A Show Goes On
Two dynamic sportscasters proved that a Spanish-language Red Sox radio show could thrive. But it took a tragedy to earn the program the attention it deserved.
Uri Berenguer did not expect to become the senior broadcaster in the Spanish Beisbol Network's booth at Fenway Park so soon. And not like this. When he turned 23 in May, he was already a press-box veteran, a statistician for the sports radio station WEEI by age 13 who called his first game in Spanish at 17. But he was still the junior partner to J.P. Villaman, known to fans as "Papa Oso" ("Papa Bear"), a 46-year-old native of the Dominican Republic whose operatic treatment of even routine plays complemented the younger man's stat-heavy analysis. The duo was a natural fit for the five-year-old network on a mission to modernize Spanish baseball radio while retaining the drama and celebration of the old school. On game days, their booth hosted a fiesta filled with laughter, jokes, and friends as high-energy dance music punctuated the beginning and end of each inning.
It was a party that was unknown to most of Red Sox Nation until late May, when Villaman died in an early-morning car accident after a game. The tragedy thrust the network and Berenguer into the spotlight.
"I think it's kind of sad that that's what it takes to get noticed, and if anybody appreciated that battle, it was J.P.," says SBN president Bill Kulik, who founded the network in 2001. Today, it broadcasts every Sox game in Spanish, to listeners on five local stations as well as on the Web and satellite radio (and broadcasts the games of two other Major League teams). "He tried and tried and tried and just couldn't get people to take notice. It's almost like Van Gogh or Monet or some famous painter who actually becomes more famous when he passes away. That's almost what it feels like here."
Berenguer has a similar take. "As a broadcaster, and no matter what job you're in, you always look forward to that time when you become `it,' when you become the guy," he says. "However, this is not the way I expected to reach that goal, and I did not expect it to come this - I don't even know what the right word is - this rough." Berenguer knows rough. At age 3, the Panama native was brought by his mother to Boston so doctors at Dana-Farber could treat him for a blood disorder called histiocytosis. After a decade and a half of treatment, he was declared free of the disease in his late teens.
Berenguer's dream is for SBN to reach out to more of what he calls "American Latinos," people like him who were born here or came at an early age but retain the culture of their parents and grandparents. It's a mission that, arguably, could move forward more quickly with the help of the man who now sits in Villaman's chair: Juan Oscar Baez, 42, a former Yankee minor leaguer and 20-year friend of Villaman's.
The change brings SBN closer to the traditional model of English-language gamecasts - a professional broadcaster on one microphone, a baseball guy on the other. (Villaman was a professional broadcaster, just like Berenguer.) Berenguer says that while this matchup has significantly changed the program, the early signs are that the fan base - which reaches south to anti-Yankee enclaves in New Jersey and even to South America - is sticking around to listen as the show evolves.
Baez, who says that he and Villaman were like brothers, often finds himself looking over his shoulder, expecting him to be there. Berenguer, meanwhile, keeps two photos of Villaman taped over his statistics board on the wall of the broadcast booth, a reminder that Villaman would tease him for focusing on numbers. Villaman's booming baritone can also be heard on tape periodically during broadcasts, reassuring fans that Papa Oso is still in the booth in spirit. 