Baseball a hard sell for Hispanics
Posted on Monday, February 18, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/News/217192/
SPRINGDALE — Does America’s pastime translate into Spanish ?
Baseball promoters in Northwest Arkansas took their game to Hispanic kids Saturday by staging a special sign-up at area youth centers, with on-site broadcasts from a Spanish radio station, interpreters to guide families through the process and registration forms printed in Spanish.
Organizers hope their efforts will draw Northwest Arkansas ’ immigrant population into the famously American sport.
“We just want all the kids to play... and have a good time,” said Jay Pounders of the Springdale Kiwanis Club, which sponsors the city’s Babe Ruth and Cal Ripken leagues. Leagues in Rogers and Fayetteville also held Hispanic sign-ups Saturday in hopes of luring more Hispanic kids onto the diamond.
But for immigrants cultured on soccer, hard ball can be a hard sell.
At the Springdale Youth Center, where registration was scheduled from 9 a. m. to noon Saturday, only four players signed up in the first hour.
Adan Soto, who heard about the sign-up on the radio, arrived hoping that his son Adrian might follow in the footsteps of an older cousin who excelled in baseball, once hitting four homers in a tournament game at Bentonville.
Adrian, 6, a fan of the Cleveland Indians, said he hoped to pitch for his new team. But he discovered he was 4 months too young to register, and he left disappointed.
An hour passed with no other families showing up.
The Boys and Girls Club of Benton County surveyed Hispanic families recently about what sports to offer, and found no enthusiasm for baseball.
“It’s soccer that’s the sport they liked the most,” said Maria Moulin, the club’s family outreach director.
An affinity for football, as soccer is known outside the United States, is not the only hurdle for baseball promoters. For some Hispanic families, there is a fear of signing up for any organized leagues.
“We require some information that they don’t necessarily like to give,” Pounders said.
Registration may require a birth certificate, the sort of documentation that makes some immigrant families hesitate, said Hector Cueva, vice chairman of the Northwest Arkansas Hispanic Council.
James Wagoner detects a similar reticence in Fort Smith.
“Nothing on paper — that’s the problem we see,” said Wagoner, a member of the Fort Smith Boys and Girls Club board of directors.
Hispanics are slow to register for leagues there, no matter the sport.
“They play in our soccer program,” Wagoner said, “but not as many as there should be.”
The Fort Smith Boys and Girls Club allows Hispanics to use its fields for weekend soccer games they organize themselves, with no need to register with the club. Hundreds of Hispanics gather at the fields near the city’s Whirlpool plant for those games, Wagoner said.
“They could have 1, 500 through there on a weekend,” he said.
Wagoner, who is also the international chairman of Babe Ruth baseball, said he has seen youth baseball thriving among Hispanics elsewhere. On a trip to the border town of Eagle Pass, Texas, Wagoner saw enthusiastic crowds and Hispanic kids playing baseball in every age bracket.
“I was the only white Anglo at the ballpark that night,” Wagoner said. “They had barbecued goat at the concession stand.”
Baseball promoters have tried to kindle the enthusiasm among immigrants in Fort Smith.
Wagoner suggested that it may take persuading Hispanic adults to become coaches and managers.
In Springdale, Pounders estimated that Hispanic players make up 2 percent or 3 percent of the teams. That’s up from “nothing” a couple of years ago, he said, but isn’t close to the 37 percent Hispanic enrollment in the Springdale School District.
Rob Featherston of Bentonville, who oversees all the Cal Ripken leagues in Northwest Arkansas, had no statistics, but he said he sees few Hispanic kids playing.
“Based on my observation, we don’t have a lot of Hispanic involvement, and that’s a shame,” he said. “Ideally, we’d have a representative share of everybody.”
Local soccer leagues, by comparison, are attracting more Hispanics — but still not as many as population numbers would suggest.
About 25 percent of the 930 soccer players who signed up last fall in Rogers are Hispanic, said Ceasar Aguilar, who oversees the city’s Parks and Recreation soccer program.
In Springdale, Hispanic participation in the city’s youth soccer league is growing, “but we still don’t have the big numbers that a lot of people would think,” said soccer coordinator John Marshall.
Baseball promoters started pushing three years ago to increase Hispanic participation, Cueva said. Cueva is circulation director for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette’s Northwest Arkansas edition and general manager of Noticias Libres, a Spanish-language paper owned by Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Inc.
This year’s campaign included ads in Noticias Libres and remote broadcasts from the signups Saturday by Springdale radio station La Zeta, 95. 7 F. M.
Pagnozzi Charities in Fayetteville distributed scholarship application forms printed in Spanish for families who needed help buying equipment or paying registration fees. The charity covers such expenses to help needy kids play sports.