Tuning in, tuning up Spanish
LOS ANGELES — One day in the locker room I overheard an Asian gent tell someone he learned English by listening to the radio as a kid. Namely, he tuned in to the late Chick Hearn calling Laker games and Vin Scully calling Dodger games.
“Where I grew up, I could only get certain stations,” he said, and the signals were strong and clear for both sports teams. So he turned up the volume and went to school, with a pair of legendary broadcasters as his English teachers.
I loved the image of it. A kid with his ear to the radio in a city that is a world without borders, where more than 200 languages are spoken, and where cultures bump and blend.
Like a lot of Southern Californians, I don’t have the option of watching the Dodgers on TV, thanks to the obnoxious and enduring greed-driven battle over broadcasting fees. And I can no longer listen to Vin Scully on the radio, because he packed his golden mike into a velvet box and said goodbye.
So I began punching in 1020 on the AM dial to hear broadcasts of Dodger games in Spanish.
The season is young, the nights are warming now, and I confess that I can’t always show up for class. But when I do, the other Dodger broadcast legend — Hall of Famer Jaime Jarrin, in his 59th year with the team at the age of 81 — is my Spanish teacher.
Jarrin was born and raised in Ecuador. He has a warm, calming voice. It’s rum and butterscotch and black coffee, and he speaks slowly, clearly, poetically.
Lanzamiento viene (here comes the pitch, or the pitch is coming) are two simple words. But Jarrin’s delivery turns them into a little song about the expectation that rides on every pitch.
Curva muy abierto, una bola dos estraic. (Curve ball way outside, one ball and two strikes.) And then there’s his home run call. Se va, se va, se va, despidala con un beso. (It’s going, going, going, kiss it goodbye.)
Jaime Jarrin was college-educated in Ecuador and took eight years of English there but felt lost when he got to Los Angeles, so he enrolled in a class downtown and began a career that’s in extra innings.
“Lots of Anglos have told me over the years that they improved their Spanish through my broadcasts,” said Jarrin, who recalls a flurry of new fans when Fernando Valenzuela conquered L.A. in the 1980s.
I met Jarrin’s broadcast partner, his son Jorge, and also his grandson Stefan, 26, who used to play in the Dodger rookie league and is now a scout.
Here’s a surprise: Stefan, who understands Spanish, said he doesn’t speak it very well, primarily because his parents spoke English around him when he was a boy. And his grandfather’s Spanish is so smooth, Stefan is too intimidated to try matching it.
Engineer Efren Meza told me his own Spanish has been elevated. Five years in a booth with Jaime Jarrin can have that effect.