This Draft prospect risked it all for a better life

He left his friends, his father and all that was familiar. With his mother, his sister and his stepfather, he traveled on foot and on bus for thousands of miles, along winding mountain roads, across flash-flooded rivers and through the dense rainforest, the jungle and the dangerous regions controlled by drug cartels.

Alain Gomez-Gudiño has a story to tell about the America he knows. The America that took in his asylum-seeking family at the conclusion of a grueling trek. The America that answered his prayers and then birthed his baseball dream.

“I almost cry every time I go into a ballpark,” he says, “and see who I am right now.”

He is a catcher from Saguaro High School in Scottsdale, Ariz. He is a commit to South Carolina University. He is an MLB Draft prospect.

But Alain is also a representative of the American Dream and the hunger that compels so many to risk death in deserts and rivers and mountains, to overcome hardship and prejudice and hardened hearts, all in pursuit of a better life.

And no matter what happens in his baseball career, he has already made it.

His story begins in Venezuela. Alain says he grew up a “normal kid” who loved baseball (Royals captain and fellow Venezuelan Salvador Perez is his hero), dancing and his mother’s cooking.

But by 2023, Alain’s family was a victim of the gradual economic collapse that upended and uprooted so many Venezuelan lives. Hyperinflation, economic sanctions, food shortages, a deteriorated healthcare system and violent state crackdowns on protests all created a severe physical and psychological toll on Venezuelan citizens who could no longer envision a brighter future in their homeland.

And so sometime that summer, Alain’s mother, Lislen Gudiño, and stepfather, Joel Rodrigues, made the difficult decision to risk it all in search of safety and opportunity in the land of the free and home of the brave. They sold what they owned, saved what they could and kept their plans a secret to all but their closest circle of family and friends.

“I was 15 years old,” Alain says. “When my mom's telling me about that, at first I didn't want to leave. I was leaving my friends, my family, my dad is still over there. So I knew I was gonna miss them every day. So that was hard to make that decision. But I just realized, ‘Yeah, we gotta make this decision to get a better life.’”

The better life Lislen and Joel imagined for Alain and his sister, Victoria, was waiting across the United States’ southern border. Getting there from the Venezuelan capital of Caracas would require navigating through Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico.

Plug this journey into Google Maps, and you’ll get an error message. The site will tell you the course cannot be calculated. But you can’t tell that to those who endured political and economic instability and decided that staying put would be the bigger risk. Hundreds of thousands of the displaced have traveled that migrant route. Many didn’t make it.

For his part, Alain did not embark upon that path with baseball on his mind. His dream was rather simple.

“Just go [to the United States] and study,” he says. “Go to school, get my diploma and try to do my best on everything to get a job and help my family.”

And so they went. It was Aug. 5, 2023, when Alain and his family departed Caracas. They carried with them a single bag of clothing and nonperishable foods.

Alain also brought his catcher’s mitt.

Their cell phones were their lifeline to those back home and their connection to the world. They traveled on foot, on crowded buses, on speedboats. They tried to maintain faith over fear.

The journey would take the family through the northern Andes and the Pan-American Highway. Then the Darién Gap, more than 60 miles of roadless, lawless terrain straddling Colombia and Panama. From there, they passed through Central America -- from the hot, humid coastlands to the cold, high-altitude mountain passes in Guatemala. And then the longest leg was Mexico, where outsiders can be vulnerable to kidnapping and extortion.

While the entire journey was arduous, two terrifying moments remain embedded in Alain’s mind.

The first was when the family was crossing a river on a rainy morning. It was raining so hard that his mother was struggling to see in front of her. She became nervous, had a panic attack and slipped under the current. Alain turned to find her missing and instinctively reached into the water to grab hold of her arm and pull her up, likely saving her life.

The other came shortly after they crossed into southern Mexico. Darkness had fallen, and the family was accosted by a group of armed men in some sort of military uniform. To this day, Alain does not know who they were. All he knows is that they spent about an hour and a half holding the family at gunpoint, going through their belongings, keeping them in captivity.

“My mom was crying, everybody was crying,” Alain says. “We were so scared.”

Eventually, the men let the family go. But not before taking many of their things, including all but one cell phone, their last link to Alain’s dad and the others they had left behind.

When the family reached Mexico City, they stayed in a shelter for a few weeks. The conditions were not optimal, but they were much more comfortable than what the family had encountered to get there. And as they awaited word on their asylum, Alain turned to the catcher’s mitt he had brought with him, the mitt spared by those mysterious men who had struck fear in his heart.

He turned to baseball.

First, Alain would just play catch with his stepdad. But then, on a Sunday, he came upon a park where organized games were taking place.

“I just went to the guys and asked if I could play,” he says. “They gave me a shirt, and I just started playing there.”

In that moment, near the end of his family’s strenuous journey toward freedom, baseball brought Alain a sense of joy he had not felt in some time.

Soon, it would bring him so much more.

Alain’s family was granted approval to enter the United States seeking asylum on Nov. 24, about 16 weeks after they had left Caracas. They crossed into San Diego and stayed there a short time before relocating to the Phoenix area, where some relatives lived.

At that time, Alain could not have known what opportunities awaited him in baseball. He just wanted to get an education and support his family. But upon enrolling at Saguaro High School and joining the baseball team, he found a supportive community. His teammates’ families donated food, helped Alain and his family move into their new apartment and welcomed them with open arms.

It did not take long for Alain’s natural baseball talent to shine. And as the high school batterymate for Cam Caminiti, a lefty pitcher whose fastball not only helped him get selected by the Braves in the first round of the 2024 Draft but also burned a hole through the webbing of that mitt Alain brought with him from Venezuela, it was not hard for Alain to be seen by scouts, either.

Alain wound up on the showcase circuit and received scholarship offers from programs across the country before selecting South Carolina, where he plans to study physical therapy. But a professional career is also a potential path for Alain, who attended the MLB Draft Combine.

“I couldn’t imagine, like, two years ago, to do all this stuff,” he says. “I’ve worked hard to get here, but it’s not just me. You know, my family and all the people who support me every day, it means a lot to me.”

Alain stays connected to the family he had to leave behind to pursue this life. He was relieved to get in touch with both his biological father and his grandmother after the recent twin 7-plus magnitude earthquakes devastated Venezuela and killed thousands.

Sometimes, Alain looks at a map to see the journey he and his family made to get here. He can trace the path from one life to another, from a land of hardship to a land of hope.

“When I see the map, I’m just proud of me, my family, my little sister,” he says. “We’ve been through all that. And we’re still together.”

They’re together in America. This is the place they dreamed of reaching. And now they dream anew.