Ems, OSU reaching out to Hispanics.

Byline: Ron Bellamy/The Register-Guard

A decade from now, perhaps 2006 will be remembered as the year that some local sports teams began to recognize the significance of the growing Hispanic community in the Eugene-Springfield area.

The steps now are baby steps, and there's still more talking than walking, but clearly some movement is being made toward closer relations between some sports entities and a potential constituency of fans that has been overlooked and, in fact, ignored.

In the long term, that could lead to new advertising markets for sponsors, to new fans in the stands, and to a greater degree of inclusion of the Hispanic community in local spectator sports and, thus, in the community at large.

"These are pivotal moments, doing this kind of small work," said Jorge Navarro, executive director of Centro LatinoAmericano. "Sports increasingly is a bonding with the community in ways that social service agencies like ours, or activist groups, don't get close to.

"Sports can overcome a lot of those social barriers that a concerted political effort or concerted activist push doesn't address."

Some developments:

The Eugene Emeralds, with the strong encouragement of the San Diego Padres, their major league affiliate, are seeking ways to link Hispanic players - as many as eight on the roster this season - with the local Hispanic community, both to provide a greater comfort level and educational services for the players during their short-season stay in Eugene, and to offer "heroes" to an untapped source of fans.

Earlier this summer, Tim Katzman, San Diego Padres director of corporate communications, visited Eugene and, with Ems assistant general manager Bryan Beban, had several meetings seeking to nurture a connection between the baseball team and the Hispanic community. It's a priority throughout the Padres farm system, at the directive of chief executive officer Sandy Alderson.

"If nothing else," Katzman said, "the World Baseball Classic taught us that baseball is an inclusive game, not an exclusive game."

An Emeralds' home game against Tri-City earlier this month was broadcast in Spanish on Eugene radio station KXOR-AM, part of Eugene-based Churchill Media. Paul Danitz, Churchill Media general manager, said he hopes to carry all Emeralds home games in Spanish next season, and some road games.

"I'm betting on interest in the long-term," Danitz said. "I want to take the Hispanics to the community and say, `Here we are, don't miss this marketing segment.' I want people to see that there's interest, and that the Hispanic community does want to get involved with sports and it's time that we try to take care of them."

Earlier this month Churchill Media announced a three-year agreement to carry Spanish-language broadcasts of Oregon State football games, home and away, starting this season on KXOR and on stations it operates in Portland and Yakima.

The contract with Oregon State came after Churchill Media, which is owned by Suzanne Arlie, had tried for some time to reach an agreement to carry University of Oregon games. Now Oregon will be forced to play catch-up after the Beavers have struck first in the Ducks' hometown.

"It's not going to be an immediate money-maker for this company," Danitz said. "There will be a day, we hope, when it will be." Ultimately, he believes, the deal "will be very good for the school, and good for us, too."

Thursday, Churchill Media revealed another venture into sports coverage, announcing that it will close KLZS-AM (1450), a Eugene-based music station, at the end of this month and, on Sept. 1, shift programming on that signal to ESPN Deportes, ESPN's Spanish-language network.

According to Churchill Media's numbers, the Hispanic market in the Eugene-Springfield area numbers almost 27,000 people; by the year 2050, according to one estimate, Hispanic people will account for 25 percent of the local population.

Long before then, you'd think, local sports franchises - the Ems, OSU, the University of Oregon - will not simply be judged on whether they provide Spanish-language broadcasts of sporting events, or provide promotional events aimed at the Hispanic market, but in their hiring practices and bilingualism.

"I think it's really an untapped source, at least locally," Navarro said.

"Obviously, it's a demographic piece that is continuing to grow, and the stronger the community roots are, the better it is for all of us. ... It's a significant number of people. Recognizing them, I think, is a really big piece."

In the short term, the Spanish-language broadcasts that KXOR will offer for Oregon State football this season, and potentially for the Ems next season, are symbolic of recognizing that community. In the long term, those broadcasts represent potential markets for advertisers, a new base of fans and, for Oregon State, a recruiting vehicle for new students.

The Beavers also will be carried on KLZS, along with ESPN Deportes, which will carry sports news shows, extensive soccer coverage - including games for the highly popular Mexican team, Las Chivas Rayados de Guadalajara - and will carry major league baseball games, including the playoffs and World Series.

Danitz, who came to Eugene from Texas, where he was involved with radio stations that carried Spanish-language broadcasts of Dallas Cowboys games, saw firsthand how the Cowboys became immensely popular in the Hispanic community in Texas and in Mexico.

He has plans to get some OSU games on the air in Mexico City.

"It's my intention to brand this team as the college team for Hispanics," Danitz said.

It's an opportunity that might have been Oregon's, because Churchill Media had been negotiating with ESPN Plus, which handles the Ducks' radio and television matters, and did a Spanish-language broadcast of the Civil War on KXOR last year.

However, from Churchill Media's viewpoint, talks "weren't moving at a pace that was going to get anything productive done," according to Scott Diehl, chief operating officer of Arlie & Company, and negotiations were terminated earlier this year.

As slowly as talks had gone with Oregon, they went that rapidly with Oregon State, the Beavers pouncing on a loose football, so to speak, and running with it, right in the Ducks' hometown.

"It was the kind of partnership we were looking for," Diehl said of Oregon State, "where they understand the importance of the Hispanic community to their college and they were looking for ways to involve the Hispanic community."

Tim Roberts, ESPN Plus regional manager, said that while the Ducks won't have Spanish-language broadcasts of football games this season, "we have something in the works" for the 2007 season. "That's an important component to us and we want to reach that market," he said.

As do the Emeralds, who traditionally have drawn relatively few fans from the Hispanic community, even though it's a natural market, given the popularity of baseball in Hispanic countries, and the fact that each year the Ems' roster includes Spanish-speaking players from the Dominican Republic, South America or Mexico.

"Where we are located in Southern California, the Latino culture is a large part of what we embrace and work with and market to every day," the Padres' Katzman said, noting that the growth of the Hispanic community here "led to more discussions and an instinct to reach out to that community."

Providing links between the Emeralds' Hispanic players and the Hispanic community will not only create new fans, Katzman said, but provide a better experience for the players, who often come to Eugene with little English.

"We realize that not every one of these players will make it to the major leagues, but certainly the road to the major leagues starts here in Eugene," Katzman said.

"Our purpose is not to strip these Latino players of their culture and heritage, but to provide them with a greater degree of confidence in dealing with a new environment."

And so last month, Katzman and Beban met with Duane Funk, director of Downtown Languages, to discuss involving future Ems in English lessons there; pitchers Ernesto Frieri, from Colombia, and Rolando Valdez, from Mexico, made an appearance, joined a class in singing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" in English, and gave away Ems tickets to the students.

Katzman and Beban also met with Lt. Carolyn McDermed and station manager Lupe Thompson of the Eugene police department's substation in the Whiteaker neighborhood, to discuss involvement by Spanish-speaking Ems in that community, and perhaps an appearance before the grand opening of the new substation at West Sixth and Monroe next month.

McDermed noted that such a connection could be beneficial to the police department, which ultimately hopes to recruit more young Hispanics into its ranks.

"Sports is just a natural connection," she said, expressing hope that appearances by baseball players at police department functions would help police "build a relationship" with neighborhood residents "so that they come to us when they're in trouble and they need things, and not fear us."

Which, in the long term, makes for a stronger community, and which, in turn, is why this is about a lot more than baseball and football.