Beisbol on the Air: Essays on Major League Spanish-Language Broadcasters - Paperback

by Jorge Iber (Editor), Anthony R. Salazar (Author)

Both the U.S. population and Major League Baseball rosters have seen dramatic demographic changes over the past 50 years. The nation and the sport are becoming multilingual, with Spanish the unofficial second language. Today, 21 of 30 MLB teams broadcast at least some games in Spanish.

Filling a gap in the literature of baseball, this collection of new essays examines the history of the game in Spanish, from the earliest locutores who called the plays for Latin American audiences to the League's expansion into cities with large Latino populations--Los Angeles, Houston and Miami to name a few--that made talented sportscasters for the fanaticos a business necessity.

Author Biography

Jorge Iber is an associate dean and a professor of history at Texas Tech University in Lubbock. He is the author of numerous works on the role of Latinos and Latinas in U.S. sports. Anthony Salazar is the chair of the Latino Baseball Research Committee of SABR and has worked on various projects dealing with this topic.