SALISBURY — On their first day back at Perdue Stadium since the death of Luis Guevara, Luis Silverio stood in front of his players and issued them a promise. Silverio, a fundamentals coach who joined the Orioles organization this winter, wanted everyone to know how deeply Guevara’s life had impacted him.
“I’m going to carry myself a specific way from today on,” Silverio told the assembled members of the Low-A Delmarva Shorebirds on Tuesday. Inside that clubhouse, grief counselors were present, ready to assist a group of players going through one of the most difficult moments of their lives.
For many of these low-level Orioles minor league players, Guevara had been a near-constant companion through their time in the organization. Guevara signed with Baltimore in 2023, moved from Venezuela to the Orioles’ baseball complex in the Dominican Republic, then made the jump stateside this season.
He died this month after a personal watercraft crash in Sarasota, Florida. Before then he spent a month with the Shorebirds, and that month was enough to change the lives of peers and coaches alike.
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“I know the impact he made on me, and I think, carrying that, I can possibly make an impact on somebody else,” said Silverio, explaining his promise to the players gathered. “This is something I learned from a 19-year-old. In six months. Not even six months straight. When he spent that month here, it was like, every single day, I did not have a bad day for a month because of that kid.”
Friends from Guevara’s childhood were adamant about Guevara’s bright personality and love of baseball. The friends he made within the Orioles organization echoed that. They knew him for a far shorter time, but for many players, following the dream of playing in Major League Baseball means moving to a country with a different language.
Their family, then, becomes the players and coaches they are around each day.
These players are on a grand adventure. It’s a stressful one — in which players must perform at a high level to keep a dream alive not just for themselves but for their families — but it’s an adventure all the same.
It should never have ended this way for Guevara.
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In a sense, however, Guevara’s journey goes on in every person he met within the organization. He won’t step onto that ballfield any longer. But his friends — his brothers, they insist — will step onto it each day channeling the passion that fueled Guevara and made him stand out.
Silverio first met Guevara in February at the Boca Chica baseball facility in the Dominican Republic. He was in a group of 80-some players. It was early in the morning, and no one had even picked up a ball yet.
“If you have energy at 7:45 in the morning for stretching, it’s like, ‘This kid loves being out here,’” said Silverio, who was born in the Dominican Republic.
His teammates Andrés Nolaya and Joshua Liranzo reiterated that sentiment. Nolaya, a 20-year-old catcher, first met Guevara during tryouts in Venezuela. They lived near each other. When they reunited with the Orioles, they became fast friends. Nolaya and Guevara were roommates on every road trip.
Liranzo signed in the same international class as Guevara in 2023. When he arrived in Boca Chica, he walked into a dorm room for six to eight players.
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“You are kind of forced to either build those relationships or become enemies with those guys,” Liranzo, an 18-year-old infielder, said in Spanish, with Silverio translating. They never would’ve been enemies.
Guevara used to tell people, “You can do anything you want. It can be good, bad or whatever.”
“He would still be positive about it,” Liranzo said. “He’d say, ‘I still love you.’ He was just that kind of person. It didn’t matter who you were or what kind of person. He would always try to get the best out of you, and he would do that by him always giving you his 100%.”
Added Nolaya, through Silverio: “He won the love of every single person in this clubhouse. When it was time for him to go back [to Florida], nobody wanted him to leave.”
But he left, back to the Florida Complex League. The crash near Lido Key Beach occurred less than a week later. The news percolated through the organization. Players and coaches raised prayers. They held on to hope because there was nothing else to hold.
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What is left now are memories. Memories, love and a promise.
When Guevara’s soul departed, a piece of it landed within every person he knew. In that way, Guevara lives on forever.
“He lived his life happy and worked hard and cared deeply about baseball and friendship,” Delmarva manager Collin Woody said. “And these guys are trying to do their best to stay strong and live their life with some of those motifs in mind.”
‘I’m going to be a big leaguer’
The life of a minor league prospect isn’t glamorous. There are motels, hours spent in buses, small clubhouses and the ever-present knowledge that you’re competing with your peers as much as you’re trying to lift them higher. There are only so many spaces on a Major League Baseball roster, after all.
When Guevara met Liranzo, they were joking in the Dominican Republic, dreaming as kids do about the future — the bright lights, the big moments, the fame and, of course, the money that comes with a successful baseball career. He declared these next words proudly:
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“I’m going to be a big leaguer,” Liranzo remembered Guevara saying. “You’re really going to doubt me? I’m a big leaguer. I promise you. You’re not seeing it now, but I promise you, I’m going to be a big leaguer.”
It was endearing because, out of Guevara’s mouth, it didn’t sound entitled or cocky. It sounded earnest. He said it with an absolute certainty that turned a laugh from Liranzo into a nod of agreement — and the next few years watching Guevara play confirmed Liranzo’s belief in him. It wasn’t because Guevara was the best player on the field. It was because of the work ethic, the way he played, the smile he wore whenever he arrived at the ballpark for another day.
Part of that is because Guevara played for more than himself. Nolaya knew Guevara before he signed. He knew his upbringing, and he realized, like many players, Guevara represented hope for his family.
