Billy Berroa passes ……………

Dear friends and colleagues,

It is a truly sad day for millions of Spanish-speaking baseball fans. Billy Berroa has passed away. Billy was diagnosed with Colon Cancer in late 2005 and he passed quietly among family and friends in his native Dominican Republic.

Billy Berroa was truly a legendary figure in the field of sports broadcasting and Tony Hernandez – CEO of Latino Broadcasting says …. I am honored to have had the distinct pleasure of working closely with Billy for many years. I have nothing but the fondest memories of Billy from our work on the All-Star Game, ALCS, NLCS and World Series from 1995-2004. When we launched LBC in early 1996 it was that year’s All-Star game which truly put our network on the map. That game was called by Berroa alongside MLB Hall of Fame announcer Jaime Jarrin and of course, under the superb direction of Armando Talavera. Over the years, this wonderful trio of talent would continue to call countless Major League Baseball games for this company. As I look back on all those road trips together, they are undoubtedly my very fondest professional memories.

Billy was a true gentleman and a baseball historian extraordinaire. His years of work, alongside Jarrin are arguably the very best Spanish-language radio broadcasts in Major League Baseball history. Billy was a kind, gentle soul with an amazing sense of humor and an unsurpassed knowledge and respect for the game of baseball. The very best Latino players in the game treated Billy with the immense respect and admiration he deserved. Sammy Sosa, Bernie Williams, Tino Martinez, the Alomar brothers and Luis Sojo were but a few of the players who would never turn down a Billy Berroa interview request. And the reason they could never say no was because Billy cared for them. He truly and honestly cared for the games players. Ino Gomez, who was the earliest member of the LBC family just shared a wonderful Billy Berroa story with me. According to Ino, Juan Alicea, who narrated the Mets games with Billy in NY, learned from Berroa to ALWAYS criticize the play and never criticize the player. If a player was having a bad day, then call it just that, a bad day. As Billy assured him, this will prevent you from hurting a player by personally attacking his performance.

If there is, as I suspect, Baseball in heaven, then their game broadcasts will now rise to a new level. I can only hope that Major League Baseball will recognize Billy Berroa’s immense contributions to the sport by posthumously enshrining him into the MLB Hall of Fame.

Our hearts go out to the Berroa family.