SOUL OF ESPANOL JARRIN HAS MADE MARK AS LATIN VOICE OF DODGERS.

Byline: Patrick Hipes Staff Writer

The young man with the brown complexion walked up to the row of televisions in the windows; a crowd had gathered on the sidewalk and was fixated on the flickering screens. Curious, he moved closer.

It was the World Series, and a team from New York played a team from Brooklyn. The year was 1955, and it was Jaime Jarrin's first look at a baseball game. It also was his first look at a Dodgers team he would call his own for the next half-century.

``I said, `My goodness, that must be a great sport,' '' said Jarrin, 47 years after the moment and now a Hall of Fame Spanish-language broadcaster for the Dodgers, who celebrate their tie with the Hispanic community today with the Viva Los Dodgers festival at Dodger Stadium.

``That's when I really started wondering about baseball, and I started inquiring about the sport. And the same thing has happened to so many others.''

The history of the Dodgers' franchise is the history of baseball, from Branch Rickey signing Jackie Robinson to Walter O'Malley envisioning a promised land laying at the shore of the Pacific Ocean.

In the same way, the history of Jaime Jarrin is the history of a team and of a city. He is the immigrant who arrived in the city of immigrants, looking for his destiny the same way a growing Hispanic population and a bummed-out Dodgers franchise were looking for theirs.

The three have grown up together. The Dodgers have been one of baseball's most successful and sustainable franchises since moving in 1958, becoming the West Coast gem of America's pastime and turning L.A. once and for all into a major-league city. The city's Spanish- speaking population, confined mostly to East L.A. when the Dodgers arrived, will rise to more than 50 percent of the total population by 2010.

In the middle of it all has been Jarrin, a slightly built Ecuadorian radio announcer who once knew nothing about baseball but now sits in the sport's shrine in Cooperstown, a reward for playing a major role in bringing baseball to a culture, and in return, a culture to baseball.

He has used his melodious voice to guide generations of Hispanic listeners though game after game. At the same time, he has helped them understand they are no different than a producer from Beverly Hills or a general contractor from Van Nuys. They might come from different places, but they all want to know what the Dodgers' score is.

``All of the Latino community knows who Jaime Jarrin is,'' said state assemblyman Tony Cardenas (D-Mission Hills), a longtime Dodgers fan who grew up in Pacoima. ``He's a symbol of success in the way that he has been able to come here and cross that invisible line. He introduced baseball to a lot of people.''

Humble beginning

By the time O'Malley agreed to acquire Chavez Ravine in October 1957, Jarrin had been in the United States for two years and was working at KWKW radio, the country's first full-time Spanish-language station. He began in the business at a 750,000-watt mega station in Quito, Ecuador, where he was covering national news by age 19.

A broadcast journalist first, Jarrin eventually covered milestones such as the funerals of John F. Kennedy and Winston Churchill, U.S.-Mexico summit meetings and the first papal visit to New York.

When the Dodgers arrived, KWKW, with Jarrin as its 22-year-old news director, became the first Spanish-language station to land a contract with a major-league team.

``I think that Mr. Walter O'Malley was a great businessman, and I am sure he saw the potential of Hispanics in this market,'' Jarrin, now 67, recalled. ``I remember he used to go around telling us, `When are you going to get me a Mexican Sandy Koufax?' he used to say. `Why don't you get me some big name from Mexico?' I think he sensed and saw the potential, no question about it.''

Jarrin still knew little English and even less about baseball, so when KWKW management asked him to be the Dodgers' announcer that first season, he balked. The station insisted he take the job but gave him one year to learn the sport. Jarrin agreed.

From 1962 to 1984, he did not miss a ballgame, a stretch of more than 4,000 games that would have made Chick Hearn proud.

In the beginning, Jarrin broadcast early road games by listening to eventual fellow Hall of Famer Vin Scully and Jerry Doggett in English on the radio and translating the action immediately into Spanish for his own audience, much like the way the radio announcer did in the movie ``Bull Durham.''

Those years formed Jarrin's signature style. As he learned from Scully, he lets the action form the drama, using the word instead of the emotion to describe the moment with precision and grace. Also like Scully, one need not know much of the language to be lulled by the sing-song melody of his voice, smooth and pure.

Jarrin describes the action and explains it, owing that to those in his audience who, as newcomers to the city and the game, are learning like he once did. ``Listening to Jaime,'' said longtime Dodgers player and coach Manny Mota, ``is like watching the game.''

``Jaime is so smart, is so sharp,'' said longtime Dodgers scout Mike Brito, he of the radar gun and Panama hat behind home plate who made his own contribution to Dodgers lore and Jarrin's destiny by signing a Mexican named Fernando Valenzuela. ``It's amazing how quick he picked up the sport of baseball. He's got a big personality, a nice voice, and people have liked him for years. He's an institution in the Spanish community.''

Going mainstream

When the Dodgers moved to L.A., only about 6 to 8 percent of those early crowds at the Coliseum and brand-new Dodger Stadium were Hispanic. Today, Jarrin estimated, the figure is closer to 40 percent.

