Eduardo Ortega’s brothers would rush onto the scene, bounding with unbridled joy after shifts at the local Calimax grocery store, as kids invaded a sandlot in Tijuana’s Colonia Juarez neighborhood.

It was summer and sunny, the work day was over, baseball was waiting. To be a boy hurriedly jamming a hand into a glove in that place was to be a boy breathing — each seemingly as involuntary and essential as the other.

Amid the swinging and running and diving and spitting, Ortega inevitably sneaked away to scale a nearby tree. Ortega ascended, clawing into branches until he located the perfect perch. He’d settle in and transform into Mario Thomas, parroting the style of the late San Diego Padres broadcaster.

For children in the area, baseball meant caking themselves in a mixture of dust and sweat as close to the field as possible. For Ortega, baseball meant fashioning a makeshift radio booth among the birds and leaves.


“It was an area with hard-working people — I would say a little below mid(dle) class,” said Ortega, 52, who’s entering his 30th season as the Spanish-language voice of Padres — and, really, Major League Baseball. “We all knew each other, all the families. The kids, we’d get together in the afternoons to play.

“I loved baseball, but I was so bad. They sent me to right field, but I was always benched. The tree became my booth. It seemed more serious up there — and nobody bothered me.”

Major League Baseball’s return to Mexico City, the first trip since 2004, binds the worlds and loves of Ortega — a treasured, trusted voice to millions. The man who has served as the Spanish radio voice of the World Series 21 times and All-Star Game 16 times, the man who became a U.S. citizen in 2009, spans cultures as effortlessly as borders.

Eduardo Ortega chats with fans for a radio interview at the Fan Fest on Saturday in Mexico City. (Scott Wachter / Padres / Scott Wachter / Padres)


Ortega is tri-lingual, speaking Spanish, English and the passionate prose he wraps around baseball.

“The thing about his love of the game, it’s true,” said Mike Dee, Padres president. “But he’s blessed with some of the best pipes you can have. He just has that booming, commanding voice.”

Dee tabbed Ortega a “rock star” in Mexico and anywhere baseball is carried in Spanish during a January event at a Boys & Girls Club in Tijuana.

Boston’s former Chief Operating Officer recently pointed to the time a Red Sox executive asked if Ortega would emcee a Spanish-language ceremony to retire the No. 45 jersey of Hall of Fame pitcher Pedro Martinez last July at famed Fenway Park.


“That just shows you the respect he has,” Dee said. “He’s bigger than the Padres in respect to the footprint he has in baseball.”

The Ford C. Frick Award is presented annually to a broadcaster for major contributions to baseball. The wing at the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., houses giants ranging from Mel Allen to Vin Scully, Jack Brickhouse and Harry Caray. The elite group also includes three Latino trailblazers who shaped and inspired Ortega: Buck Canel, Felo Ramírez and legendary Dodgers voice Jaime Jarrín, who was inducted in 1998 as a star-struck, blossoming Padres play-by-play announcer froze in rapt attention.

The prospect of Ortega joining those classic voices in that immortal place feels miles closer to “when” than “if.”

“Oh, he’s going to be in the Hall of Fame someday,” said iconic Padres announcer Dick Enberg, a Frick inductee in 2015. “He’s that good.”


Beer, a flat tire and the Padres

San Diego Padres announcer Eduardo Ortega signs an autograph at El Stadio Gasmart on February 12, 2016 in Tijuana, Mexico. (Scott Wachter / Scott Wachter/The San Diego Padres)

As a youthful radio guy in Mexico’s Northern Baja region, Ortega pieced together as many jobs and opportunities as his waking hours allowed.

One gig required being the commercial voice for Cerveza Superior, the main sponsor of local bullfights. Ortega would robustly roll “R’s” and elongate syllables between fights to underscore the beer’s merits as oncoming matadors pranced into position.

Even now, as Ortega mimics his dusty sales pitch, you want to buy a case of the stuff without sampling a drop.


At one radio station, Ortega leveraged a shift as a disc jockey to uniquely blend his enthusiasm for broadcasting and sports. He created a segment entitled Lucha Libre Musical (Musical Wrestling), pitting singers like Mexico’s José José vs. Spain’s Camilo Sesto via listener voting.

“Every time people called to support the singer, I just made it a play-by-play like wrestling, ‘This guy is making a move,’ like we were in the ring,” Ortega said. “It sounded like wrestling, but it was a competition of singers.”

Ortega possesses a voice so naturally bold and engaging that mundane phone calls with him become must-listens.

At the age of 12, school administrators tapped into Ortega’s innate gift, recruiting him to be the de facto master of ceremonies for graduating classes each June. As a teen, he began working for the equivalent of $40 per week for what’s now Tijuana’s XEBG, AM-1550 — splashing his personal panache onto everything from boxing matches to marathons.


Roots planted during those early days established Ortega as a tireless worker and talent, ultimately carving a path toward the Major Leagues.

San Diego Padres’ broadcaster Eduardo Ortega is inducted in to the Hispanic Heritage Baseball Museum Hall of Fame at the New Americans Museum on Saturday June 27, 2015, in San Diego. ( / Scott Wachter/The San Diego Padres)

He’s called the 3,000th hits of Tony Gwynn and Rickey Henderson, Randy Johnson’s 4,000th strikeout, Barry Bonds’ 755th home run, the game when Hoffman broke the all-time saves record (now owned by Mariano Rivera) — and five no-hitters.

