Nicaragua’s national sport is not soccer, but baseball. At FunLimon, the community development center my family established in Nicaragua, our baseball field is always in use. And the level of the games played there is very high. Much higher than you’d expect to see with rural baseball games in the US.

Still, when AS asked me if I knew who Duque Hebbert was, I had to admit I didn’t.

It turns out he’s a Nicaraguan baseball player that just signed a contract with the Detroit Tigers. Apparently, he was invited to join the team after striking out a trio of MLB stars.

I asked a few of my friends in Nicaragua if they had heard the news. Oddly enough, it seems that nobody there even knew about Hebbert before the story broke nationally.

“Yes,” one of them told me. “This made it to the news yesterday in Nicaragua. He is originally from the Northern Nicaraguan Caribbean Coast. Puerto Cabezas is the name of his hometown. He is just 21, so everyone is expecting this to be the beginning of a professional career at the highest level possible.”