When former Tigers All-Star Victor Martinez retired from baseball after the 2018 season, he was ready to become a cattle rancher. A year and a half later, he’s now a champion racehorse owner with an entry in the Kentucky Derby.

When King Guillermo won the Tampa Bay Derby earlier this month, beating 49-to-1 odds, the horse earned a chance to compete in the Kentucky Derby. And Martinez earned a chance at something he could only dream about when he got into the horse business last year.

That dream won’t become reality on the first Saturday in May; the Kentucky Derby has been postponed until Sept. 5 due to the coronavirus pandemic. But Martinez is willing to wait. He quickly paid the $6,000 entry fee to get King Guillermo eligible for the Triple Crown races.

Martinez has said racing horses has been a lifelong dream of his. He told MLB Network’s Ken Rosenthal in a story for The Athletic that he talked with then-Tigers teammates and fellow Venezuelans Miguel Cabrera, Aníbal Sánchez and Omar Infante about buying a thoroughbred together in 2013. However, the opportunity didn’t really come together until last spring, when Martinez could devote his full-time energy to his ranch. He bought three horses with his wife, Margret, at the Ocala Breeders’ Sales Company spring sale of 2-year-olds, including King Guillermo, a Kentucky-bred son of former champion 2-year-old Uncle Mo. Among Uncle Mo’s other offspring is 2013 Kentucky Derby winner Nyquist.

The name has special meaning for Martinez. His father, Guillermo, died of a heart attack when Victor was just 6 years old. The experience played a big role in Martinez’s concern after his own heart issues led to a cardiac ablation procedure in 2017.

Martinez played another year after that but already had his retirement plans set with Victoria’s Ranch, named after his daughter. He was already raising cattle, but he added a new dimension to his operation when he bought the horses. He brought on longtime Venezuelan horse trainer Juan Carlos Avila.

King Guillermo had been racing better on turf, according to Rosenthal and other reports, but Martinez wanted to give the horse another chance on dirt, at the Tampa Bay Derby.

“His workouts on the dirt were pretty amazing,” Martinez told TVG Network in a postrace interview. “We got nothing to lose, man.”

The race is an impressive watch, with King Guillermo and jockey Samy Camacho pulling away down the stretch to win by 4 3/4 lengths. The time of 1:42.63 for the 1 1/16-mile race was the third-fastest time in race history, according to Tampa Bay Downs.

Martinez was a five-time All-Star, two-time Silver Slugger and an American League MVP Award runner-up in 2014, but none of it compared to watching his horse win.

“This is something else,” he told TVG.