Baseball player Wilson Ramos has been kidnapped from his family home in the city of Valencia in Venezuela.
He was taken on Wednesday by four armed men in a van, according to Kathe Vilera, spokeswoman for the Tigres de Aragua team.
Mr Ramos, 24, plays as catcher for Tigres de Aragua and also for the Washington Nationals team in the US Major League.
Venezuela is believed to have one of the world’s worst rates of kidnapping.
The national director of Venezuela’s investigative police force, Jose Humberto Ramirez, confirmed the abduction to local media and said police were deploying to rescue Mr Ramos.
The president of the Tigres de Aragua team, Rafael Rodriguez Rendon, visited Mr Ramos’s family to express the team’s “solidarity” with them. According to local media, he called for “caution and calm” while the authorities investigated the incident.
Lack of security
Sports figures have found themselves the target of violent crime in Venezuela in the past, but this is thought to be the first case targeting a baseball player who plays in the US Major League.
Most kidnappings in Venezuela are carried out to extort a ransom, but there were no immediate reports of any ransom demand.
In a statement on her Twitter account, Ms Vilera added: “Lack of security in this country has no limits and nobody does anything! When will the kidnappings stop?”
The rising rate of violent crime has become a major source of public concern in Venezuela in recent years, with many accusing President Hugo Chavez’s government of not doing enough to combat the problem.
