Until last month, Nico had never seen a Major League Baseball game live.
He had been to an MLB stadium only once before, when his third-grade school chorus sang the national anthem at an Atlanta Braves game. All the now-18-year-old freshman at Florida State remembers from that experience was falling asleep on the way there, however, having to reorient himself in time to sing before leaving immediately after.
"I asked my mom, ‘Why can't we stay?'" Nico recalled. "And she was like, ‘Just mind your business.' We just kept going."
Nico finally got his chance to watch an MLB game in person at Game 2 of the 2024 World Series, courtesy of FOX Sports honoring him as the 2024-25 Boys & Girls Clubs of America (BGCA) Youth of the Year — an award he received in September. It included a scholarship to Florida State, and as far as he initially knew, nothing more than a small ceremonial role in the pregame festivities before the Los Angeles Dodgers took on the New York Yankees on Oct. 26.
So when Nico arrived at Dodger Stadium, he was focused on taking it all in. Little did he know that he was about to meet the "MLB on FOX" crew and become the latest recipient of the FOX Sports World Series scholarship on behalf of his hometown Boys & Girls Club of Northeast Florida in Jacksonville.
"I actually remember being at the game and looking at the scoreboard and seeing 52,700 in attendance," Nico said. "I was like, ‘That's crazy.' Being astonished by how big the stadium was, and then actually being able to walk in and be in a dugout and be, like, backstage, seeing the coaches and the players and seeing the old lockers from way back and stuff like that. Just being in there, and seeing the history, it was very cool and fascinating."
Nico also
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