“He could help his mom get what she wanted, a better house, help his siblings, because he had various siblings,” Nolaya said in Spanish. “He did it for those reasons. And, more than anything, because he loved it. Because he did it with love.”
On road trips, when Nolaya ordered food for himself and Guevara, he would tell Guevara to put away his wallet. “Don’t worry about spending your own money,” Nolaya said with Silverio interpreting again.
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Silverio, who coached in the Dominican Republic for the first few years of his career with the Arizona Diamondbacks, said, “It’s not just him [Guevara]. I’d say 80%, 90% of these guys, they are the main providers for their family.”
As Nolaya considers what will stick with him forever after a friendship with Guevara, it’s generosity. The Venezuelan catcher said it’s impossible to tell what someone might be going through from the outside, so it’s better to be kind, to offer help, no matter what.
Liranzo will take Guevara’s resilience to heart. He recalled a spring training game this year when Guevara was hit by a pitch on the ankle. Liranzo, the on-deck batter, walked over to Guevara on the ground. He picked up Guevara’s lost helmet and asked if he was all right.
“No,” Guevara said. “My foot is killing me.”
But when Liranzo told Guevara to speak up, to avoid playing the rest of the game in pain, Guevara’s face changed in an instant.
“What? Take me out? Are you crazy? You’ve gotta chop my foot off for me to come out of this game,” Guevara said, as Liranzo remembers it. For Guevara to leave a game, it needed to be very serious.
“There was so much on the line for him, and he just loved playing the game,” Liranzo said.
Guevara jumped between minor league levels this season as a replacement player when there were injuries. He made his Double-A debut that way, less than a month before he died. But Guevara spent the most time with Low-A Delmarva, where he played 24 games.
When Guevara arrived in Salisbury, he felt most at home, despite being in a small town on the Eastern Shore. He was close to several players, included Nolaya and Liranzo. And, while living so far from blood relatives, these teammates proved to be more.
“You guys are my family,” Nolaya recalled Guevara saying. “I feel really comfortable here. I’m gonna make sure I stay here.”
Receiving the tragic news
Thirteen hours after this meeting, the Shorebirds were expected to step back onto the field at L.P. Frans Stadium in Hickory, North Carolina, for the most difficult game of their lives. But first Woody needed to tell the team what had occurred. The Orioles were set to release a statement at 11 p.m. June 17.
Shortly before then, Woody, the manager, told Guevara’s brothers that he had died.
Nolaya had tried to mentally prepare for this moment. He knew from conversations with friends in Florida that the situation on June 15, the day of the crash, was severe. But this? How do you comprehend this? Guevara was alive and then he wasn’t — he was full of life, more life than anyone Nolaya had ever known.
“When we got the news, it’s just something you can’t really prepare for,” Nolaya said through Silverio.
“He taught me to understand the importance of life,” Nolaya said in Spanish. “There were times where we wouldn’t appreciate a person or we didn’t talk about how much we love them because we have them around. Maybe because we keep that personal. But, because he’s gone, it changed my perspective.”
Nolaya didn’t get to tell Guevara one last time how much he cared for his friend. He’ll never stop carrying that forward.
The news hit Liranzo especially hard.
“That destroyed his heart in pieces,” Silverio said of Liranzo. “It was almost impossible for him. He’s still super emotional about it. But that last week for him, specifically, he still doesn’t know how he got through it.”
In Spanish, Liranzo expanded on a heartbreaking stretch. About a month ago, the trainer Liranzo had worked with since childhood in the Dominican Republic died. He was a father figure to Liranzo. He’s just 18, and here he is, with two massive losses in a month.
“It was something that shocked me. One death and another death is something that really hits you hard,” Liranzo said in Spanish. “It literally broke my heart because, how do you say, of all the people that you don’t expect it to happen to. … It splits the soul, truthfully. It was a little difficult, truthfully. First, my dad, you know? Then, I lost a person more than a friend because that fighter, for me, was my brother. He was always with me.”
They hardly slept. They woke up at 8 a.m. They arrived at the ballpark, put on their uniforms and played a baseball game. They cried and laughed, and “we did our best to embody his name and him as a person,” Silverio said.
On each person’s hat were Guevara’s initials and number. In the dugout hung Guevara’s jersey. They mimicked the pregame handshakes Guevara loved to do. They lost the game 5-4. But they played — they knew Guevara would have wanted nothing more than to be on that field with them.
In the week since, this hasn’t gotten easier. In the month to come, the year to follow, the decade to pass, nothing will mend this heartbreak. Death doesn’t work that way.
The idea Guevara is gone, though, is false. At Perdue Stadium in Salisbury, in the early afternoon before Wednesday’s game, the memories of Guevara flowed quickly from the minds of Nolaya, Liranzo and Silverio. No matter how many years pass, no matter if they are still in baseball or not, Guevara will never leave them.
“That kid was a piece we’re going to miss forever,” Silverio said. “He made it very obvious when we were present why he was such an amazing human being.”
Baltimore Banner reporter Liana Handler contributed to this story.
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