For nearly all of their lives, Alexis Hernández and Luis Guevara told each other two things: Be great. Compete.

It kept the two motivated as they sprinted up and down the hills of northwestern Venezuela in the offseason before relocating to the United States. When Guevara couldn’t string together hits during a brief stint with the Orioles’ Double-A affiliate, he shrugged it off, laughing, said Hernández.

Be great. Compete. The rest will come.

As Hernández laced up his cleats and put on his glove last Wednesday for Toronto’s Single-A affiliate, he thought of those words. This time, though, he was the only one reciting them.

Guevara, 19, died in a personal watercraft crash in Florida, the Orioles confirmed on June 17.

“To be honest, when I went to play, I felt sad, discouraged, just like my family,” he wrote in Spanish. “But that didn’t stop me from enjoying the game because I know he’s in heaven and would be happy that I am fighting and doing what we talked so much about in the offseason.”

The Banner contacted four players who grew up with Guevara to learn more about his life in Venezuela, and they sent responses in Spanish over WhatsApp and Instagram.

Growing up in Tinaco

Guevara’s baseball career started at 3 years old in Tinaco, Venezuela, a small town tucked in the foothills of Cerro La Gloria and Cerro Tiramuto, two mountains in the northern part of the state of Cojedes.

Andrés Torres, 18, first met Guevara when he was 5 at a local baseball school. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, the two would make the hour-and-20-minute drive to spend the entire day training.

“He was someone who was very passionate about the sport,” said Torres, a catcher in the Tampa Bay Rays organization. “Someone very restless in a good way. He never had a bad attitude. He was never disrespectful. He was a very happy child.”

His mom didn’t work, and his stepdad helped out at a baseball academy in Valencia, about an hour’s drive from Tinaco. He had an older brother, now in his mid-to-late-20s, and his father died in 2022, Torres said.

Everyone who knew Guevara believed he was destined for more than cattle ranching. He quickly rose through baseball academies and leagues, reaching the Postseason Academy.

There, a then-12-year-old Guevara, could access indoor facilities, turf fields and the attention of MLB scouts.

People would visit to see Guevara play, according to Torres. Despite the attention, he approached each practice unfazed.

He would dance and talk about anything other than the scouts, tell jokes — whatever it took to distract his teammates from the onlookers.

His light-hearted demeanor earned him the nicknames “mi loco” and “el locon,” translating to “my madman” and “the mad one.”

“He was never one to be sad or downcast,” Torres said. “He always made anyone smile with his crazy antics.”

Meanwhile, Evelio Hernández, a pitcher on the Cleveland Guardians’ Single-A affiliate, would meet Guevara at the Tinaco sports complex to practice outside of school.

Between the rusted chain-link fence and the blue and yellow-painted concrete dugouts, the two would dream big: of leaving Tinaco, coming to America, playing in Major League Baseball.

“He was always a cheerful person, enjoying what he was doing,” Hernández said. “A tremendous person. A kid with dreams.”

Guevara clung to the hope of big league baseball as a source of motivation. Each practice, Guevara would arrive earlier than the rest of the team and leave later.

Getting signed

In March 2022, Evelio Hernández signed a minor league contract with the Cleveland Guardians organization, leaving that June to play in the Dominican Republic. Guevara departed soon after with a contract of his own from the Orioles in 2023.

“That’s why we know what it’s like to follow a dream,” Evelio Hernández said. “He showed us that we can achieve what we set out to do.”

Guevara started his career in the Dominican Summer League, playing there in 2023 and 2024.

In 2025, he reached Double-A Chesapeake for two games. He also played 24 games at Low-A Delmarva and four with the Florida Complex League Orioles.

When he was back home, Guevara tried to give back to the community that raised him as much as possible.

He handed out food from the back of a pickup truck filled with stacks of plastic bags, in a video shared by Armando Gabriel Perez Flores. A middle-aged woman took the bag in one hand and kissed Guevara on the cheek as a sign of appreciation.

Perez Flores currently plays with the Berlin Flamingos, a professional baseball team in Germany. He grew up with Guevara and the two trained together before eventually going different places in their careers.

“He always helped the community he lived in with food and things for the children,” Perez Flores said.

Life without Guevara

Guevara’s death stunned Tinaco, as friends and family reckoned with the loss of the light-hearted, hardworking ballplayer, all four players said.

When the news broke on Spanish-speaking social media accounts, Perez Flores reposted a black-and-white image of Guevara with the message, “Descansa en paz mi loco.” Or, “rest in peace, my madman.”

Torres found out after Guevara’s mom called his mother right before a game with Tampa Bay’s Dominican Summer League team. Like Alexis Hernández, Torres fought through his grief to play.

“He’d never done anything wrong to deserve to leave at such a young age,” Torres said.

With his motivation dismally low and his focus anywhere but on the field, Torres needed a way to keep himself grounded. So, he started dedicating every hit, every play, to Guevara.

Still, he couldn’t entirely wrap his head around the news. Was it real, or was it a dream?

He thought about the final message he sent to Guevara. The day before the crash occurred, the Orioles’ minor leaguer and Torres talked about batting approaches and why Guevara went hitless in Double-A.

“Take care of yourself,” Torres wrote June 14. “You know this is your thing, and this will be yours, bro. We are going to go far. Thank you. Never change.”

Torres keeps another saying from Luis with him nowadays: “todo es un enfoque” — everything is a focus.

His friends around the world hope to one day achieve the dream of Guevara and so many children in Latin America: reaching Major League Baseball.

After all, that seems like the only proper way to memorialize Guevara, or, as Torres called him, “the best person I knew.”