Eduardo Ortega (born 1963) is a Mexican-American baseball broadcaster. He has worked as the Spanish language broadcaster of the San Diego Padres of Major League Baseball (MLB) since 1987.
Born in Tijuana, Mexico, Ortega began announcing baseball for the Potros de Tijuana in his hometown when he was 20 years old. [1] Four years later, he was hired by the Padres. He works for ESPN Deportes during the MLB postseason, and has also announced the MLB All-Star Game and World Baseball Classic. He was a finalist for the Ford C. Frick Award in the 2013 balloting, and was again a finalist in 2014. [2] [3] During the MLB offseason, Ortega also works as a broadcaster for the Águilas de Mexicali of the Mexican winter league.
Ortega is a member of the Tijuana Sports Hall of Fame, inducted in 2004, and the Hispanic Heritage Baseball Museum Hall of Fame, inducted in 2013. In 1998, Ortega was named Tijuana’s Sports Ambassador. [4]
The San Diego Padres are an American professional baseball team based in San Diego. The Padres compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (NL) West Division. The team plays its home games at Petco Park. The Padres were founded as an expansion franchise in 1969. The team's name, Spanish for "fathers", refers to the Spanish Franciscan friars who founded Mission San Diego in 1769. The team's first owner was a prominent San Diego businessman, C. Arnholt Smith. The Padres are owned by the estate of Peter Seidler, who owned the team from 2012 until his death in 2023.
The Ford C. Frick Award is presented annually by the National Baseball Hall of Fame in the United States to a broadcaster for "major contributions to baseball". It is named for Ford C. Frick, former Commissioner of Major League Baseball. Prior to his career as an executive, Frick was a baseball writer and occasional broadcaster; he gained fame as a ghostwriter for Babe Ruth in the 1920s. The award was created in 1978, and named in tribute to Frick following his death that year.
Thomas F. Cheek was an American sports commentator who is best remembered as the play-by-play radio announcer for the Toronto Blue Jays of Major League Baseball (MLB), from the team's establishment in 1977 until his retirement in 2004. During that time, he covered a 27-year streak of 4,306 consecutive games plus 41 post-season games—from the first Blue Jays game on April 7, 1977, until June 3, 2004. He was inducted to the Blue Jays Level of Excellence in 2004.
Richard Alan Enberg was an American sportscaster. Over the course of an approximately 60-year career, he provided play-by-play of various sports for several radio and television networks, including NBC (1975–1999), CBS (2000–2014), and ESPN (2004–2011), as well as for individual teams, such as UCLA Bruins basketball, Los Angeles Rams football, and California Angels and San Diego Padres baseball.
Vergil Patrick Hughes is an American sportscaster. He has been the radio play-by-play announcer for the Chicago Cubs of Major League Baseball (MLB) since 1996. The 2022 season marked the 40th consecutive year that Hughes served as an MLB announcer.
Gerald Francis Coleman was an American Major League Baseball (MLB) second baseman for the New York Yankees and manager of the San Diego Padres for one year. Coleman was named the rookie of the year in 1949 by Associated Press, and was an All-Star in 1950 and later that year was named the World Series Most Valuable Player. Yankees teams on which he was a player appeared in seven World Series during his career, winning five times. Coleman served as a Marine Corps pilot in World War II and the Korean War, flying combat missions with the VMSB-341 Torrid Turtles (WWII) and VMA-323 Death Rattlers (Korea) in both wars. He later became a broadcaster, and he was honored in 2005 by the National Baseball Hall of Fame with the Ford C. Frick Award for his broadcasting contributions.
David Wilson Campbell is an American former baseball player and sportscaster. He played parts of eight seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB), primarily as an infielder for the San Diego Padres. He was nicknamed "Soup", a reference to the brand name Campbell's Soup.
