isn’t one to be taken lightly. So while he may want to put the scary and painful chapters in his life behind him, it’s worth it for the rest of us to remember just how improbable it will be for him to be standing on that field at Petco Park Tuesday night.
“I just want to enjoy the moment, live it to the fullest, take part in it and enjoy it with my family down there,” said Ramos. “It’s one of those that I’ll probably remember for the rest of my life.”
With some athletes, that might sound like a cliché. You can be sure Ramos means it.
