'We can be huge': Nicaragua here to win

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. -- For Sandor Guido and Team Nicaragua, Wednesday’s game against the Mets was no meaningless exhibition. It was 17 years in the making.

Nicaragua was not invited to the inaugural World Baseball Classic in 2006 nor the sequel in ’09, neither of which featured qualifying rounds. The country failed to win a game in the 2013 play-in tournament and was blown out by Mexico in a qualification final four years later. Then the 2021 WBC was postponed due to COVID, leaving Nicaragua -- a baseball-mad country of more than 6 million people -- still waiting to show what it could do on an international stage.

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When Nicaragua lost its first qualification game late last year, the trend seemed destined to continue. Only this time, Nicaragua proved resilient, winning three consecutive elimination matches to qualify for the 2023 World Baseball Classic.

“It was a very exciting moment, a very emotional moment,” Guido, the Nicaragua manager, said through an interpreter. “As a team, we had everybody almost moved to tears. And then as a country, everybody was filled with so much joy. It was a team that was kind of overlooked, and we went out there and competed and got our chance to make it to the next round.”

The appetizer was a trip on Wednesday to Clover Park, where Team Nicaragua faced about the stiffest test imaginable: an exhibition against Max Scherzer and the Mets. With a boisterous group of supporters waving blue-and-white flags and cheering behind the visiting dugout, Nicaragua jumped out to an early lead on Cheslor Cuthbert's homer off Scherzer and held on for a 2-0 victory. Nicaragua's pitchers held the Mets to just one hit.

“It’s huge,” said Erasmo Ramírez, the most experienced member of Team Nicaragua. “Having your team finally in a huge spot, a tournament that the best of the best show up, it’s something that fans are super excited [about].”

The team that arrived in Port St. Lucie on Wednesday was even stronger than the one that qualified for the Classic, in large part because of some additional pitching help. Jonathan Loáisiga of the Yankees and Ramírez of the Nationals boast 16 seasons of Major League experience between them, which is more than the rest of the roster combined. Of the other members of Team Nicaragua, only JC Ramírez, Alex Blandino and Cuthbert have played in the bigs. Fifteen Nicaraguans have done so in history.

This is nonetheless a baseball-crazed country that counts Dennis Martinez and Vicente Padilla among its all-time best players. Guido has been a significant part of that heritage as well, manning first base for the national team for 16 years and later serving as bench coach under Marvin Benard, who played nine years in the Majors. Guido’s vision is for Nicaragua to garner the same international respect afforded to other Latin American baseball powers, such as the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. One day, he would like for Nicaragua to compete against them as peers in the Caribbean Series.

“I’m a winner. I’m a dreamer,” Guido said. “Everybody thinks we’re just happy to be here. But our mission is to win two games. We don’t know who it’s going to be against. We don’t know how it’s going to happen. But when they’re there, we’re going to look to take it.”

That goal promises to be difficult. Stuck in a group with the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Venezuela and Israel, Nicaragua is widely expected to finish fourth or fifth. No WBC team from the Western Hemisphere features less big league experience on its roster than Nicaragua, which will open Classic play on Saturday against Puerto Rico at 12 p.m. ET on FS2.

The Nicaraguans don’t care. When Cuthbert homered off Scherzer at Clover Park, the country’s supporters in attendance celebrated wildly. Nearby sat Nicaragua’s presumptive Game 1 starter, Erasmo Ramírez, who drove up on his own from South Florida to watch the exhibition.

“I get it, the group is tough,” Ramírez said. “You’ve got big names, big hitters, big pitching. We’re a team that nobody can expect something huge, but we can be huge.”