Anthony Keith Gwynn Jr. is an American former professional baseball outfielder. Gwynn played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Milwaukee Brewers, San Diego Padres, Los Angeles Dodgers, and the Philadelphia Phillies. The son of Baseball Hall of Famer Tony Gwynn, he works as a broadcaster for the Padres’ radio network and as an afternoon sports talk host on the Padres' flagship radio station.
Theodore Leitner is an American retired sportscaster.
Adrian Garcia Marquez is an American sportscaster who works for Fox Deportes as a play-by-play announcer, narrator, and host. He also serves as one of the international voices of the NBA calling action on the NBA League Pass. Prior to joining Fox and the NBA, he was with the Los Angeles Lakers for 6 seasons serving as the team's Spanish TV play-by-play announcer on Time Warner Cable Deportes later becoming Spectrum Deportes.
The San Diego Padres are an American professional baseball team in Major League Baseball (MLB) based in San Diego, California. The club was founded in 1969 as part of the league's expansion. The team's hall of fame, created in 1999 to honor the club's 30th anniversary, recognizes players, coaches, and executives who have made key contributions to the franchise. Voting is conducted by a 35-member committee. Candidates typically must wait at least two years after retiring to be eligible for induction, though Tony Gwynn was selected during his final season in 2001 before the last game of the year. He was also the Hall of Fame's first ever unanimous selection. There are 19 members in the team's Hall of Fame, the most recent inductees being John Moores and Jake Peavy in 2023. The inductees are featured in an exhibit at the team's home stadium, Petco Park.
Bally Sports San Diego was an American regional sports network owned as a joint venture between Diamond Sports Group, and operates as an affiliate of Bally Sports. Prior to the team parting ways with the network in 2023, the San Diego Padres owned a 20% stake. It was launched on March 17, 2012. The network was liquidated in April 2024.
René Cárdenas is a Nicaraguan sports journalist and announcer. He became the first Spanish-language announcer to cover Major League Baseball (MLB), when he joined the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1958. He has also broadcast games for the Houston Astros and Texas Rangers and has announced boxing matches as well.
An American Journey: My Life on the Field, In the Air, and On the Air is a 2008 autobiography written by Jerry Coleman and Richard Goldstein. Coleman is a recipient of the Ford C. Frick Award at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and is a member of the United States Marine Corps Sports Hall of Fame located at Marine Corps Base Quantico, in Quantico, Virginia.
Elections to the Baseball Hall of Fame for 2015 proceeded according to rules most recently amended in 2014. As in the past, the Baseball Writers' Association of America (BBWAA) voted by mail to select from a ballot of recently retired players, with results announced on January 6, 2015. Randy Johnson, Pedro Martínez, John Smoltz and Craig Biggio were elected to the Hall of Fame. It was the first time since 1955 that the BBWAA elected four players in one year.
Elections to the National Baseball Hall of Fame for 2020 proceeded according to rules most recently amended in 2016. As in the past, the Baseball Writers' Association of America (BBWAA) voted by mail to select from a ballot of recently retired players. The results were announced on January 21, 2020, with Derek Jeter and Larry Walker elected to the Hall of Fame.
Elections to the National Baseball Hall of Fame for 2021 proceeded according to rules most recently amended in 2016. As in the past, the Baseball Writers' Association of America (BBWAA) voted by mail to select from a ballot of recently retired players. The results were announced on January 26, 2021, with no players receiving enough votes to be inducted.
Elections to the Baseball Hall of Fame for 2023 were conducted according to the rules most recently amended in 2022. As in the past, the Baseball Writers' Association of America (BBWAA) voted by mail to select from a ballot of recently retired players, with the results announced on January 24. Scott Rolen, in his sixth year of eligibility, was the only player elected from the BBWAA ballot. Rolen had received 10.2% of the vote in his first year on the ballot in 2018, the lowest first-year percentage ever for a candidate eventually voted in by the BBWAA.
Mario Thomas Zapiáin, nicknamed "Don Mario", was a Mexican Spanish language baseball announcer who worked San Diego Padres games for 28 seasons, from 1969 to 1997.