Nicaragua great baseball weekend: new stadium and Pan Am U-12 Championship open

It is easy to foresee an unforgettable baseball weekend for Nicaragua. It comes just after WBSC Congress in Botswana, when FENIBA (Federacion Nicaraguense de Beisbol Asociado) was awarded as the baseball Federation of 2017.

FENIBA Tweeted their appreciation for the Baseball Federation of 2017 Award

On Friday, 20 October Nicaragua will play the inaugural match of the brand new Denis Martinez stadium in Managua against Chinese Taipei. A 30 million dollar donation by the visiting country made the project became a reality.
El Presidente himself will throw the ceremonial first pitch: “As a player, I never imagined that one day a stadium would be named after me” said Martinez “I thought they could chose another name, since also the old ballpark was named after me. But still I am honoured and just sent a thank you note to President Ortega”.
Denis Martinez was born in 1955 in Granada and had a 23 year career in Major League Baseball (MLB; played for Baltimore, Montreal, Cleveland, Seattle and Atlanta). In 1991 he pitched a perfect game (number 13 in the history of MLB) for the Montreal Expos against the Los Angeles Dodgers. His 245 wins and 2,149 strikeouts define the profile of one of the top Latin American pitchers of all time.
The Denis Martinez stadium can seat 15,000 fans but can expand to 20,000. It will host the Central American Games in December and will become the National Stadium of Nicaragua. The original National Stadium had been built in 1948, restored after the 1972 earthquake and renamed after Anastasio Somoza Garcia. In 1979 the Sandinistas renamed once again the stadium: after Rigoberto Lopez Perez, the man who assassinated Somoza. In 1998 President Arnoldo Aleman issued a decree to rename the stadium after Denis Martinez.

A view of the Denis Martinez National Stadium in Managua

On Saturday, 21 October the Pan American U-12 Championship will open in Managua. Nicaragua will host 8 teams from Central, Caribbean and South America: Argentina, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Brasil, Dominican Republic, Aruba, Peru and Panama.
The tournament is not a qualifier to WBSC U-12 Baseball World Cup 2019. The qualifier will be played in 2018.
Nicaragua finished third in the Pan American U-12 Championship 2016 (cover photo) and sixth in the WBSC U-12 Baseball World Cup 2017. They won the Pan American U-10 Championship earlier earlier this month.

Jarold Montealto will start for Nicaragua against Peru to open the U-12 Pan American Championship 2017