Former baseball player Dennis Martínez spoke after the decision of the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo to remove his name from the facade of the Nicaraguan National Baseball Stadium. In its “From the Mound” columnpublished on the website of the newspaper La Prensa, the greatest glory of Nicaraguan sports in the Major Leagues, assures that dictators can “remove and add names at will,” but what has always mattered to him is the example that leaves in life
On November 23, the name of Dennis Martínez was not only removed from the outside of the Stadium, but it was also removed from the colossus’s social media accounts and from the propaganda of the parties. The regime is trying to erase all traces of the World Baseball Hall of Famer’s legacy.
In the writing, Dennis Martinez recounts the “unique sensation” that flooded him five years ago when he learned that the new stadium would bear his name and the importance that the colossus represented in the Central American Games.
Related news: Dictatorship removes Dennis Martínez’s name from the National Baseball Stadium
“Days before the inauguration, my legs were shaking because of the great significance, but what would happen in the second inauguration, which was more genuine because it was not in favor, but with people who like sports, surpassed me,” Martínez wrote. .
The baseball star stated that the best thing about the inauguration was the reaction of the Nicaraguan people because “there was unanimity” despite the different political ideologies. “Sport managed to unite a society that was fragmenting due to mismanagement in the circles of power,” said the former player.
During the social outbreak, in April 2018, the National Stadium was used as a headquarters for the paramilitaries and the Police itself, who fired at protesters from the colossus. This caused repulsion to the greatest glory of Nicaraguan baseball. In June of that year, Martínez rebelled against the dictatorship and demanded that the regime stop murdering citizens from the Stadium that bears his name.
«In 2018 I understood that sport had been in the background. I never cared about the consequences of my position in favor of the Nicaraguan people, because my way of thinking, my values and dignity have never been for sale,” said Martínez.
Dennis Martínez stressed that the National Baseball Stadium represented “unity, fun” and forgetting the “misfortunes” of a baseball country that “in the midst of difficult moments the ball found us again, however, now they had started from there the bullets of death.
“I already know what I was and I understand what I am, but I don’t know what else I will be in the future, what I am clear about is what I do not want to be and he is a person who turned his back on his compatriots when they needed him the most”, Martinez concluded.
In February 2020, the propagandist Moisés Absalón Pastora launched a campaign to change the name of the National Baseball Stadium, considering that Dennis Martínez is “ungrateful” because as a result of the sociopolitical crisis, the former baseball player declared himself an opponent of Daniel’s dictatorship. Ortega and Rosario Murillo.
