(Latin) America's Pastime: Beisbol

In 2005 Major League Baseball created a ballot for fans to elect the greatest Latino players of all time, known as the Latino Legends Team. Included on that list were notable names such as Roberto Clemente, Rod Carew, Luis Aparicio, and Fernando Valenzuela. The final votes created a team that was heavily composed of more contemporary players, such as Alex Rodriguez, Albert Pujols, Pedro Martinez, and Ivan Rodriguez. While this created some controversy, an even larger one was not realizing how deep Latino roots are in Major League Baseball by not even placing names of some Latinos on the ballot. Two of the most notable omissions were Ted Williams, who spoke fluent Spanish and whose mother was Mexican, or Reginald Martinez Jackson, whose father was half-Puerto Rican.

Latin Americans have played baseball in their own countries since the mid-1800s. Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Mexico all played baseball prior to the 20th Century. Cuban students who studied in the United States brought the game home to their country as early as 1860. An American importer, Albert Addlesberg, introduced baseball to Nicaragua in the 1880’s; it was an easy transition from cricket, which the British had already brought there. Mexico and Venezuela each established professional baseball leagues in the 1920’s that continue to exist today.

Two Cuban players, Rafael Almeida and Armando Marsans, played for the Cincinnati Reds in 1911. The first major league player from Latin America was Cuban Charles P. Pedroes, who played in 1902.

Today 27-percent of Major League Baseball players are Latino, with over 24-percent of them born in Latin America. The rest of the Latino players, such as Matthew Garza or Sergio Romo, are U.S.-born American citizens, despite their Spanish names and Mexican heritage.

So, Latinos and Latin Americans have been involved with baseball for well over a century, since the creation of the game, really. In a previous post I commented on how Latin Americans like to remind those from the United States that they are not the only “Americans” in this hemisphere given that countries from North and South America arguably contain “Americans,” too. I don’t buy that argument so much, but when talking about baseball as an “American” pastime, I really have to say that we are talking about more countries than just the United States.

Apparently, not many agree that Latinos have a place in baseball given the uproar that emerged on social media over the All-Star break. First, Cuban Yoenis Cespedes won the homerun derby. In a reprisal of last year’s journalistic performance, Pedro Gomez of ESPN conducted an interview in Spanish and then translated the interviewee’s answers into English. Last year, it was only a few questions to Robinson Cano’s father, who does not speak English, while this year he conducted his entire interview with Cespedes in Spanish, while providing immediate translation. Cespedes has only been in the United States for two years, so it is highly unlikely that his English is very good, as anyone who has taken years of a foreign language in high school can attest to. But his homerun hitting is awesome, and that is what true baseball fans should care about. A vocal few, however, just couldn’t handle it and spouted off with xenophobic and discriminatory comments on Twitter. It is very likely that ESPN approved of this not-so subtle pandering to Latinos and Spanish speaking audiences given that they chose him to do the interview again.

The following day, New York born, Puerto Rican-descent singer, Marc Anthony sang "God Bless America" (in English-I shouldn’t have to qualify that, but, oh well). Again, the Twitter-verse lit up with discriminatory comments questioning his right to sing one of our national songs. Even if he were born in Puerto Rico, those who objected should be reminded that he would still be an American citizen, but I would not expect the critics to know even that given that many misidentified Marc Anthony as Mexican or illegal.

National CBS columnist Gregg Doyel wrote a great response of this All-American issue that I will end with here:

“… people got mad, maybe because people get mad when they’re scared. And people are scared of Spanish. Scared that they don’t understand what others are saying. Envious that they can’t speak two languages. Frightened that maybe this world is changing, and people like us — people who speak only English — will be left behind… America is changing, people. Better or worse, the days of everyone here speaking one language -- a language named for a country in Europe; ironic, really -- are gone. English will always be our native language, but it's not going to be the only language. Those days? Long gone. You can bitch and moan about it, like people decades ago bitched and moaned about integration, but this is the country we have. Understand that.”

Bien dicho.