Retired major league baseball player Victor Martinez played on five teams that reached the postseason, was an American League All-Star five times and slugged 246 home runs in his 16-year career, which ended in 2018.
But in the glow of a raucous winner’s-circle celebration late this afternoon at Tampa Bay Downs, he said nothing in his baseball career compares to experiencing his 3-year-old colt KING GUILLERMO, named for his late father, win the Grade II, $400,000 Lambholm South Tampa Bay Derby.
“My dad died when I was 6, and I always wanted to have a horse named for my dad,” an emotional Martinez said after King Guillermo posted a 4 ¾-length victory from 3-2 favorite Sole Volante in 1:42.63 for the mile-and-a-sixteenth distance with Martinez’s Venezuelan countryman, Samy Camacho, in the saddle.