Ortega also crafted nicknames for Padres like Gwynn (Campeón, or Champion) and Hoffman (Trevor de la Suerte, Lucky Charm).


“Since we’re English speaking, most of us don’t hear his work,” Enberg said. “But in his own way, he’s a superstar. He’s bringing our game to a country that loves baseball.

“Plus, he’s a sweetheart of a man. He’s the kind of guy, if you slipped and fell, he’d be the first one to run over and pick you — whether literally, or figuratively as a broadcaster.”

Ortega is so known and revered away from baseball’s main stage that even a failing tire creates a connection.

“The other day, I had a flat in Tijuana,” Ortega said. “I spent 45 minutes in the shop with the owner, on the end of Avenida Revolución. We talk and talk for like 25, 30 minutes while they’re fixing the tire.


“I didn’t mention anything about who I was and there was never a hint that he knew who I was. At the end, he said, ‘Can I get a couple Padres tickets for Opening Day?’ ”

The unique sounds of a mother’s love

Eduardo Ortega, Spanish-language announcer for the San Diego Padres, talks with an audio technician while recording an announcement at Petco Park, on February 23, 2016 in San Diego, California..Photo - David Maung (David Maung / San Diego Union-Tribune)

The somber irony of Ortega’s rise behind a microphone: His biggest fan, who followed and cherished the burgeoning career that now includes television, never heard a broadcast.

Amparo Diaz beamed at the respect Ortega gained — first in the neighborhood, then Tijuana, then across Mexico, then the Spanish-speaking corners of the U.S., then yawning stretches from Santo Domingo to South America.


Diaz, Ortega’s mother, provider and unflinching supporter, was deaf.

“My parents divorced when I was 3,” Ortega said. “My mother always had dinner for us around 7, then homework. She lost her hearing when she was 14 from infections. There were no medicines in those days to cure it. The economic situation didn’t allow the family to take care of sick kids.”

Ortega and his mother used sign language to communicate. To Diaz, Ortega spoke loudest in the most meaningful place — her heart.

“She became a big baseball fan, watching the games on TV,” Ortega said. “When I was on the road with the Padres, she would tell me that friends would stop over and talk about my work. They would say, ‘Your son is calling a home run right now. It sounds very good. He’s a very good announcer.’


“That was nice.”

Diaz passed away during the offseason in 2011.

“It gets me sentimental, nostalgic, because I took inspiration from her,” Ortega said. “I was very close to my mother and I wanted to make her proud.”

He did, of course.


The scalp-to-shoes gratification baseball has delivered is most profound on a baseball-related to Mexico, like this weekend’s series between the Padres and Houston Astros. On Friday, Ortega roamed the streets of El Zócalo, Mexico City’s commonly named city center, to cheerfully chat with star-struck locals.

Ortega fondly recalled one of his most fulfilling career highlights back in 1996, when the Padres traveled to Monterrey to face the Mets in baseball’s first regular-season games in Mexico. As the plane approached the airport, he paused.

“It was almost shock,” Ortega said. “I felt like I was coming home with my Major League team. I looked around and there’s Tony Gwynn and Steve Finley and Wally Joyner and (Ken) Caminiti.

“I didn’t feel like the owner of the Padres, but it was very important to me, those games.”


Now, Ortega and his Padres return again.

Eduardo Ortega, left, speaks with locals at Zocala Plaza. Ortega and the Padres were visiting as part of the Mexico City Series Festival for fans. ( / Danny Sanchez / Padres)

Wrestling to baseball’s Spanish broadcast peak

Visit the Twitter page for Ortega and the image of two men stares back, decked out in Padres jerseys, baseball gloves — and Mexican wrestling masks.

The image represents another chapter of his career, when he handled play-by-play duties for wrestling, an activity with a rabid following in Mexico.


“Those guys are the sons of the original wrestlers with those masks,” Ortega said. “The blue mask is The Blue Demon, my all-time favorite. The silver mask is The Saint. Those are the largest, biggest characters in the history of Mexican wrestling. They were even big stars on film, making movies.”

The love of wrestling extends so deeply that Ortega collects the masks — more than 260 in all.

Eduardo Ortega on Tj TV12 Weekly Show interviewing Rey Misterio Sr. and other wrestlers in 1982. ( / Provided photo)

A simple snapshot on social media reveals and reinforces the blended worlds of Ortega. Two countries, two distinct things about those countries, embodied in two shrouded, anonymous men. The humble broadcaster, nimble as ever.


“He’s the perfect fit,” Enberg said.

The story of Ortega climbing trees in Tijuana caused Enberg to laugh. He remembers walking to the rural road on the farm in Armada, Mich., grabbing a stick and hitting rocks across the road while listening to a radio call of the Detroit Tigers.

If Ray Boone came to the plate, Enberg hit right-handed. If Dick Wakefield stepped in, he’d switch to become a lefty. A rock that landed on the road caused an out. A blast over the telephone line signaled a home run.

“If you’re a fan of the game, you emulate it,” Enberg said. “I think every announcer of baseball who succeeds enough to get to the big-league level did that in some form. I didn’t climb up a tree, though. I just hit rocks on the farm.


“Now, (Ortega’s) really reached the top of the broadcasting tree, huh?”

Climbing, still.