``In the beginnings, in '59, '60, '61, '62, there were very few Spanish-speaking big names among players,'' Jarrin said. ``It was Juan Marichal, Roberto Clemente, Philipe Alou, Manny Mota later on, Orlando Cepeda. Very few.''

O'Malley, meanwhile, always was looking for his Mexican Koufax. Jarrin remembered one such attempt at attracting Hispanic fans, signing a pitcher named Phil Ortega whom O'Malley claimed was from Mexico. Instead, Ortega was Indian, and he didn't know a lick of Spanish.

It is Sammy Sosa-home run removed from today, when the biggest names in baseball include Pedro Martinez, Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez, and when this season's All-Star Game in Milwaukee featured a major-league record for most foreign-born players on the roster, mostly coming from Spanish-speaking countries.

Jarrin has watched and participated in the boom. As it was for baseball, it has been a long journey for him, as well - he used to broadcast games from a position down the left-field line at Dodger Stadium before he got a spot in the press box - as Scully the mentor reminded a crowd once at a postseason awards banquet.

``I told the people that night that it's just a matter of time,'' Scully said, ``before he's behind home plate and we're out in left field.''

Still, it would be difficult to maintain Jarrin led baseball's Hispanic movement by himself. Though he was well-known throughout the country's Spanish-speaking community, he remained far from the English-speaking masses that eventually would declare Scully broadcaster of the century. One Anglo sports writer and old friend of Jarrin's recently deadpanned he heard Jarrin was a great broadcaster, but that when he listened to him he ``couldn't understand a word he was saying.''

Fernandomania, however, changed that perception.

Valenzuela, a young left-hander whom Brito discovered in Sonora, Mexico, was called up at the end of 1980 but made his impact on Los Angeles and the country the next season, when he pitched a shutout on opening day and started the year 8-0 with an 0.50 ERA. It produced a whirlwind of media attention with Jarrin in the middle, serving as interpreter from Seattle to Chicago to Montreal.

``In 1980, '81, oh our broadcasts were so huge because of Fernando Valenzuela,'' said Jarrin, who remembers a visit to the White House where Vice President George H.W. Bush and Secretary of State Alexander Haig lined up get the 20-year-old pitcher's autograph.

``I think we played a very important part in teaching baseball to these fans that never saw the game before they came to this country.''

Cardenas said: ``My mom and dad listened to Jaime Jarrin when Fernando came to the team, and they didn't know anything about baseball.''

Finally, Valenzuela became the Phil Ortega for whom O'Malley always had been looking. Hispanic attendance at Dodger Stadium swelled, and Jarrin was there, translating for the shy left-hander at news conferences jammed with both English- and Spanish-speaking media, and describing each pitch to a growing legion who knew what a screwball was before they knew the rules of the game.

Everyone in L.A., Anglo and Hispanic, Bel Air executive and first-generation immigrant, wanted to know how Fernando did that night.

``Fernando made everybody get closer,'' Brito said. ``People who never liked baseball, they started to show an interest in baseball. ... Fernando was a revolution.''

By the 1997 World Series, which Jarrin broadcast for CBS Radio - he has called 16 World Series and numerous All-Star Games nationally in his career - a Spanish-speaking audience of close to 30 million on 480 stations around the world heard young Colombian shortstop Edgar Renteria drive in the game-winning run in Game 7 to win the world championship for the Florida Marlins.

``I was very well-known before Fernando came, but I was known only among Spanish-speaking people,'' Jarrin said. ``After Fernando came, and going everywhere with him, my stature grew up and I became known among the Anglos and everybody.''

Enduring forever

The man at the window of TVs in 1955 has seen much since that day, good and bad. In 1988, his son Jimmy died of a brain aneurysm at age 29. Two years later, Jarrin was in a near-fatal car accident at the Dodgers' spring-training facility in Vero Beach, Fla., and he did not return in time to see Valenzuela throw his only no-hitter.

But, like his audience, he has persevered, and flourished. He and his wife, Blanca, have lived in San Marino for 36 years. He is healthy and has no plans to hang up his headphones. That idea left his head long ago.

``I thought I would do the games for four, five or six years, then go on and do something else,'' Jarrin said. ``But then, I saw the future of baseball among the Spanish-speaking people, I loved that I was the link between the community and the Dodgers, and I said why not stay here?''

A team, a city and a culture couldn't agree more.

``When it comes to Jaime, his contract is for as long as he wants it to be,'' said Derrick Hall, the Dodgers' senior vice president. ``Because that booth, and that broadcast, would not be the same without him.''

VIVA LOS DODGERS

What: Fifth annual festival celebrating L.A.'s Latino heritage

When: Today, 10:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m.

Where: Lot 38 at Dodger Stadium

The scoop: Any fan with a ticket to today's Dodgers-Atlanta game will be admitted to the gala, which features Latin recording artists, a Dodgers autograph session, interactive games, dancing, prizes and food.

CAPTION(S):

photo, box

Photo:

(color) Dodgers announcer Jaime Jarrin played a major role in bringing baseball to L.A.'s Hispanic community.

Andy Holzman/Staff Photographer

Box:

VIVA LOS DODGERS (see text)