LOS ANGELES — Jaime Jarrín, the longest-tenured broadcaster in Major League Baseball, will retire after the 2022 season, his 64th with the Dodgers, the organization announced Tuesday.
The 85-year-old Jarrín started calling the Dodgers in Spanish in 1959, the franchise's second year in Los Angeles. He was the second Spanish-language broadcaster inducted into the Hall of Fame as the Ford C. Frick Award winner in 1998. That year he also received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
"I'm grateful to the Dodgers — the best organization in baseball — for giving me the opportunity to do what I love most for 64 years," Jarrín said in a statement issued by the team. "As much as I'll miss my baseball family at Dodger Stadium and across the country, I'm looking forward to spending more time with my sons Jorge and Mauricio and my grandchildren and nurturing my love of travel."
Jarrín was born in Ecuador and moved to California in 1955 at age 20. He became sports director for KWKW and initially rebroadcast games in Spanish from Vin Scully's calls before the station sent him on the road.
He became a staple in the Southern California Latino community over the years, his voice synonymous with the Dodgers for Latinos across the region.
He's called three perfect games, 22 no-hitters, 30 World Series and 30 All-Star Games. He was on the call for the last All-Star Game held at Dodger Stadium in 1980 — the Dodgers are slated to host the exhibition in 2022. The next year he served as Fernando Valenzuela's interpreter during the rookie pitcher's whirlwind 1981 season.
Valenzuela is now one of Jarrín's broadcast partners on the Dodgers' Spanish-language KTNQ broadcasts, which are simulcast on television. The two share the booth with Pepe Yñiguez.
Jarrín had called games with his son Jorge for the last six seasons before Jorge retired in February. They were the first father-son broadcasting duo on Spanish-language radio in major league history.
Jarrín — and the Dodgers' other broadcast teams — haven't traveled since 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic. Jarrín worked all 162 regular season games — and five postseason games — in 2019 after his wife of 65 years, Blanca, died unexpectedly that February. He had planned on assuming a lesser role to spend time with her but changed his schedule to keep himself busy after her death.
