Clarified: The Latino impact on the MLB
Taking a look at the Latino community's achievements and hardships faced in major league baseball
Taking a look at the Latino community's achievements and hardships faced in major league baseball
Taking a look at the Latino community's achievements and hardships faced in major league baseball
Project CommUNITY is an ongoing initiative across Hearst Television to put a spotlight on diverse voices in our communities. The initiative is built around regular coverage of people who are working to make a difference and stories detailing the history of the battle for civil rights, inclusion and social change across America.
Latino players have made a huge impact on Major League Baseball.
Across the world, fans can be seen wearing jerseys bearing the names of Roberto Clemente and David "Big Papi" Ortiz.
Both legacies join a list of Latinos who have helped change the game of baseball.
To this day, players of Latin American descent make up around 30 percent of the league's talent.
This episode of Clarified looks at the Latino community's achievements – and hardships faced in major league baseball.
The 'Apostles of Baseball': How Baseball Came To Latin Countries
Cubans were thought to be the first to popularize baseball among the Latin communities, According to Margaret Salazar-Porzio, curator of Latino History and Culture at the Smithsonian Institute's National Museum of American History.
"They have been called the 'Apostles of Baseball,'" Salazar-Porzio said.
In the 1860s, Cuban students attending universities in the United States learned baseball and brought the sport back to Cuba. The game spread across the Caribbean and Latin America. Baseball became popular most notably in Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Honduras and Venezuela.
Creating Community
Baseball has become part of the Latino community's cultural heritage, Salazar-Porzio said.
Latinos saw baseball as a way to form a community.
"We kind of spoke the same language of baseball," she said. "It provided this common ground that I think has been very important to a lot of Latinos."
For a while, Latino players in the United States were limited to playing local teams due to segregation. Historically, major league baseball had a color line – an invisible line that separated white or light-skinned players and darker-skinned players.
Until Jackie Robinson broke the color line in 1947, most Latinos were not allowed to play in the major leagues. Latinos would play for local teams and the Negro Leagues.
Orestes Minnie Minoso would help integrate major league baseball by becoming the first Afro-Latino star in the major leagues. He was first met with discrimination. The Associated Press reported he endured insults from opposing players and the indignity of not being welcome at certain restaurants.
His son Orestes Minoso Arrieta Jr. told The Associated Press in 2015 that his father persevered despite the discrimination.
"He was great on the field," Minoso Arrieta Jr. told The AP. "He was also great off the field, doing good to others, seeing the good in others, understanding the times that he lived in and being able to excel under such difficult situations."
Minoso was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2022.
Latina impact on baseball
Latinas have also played a pivotal role in baseball. They made teams of their own and were incredible players, Salazar-Porzio said. Their teams were sponsored by local businesses and churches.
"It was the socially acceptable space for women to express their athleticism, to make friends, and to be out, but supervised," Salazar-Porzio said.
Women also sewed baseball uniforms, cooked the team potlucks and made scrapbooks.
Latina game changers include Marge Villa-Cryan. Villa-Cryan was one of 11 Latinas who played for the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. She played over 500 games.
Linda Alvarado is another game changer. She is one of the minority owners of the Colorado Rockies, making her the first Latina or Latino to own a Major League franchise.
Jessica Mendoza is another notable game changer who played softball for the United States Olympic team. She would help the team win a gold medal at the Olympics in Athens in 2004 and the silver medal at the Olympics in Beijing in 2008.
Mendoza then became the first Latina to announce a major league game.
Roberto Clemente
One of the most legendary Latino players is Roberto Clemente. Born in Puerto Rico in 1934, Clemente began his career with the Puerto Rican Professional Baseball League at 17 years old.
The Brooklyn Dodgers signed him the following year, and he would eventually break records with the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Clemente would come to collect a mountain of awards: the World Series MVP, 12 Golden Gloves, four batting titles and 3,000 hits.
He was adored for not only his talent but his goodwill.
"He was an incredible philanthropist," Salazar-Porzio said. "He is just this incredible example of, you know, just humanity."
In 1972, Clemente died in a plane crash while delivering hurricane relief supplies to Nicaragua.
"When he passed away, it really just shocked the world," she said.
The Baseball Hall of Fame waived their five-year waiting period to posthumously induct Clemente. His legacy lives on with a humanitarian foundation created in his name.
The birth of the LA Dodgers' Stadium
Another part of baseball history is marked by the mistreatment of a predominantly Mexican American community.
The land the stadium sits on was home to three main neighborhoods: Palo Verde, La Loma and Bishop.
The Los Angeles city council approved a public housing project that required the entire community to be displaced. The area was home to over a thousand families; many had lived there for generations.
"People who owned their land, they paid taxes, they served in the military, they were mostly working class," Salazar-Porzio said.
The city started enacting eminent domain for those who didn't want to leave.
"The last family, the Arechiga family, they defended their property," Salazar-Porzio said. "The grandmother, the matriarch, came out with a shotgun, sheriff's deputies came to evict them physically from the premises." Photos document officers physically removing the family.
The affordable housing plan was cut and instead became the site for the new LA Dodgers stadium.
"Ultimately, this was a very dark moment in LA history," Salazar-Porzio said. "It was absolutely terrible."
Salazar-Porzio said there was a shift in the attitude when the LA Dodgers hired Hall of Fame broadcaster Jaime Jarrín and legendary pitcher Fernando Valenzuela.
Jarrín is an Ecuadorian-born American sportscaster who is known as the longtime Spanish language broadcaster for the LA Dodgers. "Bringing Dodger baseball into Latino homes was really significant," Salazar-Porzio said.
Valenzuela was the pitcher for the Dodgers. His impressive season in 1981 started a movement known as "Fernandomania."
"He was this like Mexican hero, who also kind of looks like your brother or your uncle, and he was very down to earth," she said.
Salazar-Porzio said both figures helped form a symbolic reconciliation between the team and Latinos in LA.
In the 80s and 90s, Salazar-Porzio said people used to call the Dodgers 'Los Doyers' as a way of denigrating Latino fans.
"But it became this term of endearment," she said.
Now, shirts and other merchandise are sold with the words "Los Doyers."
"It's a Latino sport in LA, I think something like 80 percent of the stadium during Dodger games is now Latino," she said. "So, it's huge."
Ponle Acento campaign
Another mark in baseball history is when the MLB launched a campaign known as Ponle Acento, calling for finally placing accent marks on players' uniforms.
Adrián González of the LA Dodgers helped spark the movement by posting a video on Twitter. He wrote that after 16 years in baseball, the only thing that was missing was an accent mark on his uniform.
He encouraged his friend Enrique Hernández to follow, which he did.
The idea spread like wildfire – players across the league posted photos with accents on their uniforms. Celebrities joined in. Latin actress Angélica María also requested an accent mark on her Hollywood star. Her daughter noted in a tweet it was inspired by Ponle Acento.
Through the years, baseball has been forever changed by the Latino community. From a sport spread by international Cuban students, baseball has become a cultural tradition.
Thanks to trailblazers like Clemente and Ortiz, a new generation can play ball with pride.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
This video is the first of a four-part series by Clarified featured during Hispanic Heritage Month to educate viewers on the contributions, experiences and heroes of the Hispanic community.