The Voice of Béisbol: Jaime Jarrín

Los Angeles Dodgers Spanish-language announcer Jaime Jarrín, 2009 (Wikimedia Commons)

When the 2018 baseball season opens and the first pitch is thrown at Dodger Stadium on March 29, history will be made, and few will notice. For the second time in the history of sports, a man will be able to say he has broadcast for a team for 60 years. When Vin Scully retired at the end of the 2016 season, he was justly celebrated for having broadcast for the Dodgers for 67 years and for having elevated baseball announcing to the realm of literature. But just down the hall from where he sat, another broadcaster, equally popular with his listeners, is beginning his sixtieth season with the Dodgers. That man is Jaime Jarrín.

In 1955, Jarrín came to the U.S. from Quito, Ecuador, where he had been a newscaster on a radio station known as “The Voice of the Andes.” After a year in southern California as a busboy and learning English, he went to work for a Spanish-language radio station as a news and sports reporter. When the Brooklyn Dodgers moved to Los Angeles in 1958, Jarrín’s station acquired the rights to broadcast their games. The station owner wanted Jarrín to announce them. When he declined, his boss prevailed upon Jarrín to learn the game, then try to announce it. He did, and went on the air in 1959. He’s still there.

Just as Scully started out as a novice under a more senior broadcaster before moving up to be the lead announcer, Jarrín was the #2 man in the booth until 1973. Since then, he has broadcast six or seven innings a game on radio and become, as The Los Angeles Times put it, “the Voice of Dodger Béisbol.”

One reporter drew a comparison between Scully as “the friendly and knowledgeable neighbor who asks his listeners to ‘pull up a chair,” and Jarrín as “professorial.” But the two broadcasters actually have taken the same approach. As Jarrín put it, “I knew my job was to give them some type of entertainment, knowing that Latinos are very hard-working people. They work from early in the day until late at night, so after a hard day, they come home and what better entertainment to give them than the beautiful game of baseball, in their own language?”

Jarrín was a pioneer for other Spanish language announcers and for southern California Latinos, and he understood his role. “Here, the Americans, they start with baseball in the schools. But we have an audience that comes from all over Latin America. And they came from Latin America without knowing baseball…. Now they really follow baseball. I think they learn it through us, through our broadcasts.”

In his early years, Scully had to be a bit more professorial than he was at the end of his career: Los Angelenos were used to baseball, but not to major league baseball. He taught it to them. He also taught Jarrín. For the first decade of Spanish broadcasts, the announcers didn’t travel to the games. They used Western Union reports to recreate games. Jarrín tried a different approach: he sat at the radio station wearing headphones and translated the play-by- play of Scully and his partner Jerry Doggett, who would take time between innings and during commercials to tell Jarrín about various goings on at the ballpark so he could add color to his broadcasts.

Jarrín was a locally beloved announcer within southern California’s burgeoning Latino community when, in 1981, he assumed a new role: translator for a new Dodger pitcher, Fernando Valenzuela, a 20-year-old sensation from Mexico who spoke little English. He created more new baseball fans than any other player. Fernando had that special talent, that special charisma to draw Mexicans, Central Americans and South Americans who were completely indifferent to the game,” Jarrín said of Valenzuela. As the pitcher became a star and interest in him grew, Jarrín accompanied him everywhere, including to the White House. Jarrín also became better known in his own right.

Just as Scully pursued other avenues, including a talk show and a game show, Jarrín spent many years as a newscaster, covering everything from the aftermath of John Kennedy’s assassination to papal visits. Scully became known for selling sponsors’ products on Dodgers broadcasts, while Jarrín was overwhelmed with requests to do ads for various companies. Scully and Jarrín also are recipients of the Ford C. Frick Award, given by the Baseball Hall of Fame to broadcasters for distinguished service. Scully received the honor in 1982 and Jarrín in 1998.

In 2012, Jarrín welcomed an opportunity that has come to few major league broadcasters: the chance to do games with his son. Over the years, baseball has been known for such teams as the Carays (Harry, Skip, and Chip), the Brennamans (Marty and Thom, who work together with the Cincinnati Reds), and the Bucks (Jack and Joe, who used to broadcast together for the Cardinals and have the distinction of being the only father and son to broadcast NFL’s Super Bowl). Jorge Jarrín, who had already had a successful career as a broadcaster, joined Jaimé on his broadcasts, and they still work together.

This season marks the fiftieth for Denny Matthews, another Frick recipient, who has broadcast for the Royals since their first game in 1969. He joins Jarrín and Scully as the only baseball announcers to work exclusively for one team for half a century—and Jarrín is still a decade ahead of him. Can the “Latin Vin Scully,” as one writer described him—prompting another to suggest that perhaps instead, Scully is the Anglo Jaime Jarrín—catch up to Scully’s 67 years?

A quarter of a century ago, Jarrín said, “I can’t keep doing this forever. But what am I going to do if I retire? I’ll probably wind up going out to the ballpark anyway.” So will many Latinos and Latinas, who have learned the game from him.

About the Author

Michael Green

Michael Green is an associate professor of history at UNLV. In 2015, the University of Nevada Press will publish his Nevada: A History of the Silver State. He also is the author of Lincoln and the Election of 1860 (Southern Illinois University Press) and other works on the nineteenth century and the American West.

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