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Sports

Missing Mexican Baseball Manager Found, Claims Bizarre Extortion Plot

Francisco Estrada said he was forced to stay in a hotel room by a stranger on the phone who kept him up all night.

Francisco "Paquin" Estrada, the manager of the Mexican baseball league's Bravos de Leon, has had a weird couple of days. Estrada had not been heard from since Tuesday, and after missing a scheduled press conference Wednesday morning, the team reported him missing on Thursday. A few hours later, he was found, with a story straight out of a movie. Or, anyway, out of like an episode of Magnum P.I.

The team held a press conference for Estrada when he returned, but tried their best to avoid explaining what exactly happened, other than to say that he was the victim of an extortion plot. Reporters wouldn't let it go, however, and then Estrada told them what allegedly happened:

Estrada then gave a sketchy description of events. The manager said he was coerced into staying in a hotel room for three nights. He said he was not kept there by armed abductors, but rather by an unknown person on the other end of the telephone who would not allow him to sleep and constantly quizzed him about what was on television to make sure he was still there.

The appropriate follow-up question here is: Whaaaat?

But that's all Estrada divulged. Some speculated that he was the victim of what is called in Mexico a "virtual kidnapping," where a person demands money by threatening to injure or kidnap a family member, but Estrada and the team remained mum. Whatever happened, the 69-year-old manager was not harmed.