A strange yet joyous thing happened to me as I watched the debut of NaciónESPN last Monday: I realized that when it comes to the sports media I consume as a native Spanish-language English speaker, I was always a fan who could never be boxed into a simplistic Spanish-only or English-only rigidness. And for the first time in, like, ever, I was watching three ESPN personalities who all happen to be Latino, just talking sports —no matter the language, no matter the context.
To those suddenly discovering the news that the vast majority of U.S. Latinos prefer programming in English, welcome. To understand what it means to be a truly bilingual, bicultural Latino sports fan living in 2016 and why a show like NaciónESPN matters more than ever, I will share some highlights of my life as sports fan and sportswriter.
My first childhood hero was Roberto Clemente. My second childhood hero was Muhammad Ali.
I cried when Marquette’s Butch Lee and the Puerto Rican national basketball team lost by one point to the heavily favored United States basketball team at the 1976 Summer Games. Four years later at Lake Placid, I cheered like mad when the U.S. men’s hockey team defeated the Soviet Union.
I was a Yankees fan in the 1970s, and every time Ed Figueroa pitched, I felt proud to see a boricua take the mound. But when Ron Guidry had one of the MLB’s best-ever seasons in 1978, I thought he was the greatest pitcher in the world. I always pronounced Reggie’s name as “Reginald Martínez Jackson” (emphasizing the TÍ!), yet thought Don Mattingly was a gift from the baseball heavens.
I went to sold-out Cosmos games at the old Giants Stadium to worship Pelé, but also grew up with the Knicks and rooted hard for Bernard King and Patrick Ewing. I will remind anyone who wants to know that the Puerto Rican national hoops team was one of the last to defeat a pre-Dream Team American basketball squad and the first to defeat a Dream Team.
As a young sportswriter, I covered a national champion college hockey team from New England for my school paper and conducted Spanish interviews with soccer players for The Boston Globe. Seeking a newspaper job in Boston after college, I pitched the fact papers would need more bilingual Latinos because the city would have more Latino baseball stars.
That was in 1990.
A few years later, Nomar Garciaparra and Pedro Martínez were owning the city and the local media was publishing poorly translated articles in Spanish when Pedro pitched. I would shake my head when I read it. This is not how you reach people like me. Not even close.
My love for Nomar, Pedro and eventually David Ortiz turned me into a Red Sox fan, earning me the label of The Bronx Judas. But I didn’t care. I got to witness the NOMAH craze, see the best pitcher ever (sorry, Guidry) transform Fenway Park into a merengue party and marvel at what Big Papi has done for the Red Sox — so much so that he could run for mayor of the city after retirement. I saw three Latino Red Sox stars make it cool to be Latino in this city. It meant something, especially in a metropolitan area in which 30% of those under 18 are Latino.
My point is simple: I am sports fan who has lived in a fluid world that cannot define me. If I want to watch football from Foxboro, I will do it. If I want to watch fútbol from Mexico or Europe, I will do it. If I want to listen to Ernesto Jerez call a World Baseball Classic game in Spanish, lo haré. I don’t need my culture forced on me. I just want more voices talking about the sports world that I have experienced, but has been ignored far too long.
Not anymore.
Julio Ricardo Varela is the political editor for the Futuro Media Group (producers of Latino USA and In the Thick). He is also the founder of LatinoRebels.com.
