Just getting it right isn’t always enough
Names of players born abroad test P.A. announcers
Dan Baker, the Philadelphia Phillies’ longtime public address announcer, read out the starting lineups for a recent game. Certain names he was particularly proud of, but not for anything they had done on the field.
“Leading off for the Philadelphia Phillies, No. 16, second baseman César Hernández,” Baker boomed.
That was, César (SAY-sar), as it is said in Spanish, or pretty close for someone whose only formal instruction in the language was three years in high school. Many people, after all, just say it the Anglicized way, like the salad (SEE-zar).
“Even if I don’t get it 100 percent correct, the players appreciate the effort,” Baker, 71, said.
Major League Baseball this season has players from a record 21 countries and territories outside the continental United States. The majority of them are Spanish-speaking, with players’ names that can be tricky for English-speaking broadcasters and public address announcers to pronounce accurately. The league publishes a pronunciation guide every year, compiled with input from each of the 30 teams, but it sometimes confuses as much as clarifies. The suggested pronunciation for Kansas City Royals outfielder Abraham Almonte is al-MONN-tay, more faithful to Spanish (al-MOHN-tay), while for Colorado Rockies prospect Yency Almonte it is al-MAHN-tay, which leans more to English.
The league has been making greater efforts to recognize the presence, impact and history of Latino players, producing television commercials on them and printing accent marks on jerseys. But in this case, announcers are not always certain what to do, some striving to be sensitive but others not wanting to sound like they are affecting.
“If a player felt it important enough to come to me and say, ‘Hey, I prefer if you pronounced it such and such a way,’ then absolutely,” said Howie Rose, 64, the longtime radio voice of the New York Mets. “It’s your name. But I don’t feel comfortable trying to use those affectations that are totally foreign to me and totally foreign to the majority of our listening audience.”
Rose does not speak any Spanish, so he cannot roll his r’s and would not always know the proper syllables to stress. He said he will alter his pronunciation if a player asks, which notably happened with Hall of Fame first baseman Tony Pérez, who is from Cuba. Near the end of Pérez’s career in the 1980s, he requested that his name be pronounced PAYrez, closer to the Spanish way, instead of peh-REZ, which English speakers tend to say. Although Rose was not broadcasting Mets games yet, he heard about Pérez’s change and it forever changed his pronunciations of other Perezes.
If players have not voiced a preference, Rose said he uses what is easiest for him on the air. To him, it might sound forced to enunciate like a native Spanish speaker. “I’d botch it 10,000 ways to Sunday and it wouldn’t sound genuine,” he said. “It wouldn’t sound smooth.”
Miguel Rojas, the shortstop for the Miami Marlins who is from Venezuela, has noticed that announcers and broadcasters get his name mostly right but usually do not strongly roll the “r,” as it would be in Spanish.
“They just don’t know how to do those sounds with their tongue,” said Rojas, who speaks English well. “But the same goes for me: I can learn English but the ‘th’ is hard for me to pronounce. There are some names that are hard for me to say and I make mistakes, too.”
Because of the difficulties in saying the “y” sound in the ñ, Manny Piña (PEEN-ya), the Milwaukee Brewers catcher, and Ronald Acuña (ah-COON-ya), the Atlanta Braves outfielder, said they often hear different versions of their last names. “That’s normal,” Acuña said. Piña added: “Some say PEEN-a and some say Peen-YA. It doesn’t bother me, but I’d like if they said it properly.”
Of course, Spanish names are not the only ones difficult for English-speaking broadcasters and public address announcers. How well could you say the names of these players: Marc Rzepczynski, Matt Szczur, Aaron Altherr, Seunghwan Oh, Jeff Samardzija, Sam Tuivailala or Jameson Taillon. Or how about Robert Gsellman, the Mets relief pitcher?
“It bothered me when I was little but you get used to it,” guh-SELL-man said. “They’ll get it right one day.”