Six husky pallbearers carried Yordano Ventura's coffin Tuesday down a narrow Dominican road crowded with mourners.
That scene from the 25-year-old Kansas City pitcher's heartbreaking funeral brought to life a verse from the poem "To an Athlete Dying Young":
Today, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.
Ventura was killed last weekend when his speeding Jeep overturned on a foggy mountain road in his native land.
He was hardly the first young athlete transported into that "stiller town" by a fast car.