“Maybe that affected his case,” said Jarrín, who is in his 60th season with the Dodgers and sits on a committee of former Frick Award recipients and historians that selects winners.

Cárdenas has reached the ballot of finalists , drawn from a list of long-time broadcasters, at least three times, most recently in 2015, according to the Hall of Fame, whose voting members make the final call on honorees. Perhaps out of sight does indeed mean out of mind.

“As the years pass by, new members are on the electing committee and they don’t know René and the history, or study it,” Jarrín said. “I always voted for him on the list of candidates. It’d be a great pleasure to have him in Cooperstown with me. Undisputedly, I’d love that. But it’s out of my reach.”

Cárdenas took a circuitous path to baseball.

At 16, he covered boxing for La Estrella de Nicaragua, a newspaper in Managua, his hometown and the nation’s capital. He moved to baseball, then to a bigger newspaper, La Prensa, then to radio and baseball announcing. In 1951, at 21, he left for Los Angeles to join some of his family and try his luck in the United States.

Cárdenas finished school in Los Angeles and learned English. In 1957, he read about the troubles of the Dodgers in Brooklyn and their impending move to Los Angeles. He arranged a meeting with the head of KWKW, a Spanish-language radio station, who sold the concept to the Dodgers’ owner, Walter O’Malley.

“There were nearly a million Spanish speakers in Los Angeles,” Cárdenas said. “O’Malley said yes, immediately.”

When the Dodgers went on the road, Cárdenas listened to the English-language broadcast led by Scully and translated the action into Spanish from a studio in Pasadena.