Long before he became the Arizona Diamondbacks’ Spanish-language play-by-play radio broadcaster, Oscar Soria was a teenager growing up in his hometown Hermosillo, Mexico.
He already loved baseball and had an interest in broadcasting. He had already been enthralled by Fernandomania, the phenomenon named after Fernando Valenzuela, the left-handed rookie pitcher from Mexico whose impressive start with the Los Angeles Dodgers captivated Southern California and his home country in 1981.
So as Soria walked the 30 minutes to high school, he would narrate baseball games along the way in his head in the style of Jaime Jarrín, the Dodgers’ longtime Spanish-language broadcaster.
“As Fernando captured the attention of Mexico, the man on the transmission, Don Jaime, had the perfect voice,” Soria said recently in Spanish. “It was a different style but so elegant and poetic. He provoked and sparked something in me about how to be broadcaster.”
As the Dodgers fight to stay alive in the postseason, Jarrín is on the radio for the last time in his storied career. This is his 64th and final season with the Dodgers before retiring. But even when he is no longer behind the microphone, Jarrín’s impact on the profession and sport will persist. Soria is one of many Spanish-language sports broadcasters — not just in Major League Baseball — who came after Jarrín and grew up listening to him and were influenced by him.
“Jaime put Spanish radio on the map,” said José Tolentino, a Los Angeles Angels’ Spanish-language broadcaster and former major league player who said that he owes Jarrín so much for encouraging him earlier in his career. “He put value on that position.”
“He’s had a global impact,” said José Mota, a Dodgers’ Spanish-language broadcaster who broke into the business after he finished playing in the major leagues and received coaching from Jarrín. He added later, “I’ve met broadcasters in Mexico who have never worked here but tell me that Jaime was the first person they listened to. They tell me, ‘Tell Jaime Jarrín thank you!’”
For decades, Dodgers broadcasts were synonymous with two people: Vin Scully and Jarrín. Scully, who died in August at 94, was the voice of the Dodgers in English for 67 years before he retired in 2016. Jarrín, 86, who was close friends with Scully, was known as “the Spanish voice of the Dodgers” and began calling their games in 1959 — the year after the franchise moved to Los Angeles from Brooklyn and started the first full-time Spanish-language broadcast in M.L.B. under announcer René Cárdenas.
A native of Ecuador, Jarrín came to the United States in 1955 never having seen a baseball game. He eventually became one of only three Spanish-language broadcasters who have received the Baseball Hall of Fame’s Ford C. Frick Award, the recognition reserved for broadcasters. The others: Buck Canel, who began radio broadcasts of the World Series in 1937, and Felo Ramírez, a broadcast partner of Canel who called Miami Marlins games starting in 1993 until his death in 2017.
Throughout his long tenure on the air, Jarrín not only inspired other broadcasters but advised them in their own careers.
“It’s been a big pleasure to have the opportunity to open the doors of baseball to our community,” Jarrín said in Spanish. “And I’m grateful to the Dodgers for giving me the chance to get close to the community and fans.”
Take Eduardo Ortega, for example. Ortega, the Spanish-language voice of the San Diego Padres for the past 36 years, who grew up in Tijuana, Mexico, across the border from San Diego. At home, his family listened to both the Padres’ and Dodgers’ Spanish-language transmissions, and Jarrín’s elegance left an impression on Ortega.
“Everyone’s style is different,” Ortega said in Spanish. “I tend to raise my voice and Jaime is a romantic on the air, more of the old school, but he connects to all ages with his fine style. Listening to Jaime was the inspiration to look for excellence and to follow the greatest, in my opinion.”
Or take Polo Ascencio. Before he became the St. Louis Cardinals’ Spanish-language play-by-play radio announcer seven years ago, Ascencio was a Valenzuela fan and discovered Jarrín while listening to Dodgers games while growing up in Tijuana. After he came to the U.S., Ascencio worked as a night custodian in Santa Barbara, Calif. And as he cleaned, he alternated listening to Scully in English one day and Jarrín in Spanish the next on a portable radio.
After rising from a frequent radio call-in guest to a regular contributor to a television sportscaster in Santa Barbara to a producer at Dodger Stadium, Ascencio said Jarrín recommended him to fill in on the pre- and postgame shows while Jarrín was on vacation.
And in 2014, while in his first job as a play-by-play announcer, for a Mexican winter league team, Ascencio said he was a rough place mentally and considering quitting. But one day, he said he got an uplifting text message from Jarrín, who happened to be flipping channels and caught some of Ascencio’s call.
“If that was not a sign from a baseball god or a joke from somebody trying to pull something on me, I don’t know what it was,” Ascencio said. “Without that text, I would have gone home and I would have quit my job as a broadcaster in Mexico and most likely I wouldn’t be here.”
Pepe Yñiguez, a Dodgers broadcaster since 1997, Tolentino and Mota all have similar stories of Jarrín encouraging them. As a former player, Tolentino, who is from Mexico, was working as a radio color analyst but he said Jarrín pushed him to do more play-by-play, which later opened the door to national television opportunities.
Mota’s broadcasting spark first began when he sat in Jarrín’s booth as a child during games because Mota would accompany his father, Manny, a former Dodgers player and coach, to the stadium. When the younger Mota retired from the field in 1997, he received interest in becoming a television broadcaster so he immediately called Jarrín, who gave him voice exercises to do.
“He told me not to focus only on being an analyst but play-by-play because I can speak both English and Spanish,” said Mota, who is from the Dominican Republic. “He said, ‘Don’t limit yourself because ex-players are put only into a corner. You can do more.’”
Perhaps Jarrín’s biggest impact, several broadcasters said, was the standard he set for Spanish-language broadcasts so that other teams could follow suit to reach their large and growing Latino fan bases.
“The influence of Jaime goes into organizations realizing that this is not a want but a need,” Ascencio said. “That fact that teams are willing to do this in Spanish, it’s important. Without Jaime and his leadership and him being in the Hall of Fame with the backing of greats like Vin Scully and Jack Buck, this doesn’t happen. As slow as it seems it’s growing, this growth doesn’t happen without Jaime.”
Of the 30 M.L.B. teams, Ortega said that 16 have some form of a Spanish-language broadcast of games.
Some teams only broadcast a portion of their games, be it on weekends or day games. Unlike their English-language counterparts who travel for road games, some Spanish-language broadcasts do not, and thus they call their games from a studio off a television feed. According to Ortega, only three clubs — the Dodgers, Padres and Diamondbacks — have their Spanish-language broadcast teams travel to broadcast live from every game.
Several broadcasters said Jarrín has campaigned over the decades for more investment in Spanish-language broadcasts.
When he was on the road, Ortega said Jarrín would sometimes call to ask what booth he had been set up in, and if it was one in a less desirable location, Jarrín would make some calls on his end to make sure that Spanish-language broadcasters were given the same treatment as those in English.
“He’s always made sure we’re better positioned,” said Ortega, who refers to Jarrín as “the Godfather.” “He helps us. He advises us. If we have questions, we go to him. He’s carried the flag so that we’re respected.”
Jarrín said he has long been grateful that the Dodgers have recognized the importance of their Spanish-speaking fans. He said his dream is that as many teams as possible fund Spanish-language broadcasts. He said he hoped the way he carried himself throughout his career served as an example of the potential of the Latino market. The broadcasters the came after him are proof.
