13 July 2010

Dominican Slugging and ESPN Needs a Latin@ Announcer!



So last night at the All-Star Game's Home Run Derby, two Dominican players battled it out in the final round - David Ortiz and Hanley Ramirez. "Big Papi" took the title, which made him the third Dominican to take a Derby trophy. But what I found entertaining about this year's Derby was not the 450+ feet that Ortiz and Ramirez were putting between their bat and the ball, or the cute kids that watch their daddy's from the sidelines, or even Chris Berman's crazy descriptions ("that ball had some hair on it"),  - but how the ESPN announcers as a group sound really stupid because they don't understand Spanish. A few times that microphones caught Ortiz and Ramirez talking to each other in Spanish  - and the announcers had to guess what was being discussed - and they weren't even close. Ortiz also muttered "Coño" a few times and Joe Morgan said "I think he said conyo.." but they did not go on to explain why...AYE YAY YAY speaking of Joe Morgan - is he not one of the most boring announcers on ESPN ever? How many times did he mention Ortiz's shoes? They were nice and all but they weren't anything spectacular. 

Finally, what was really the most entertaining thing of all was how many times Erin Andrews called David Ortiz "Big Papi". I hope he and his wife had a good laugh about it, because I sure did.

In essence the moral of the story is ESPN needs a Latin@ broadcaster. Nothing sounds better to the millions of Latin@ fans out there than someone who can say players' last names correctly and translate the conversations playing are having with each other and their families. With the continued domination of Latinos in baseball, ESPN is way behind the curve (wink, wink)!

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