![]() Up to that day, I was very well-known only in Southern California. UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Jaime Jarrin, ask him if he felt that the first three innings tonight, when the Mets got the eight base runners on against him, was the toughest stretch he's had so far since coming to the National League. MARTINEZ: And Jarrin went along for the ride because in addition to calling the games, Jarrin became Valenzuela's interpreter. People didn't know baseball at all, so we had to teach them. JARRIN: He created so many new baseball fans. But more than that, he brought more Spanish speakers to the game. Within a year, he was named Rookie of the Year and helped the Dodgers win the World Series. MARTINEZ: Late in the 1980 season, the Mexican ballplayer Fernando Valenzuela was brought on to pitch for the Dodgers. UNIDENTIFIED SPORTS BROADCASTER: Valenzuela set a National League rookie record, pitching eight shutouts this year. MARTINEZ: And that was where things were headed when a new mania took over baseball, Fernandomania. ![]() And it's a great, great way of making money. What you have to do is hire a couple of announcers, hire a salesman to sell Spanish broadcasts. JARRIN: When they saw the success of the Dodgers regarding the Latinos, they started wondering. And it wasn't long before other teams took notice. MARTINEZ: Within a few years, Jarrin became a respected voice, had built an audience. And I started doing one inning first, then two innings, then three innings. JARRIN: I'd listen every single broadcast on radio. He attended minor league games around the city and read all the sports columns he could get his hands on. MARTINEZ: And so Jarrin sent himself to baseball boot camp. And he looked at me, said, I want you to be one of the announcers. William Beaton called all the announcers to his office. He still remembers the big meeting with the station's general manager. And Jarrin, fluent in English and Spanish but only barely conversational in baseball, became part of the first crew to call Dodger games in Spanish. In 1958, the Brooklyn Dodgers left New York and moved to Los Angeles. MARTINEZ: Jarrin wound up becoming the news and sports director for KWKW just as baseball was about to be turned on its head. I kept going until, finally, they gave me a job on weekends. JARRIN: So I went to study Spanish at a school in Los Angeles, 7 o'clock until 11 o'clock in the morning. And just as I did, Jarrin realized that he needed to neutralize his accent. Forty years later, when I was starting my career in LA doing traffic report in Spanish, I too was told my Ecuadorian Spanish would not cut it in LA. They felt that his Ecuadorian accent would sound strange to Southern California's Mexican population. ![]() But more than that, the people at the radio station didn't like the way Jarrin spoke Spanish. MARTINEZ: He says, at the time, the city's lone Spanish radio station did not have any open positions. JARRIN: I took a job at a factory making metal fences. MARTINEZ: Jarrin says there was so much opportunity in LA back then, just not in Spanish broadcasting. So I said, that's the place where I have to go. And I start reading about Los Angeles and, like, how many Spanish-speaking people were here. JARRIN: Then I start reading about Southern California. (SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WE BELONG TOGETHER") JARRIN: In '55, I decided to come to this country as an immigrant. And this is where his story will become something a lot more recognizable to many Americans. MARTINEZ: And that reading paid off because within just a few years, Jarrin began a career of his own. JARRIN: He put me in a corner of a room to read every day about 30 minutes in the newspaper in commercial Quito - said, I am putting you in a corner because you will hear yourself the way that we hear you. MARTINEZ: Alfredo took that nascent, adolescent voice and helped Jaime develop it. Then, a couple of years later, he said, Jaime, I think you have a microphone voice. JARRIN: And I fell in love with radio when I was 10 years old. Alfredo used to take Jarrin to live broadcasts around town. He was introduced to it by his cousin, Alfredo, who was an up-and-coming radio announcer in the city of Quito. There, kids grew up wanting to play in the World Cup. MARTINEZ: You see, Jarrin was born and raised in Ecuador, where soccer dominates. JARRIN: I never saw baseball in my life, a bat, nothing like that until I came to this country. After 64 seasons, Jaime Jarrin has connected generations of Dodger fans. Sounds a lot prettier, though, when he says it. MARTINEZ: The ball is going, it's going - kiss it goodbye. Jaime Jarrin is retiring as the Spanish-language voice of the Los Angeles Dodgers. One of the most veteran broadcasters in sports is saying goodbye.
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