(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.

Latinos and El Super Bowl

The big “Latino” news of this week is probably the announcements by a bipartisan group of eight senators and the subsequent one by President Obama that outlines a set of principles for immigration reform. Some have cautioned that this is entirely a cynical political move that will end in a stalemate (and the draw goes to the incumbent, Obama), I hold a bit of optimism that the law will take some steps forward toward a more common sense and humane immigration system.

One of the big remaining concerns, often a subtext of the immigration debate, is that it is not merely a legal issue or even an economic one, but a symbol of the cultural war. For many Americans immigrant is synonymous with Hispanic, and the big threat of immigration is really the xenophobic threat of a large cultural group coming and changing the culture in which we currently live. Harvard historian Sam Huntington was bold enough to be completely honest about this view when he proclaimed the “Hispanic Challenge” against the American way of life.

So, assuming that my optimistic views are confirmed and millions of Latino immigrants gain the legal right to live and work in the United States, what will happen next? While I don’t believe that a cultural war will take place, there is no doubt in my mind that Huntington was right, that Hispanics will remake America-they already have, and they have done so with most Americans’, and especially entrepreneurial capitalists, enthusiastic support.  Already, businesspeople not only want to court Latinos, they realize they need to. Too, bad so many of them just don’t know how to do it well.

In a few days millions of Americans will be glued to their televisions to watch the real war we all care about, Super Bowl XLVII. With a Civil War-like story line of brother versus brother, North versus South, it should once again break television-viewing records. Of course for many, the real main event is the half-time show, with the potential hope of wardrobe malfunctions, and the commercials. One might assume that Latinos would rather be watching fútbol than football and thus make an extra effort to reach out to them via the between-play marketing. That would be the wrong assumption to make considering a 2009 Nielsen poll showed that football is Latinos’ favorite sport to watch on television. Perhaps therein lies the reason why we can probably expect another lackluster year of commercials with a Latin twist during the big game-the U.S. business world knows we are important, but they still don’t get us.

One mistake marketers make is that getting the attention of Latinos is all about language. They think that if you simply translate the English copy into Spanish and have an aging Latin American actor do the voiceover, then Latinos will rush out to buy the product. That mentality ignores the fact that most Latinos are U.S.-born, English-speaking, and young.

The NBA made a slightly savvier attempt by airing a Spanish-speaking commercial during an English broadcast of one of their basketball games. It breaks away from some tired stereotypes by using a modern, Middle American, backdrop. But, they still wrongheadedly reference telenovelas, the Spanish soap operas that we American Latinos are familiar with, even though we are more likely to be watching The X-factor, or Modern Family.

One ad that has been touted in advance of its Superbowl airing is downright insulting. It already starts off bad because it is an ad for the cheap Mexican knock-off, Taco Bell. It gets worse with the ironic, punk inflected, Spanish with an American accent, signing in the background. Some probably believe that this gets the younger sensibilities of Latinos right, but by going for mockery, both in terms of the product and the ad, and they might as well just dig The Frito Bandito up from the archives.

Personally, I am a fan of a Latina marketing strategist’s idea of “the wink”, which demonstrates the knowledge that Latinos are really American in many ways, but that there is a subtle Latin American sensibility to a lot of what we do. Last year a Super Bowl commercial featuring Carlos Mencía really hit the mark. Carlos, representing what we typically think of as a Latino, with his tan skin and dark features, also portrayed who many Latinos really are with his flawless English and American style. In the commercial he teaches a diverse class of foreigners some key phrases that they will need to learn to survive in the United States. It is great because he is their cultural guide to being American, and like many successful Latinos, he has mastered the art of being a chameleon. He knows the nuances of both cultures, but is decidedly American. He drinks Bud Light, after all.

So when you sit down with your Corona, or more likely, a Bud Light, this weekend, and you find yourself eating chili con carne, and dipping some chips into salsa and guacamole for a traditional American Super Bowl, take note of whether advertisers really get what (Latino) Americans like or not.