Share

As expected, when we decided to promote this week’s upcoming Béisbol show by asking our listeners to name the five best (or favorite) Latino baseball players ever, the responses were as diverse as the 75 players named. Our listeners do know their béisbol.

By far, the top four players named were not a surprise. Mostly EVERYONE who filled out the survey included at least one (or all) of these legends:
 

Roberto Clemente


 

Fernando Valenzuela


 
Pedro Martínez


 
Mariano Rivera


 

After those top four names, this was the next tier of mentions. Watch and enjoy.
 

Martín Dihigo

“He was the best ballplayer of all time, black or white.”—Buck Leonard


 

Juan Marichal


 

Orlando Cepeda


 

Miguel Cabrera


 

Luis Tiant


 

Edgar Martínez

 

Albert Pujols


 

Big Papi


 

King Felix


 

This list could go on and on and on. If you want to read what others are saying, you can catch the conversation on Twitter. You can also tweet to @LatinoUSA, since I am sure you will begin to say that our listeners missed some big names, right? Seriously, we could have added 80 more names to this list, but I had only about two hours to find YouTube videos. It’s a good thing MLB did a pretty exhaustive list in 2012. You can check that one out and tell us what you think.

A few other things. Some of you asked that we let people know that the great Ted Williams is of Mexican descent from his mother’s side. A 2005 New York Times article discussed how Williams tried to play down his Mexcian heritage. Nonentheless, in 2012, MLB added Williams to the All-Time Latino Team.

In addition, my good friend Luis Marentes wanted to make sure I shout out Alex Cora because the survey also asked listeners for their favorite players, and not just the best. Luis wins on a technicality, so here’s an Alex Cora video (with a Vin Scully appearance):

 


 

Finally, I closed my last post with a cool béisbol song, so I decided to end this one with a song from my childhood.

 


 

Keep tweeting your thoughts to me @julito77 or to @LatinoUSA. See you Friday with a new Latino USA!

2007 photo of Mariano Rivera by Keith Allison via Flickr

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.