Jaime Jarrín has done the same job, at the same company, for the past 64 years.
It’s not as monotonous as I may have made it seem, because Jarrín, 86, is the Spanish-language radio play-by-play broadcaster for the Los Angeles Dodgers, and he’s been at the mic for them since 1959.
This is his hallmark home run call: “Se va, se va — y despídale con un beso!”
In English, it translates to: “It’s going, it’s going — kiss it goodbye!”
Trust me, it sounds sooo much prettier to hear him say it in Spanish.
‘I never saw a baseball in my life’
Jarrín’s time has served as a historical and generational bridge for Spanish-speaking baseball fans in the city of Los Angeles. He called the Dodgers first World Series win in L.A. in 1959, along with the next two they won in the ’60s, the two they won in the ’80s, all the way through to their most recent championship in 2020.
Looking back on Jarrín’s career now, his relationship with Los Angeles baseball feels timeless — something that seemingly has always been there. But when he first started that part of his career, that wasn’t exactly the case.
“I never saw a baseball in my life, a bat, or nothing, until I came to this country,” Jarrín told me. The reason why is because Jarrín was born and raised in Ecuador — a place where soccer dominates. There, kids grew up wanting to play in the World Cup, not the World Series.
His first love was radio, a world introduced to him by his cousin Alfredo who was an up-and-coming radio announcer making a name for himself in Ecuador’s capital city of Quito. Jarrín says Alfredo opened the door to a world that would one day become his life.
The thing is, he won’t be saying it for much longer. That’s because whenever the Dodgers finish their playoff run, Jarrín is going to call it a career. And what a career it’s been.
