How the Cardinals Are Growing Baseball's Latino Audience

Now, going back to your sport, baseball, you're the voice of the Cardinals. Yes, sir. The Cardinals play in St. Louis. St. Louis Cardinals. We'll put that there. So, you're the Spanish voice of the Cardinals, and you started an Instagram page. Is there a Latino audience in St. Louis? Because I don't think of Latino audiences in St. Louis. You know, St. Louis is not a big city. There's a couple million people that actually live in St. Louis. It's about 250,000, 300,000 Latinos in St. Louis. But what a lot of people don't know, right across the river, like within a mile of Busch Stadium where the St. Louis Cardinals play it's Illinois already but that part of Illinois has a lot of Latinos so when you talk about Latinos in St. Louis yes you're talking about the ones that live in St. Louis but also around St. Louis and let's not forget like I said it's just like here you know San Isidro and Tijuana that's exactly how it is with St. Louis Illinois you cross the river you're in Illinois you don't count as being in St. Louis anymore because you're in Illinois yes and you talk about the uh the Cardinals they're uh our uh Instagram page yeah I took charge you know they they asked me to do it gladly I did it and it's been growing fast last season yes you know I know 40,000 followers is not a lot of followers for a lot of people but from 40 000 to about 48 49 000 in one season that's a lot of followers to gain especially like i said when the city doesn't have a lot of latinos but one thing that the Cardinals have Latino ballplayers. And throughout the years, throughout their history, there's been Latino players from everywhere. Albert Pujols. Albert Pujols. Pujols, of course. Yeah, Albert Pujols, Yadier Molina, the most recent ones. But the ones coming up, we have players from Panama. We have players from the Dominican Republic. We have players from Mexico. We have players from every single corner of the world representing the Cardinals and also in baseball. There's players from Honduras, Nicaragua, Colombia, Mexico, Dominicana, Puerto Rico. Yes, we talk about baseball. We talk about the United States, but that's why they call it the World Series, which actually is happening next week. So we'll talk about that later. So in a previous, I think it was yesterday's show, we were talking about how the NFL is having all these international games to increase their international audience. Baseball is doing the same, yeah? Same thing. A few years ago, I'm talking about maybe, what, 14, 15 years ago, they started doing this, right? More and more and more. The Dodgers actually have played in Australia, Japan, Korea. I myself was lucky enough to go to Monterrey, Mexico in 2019 when the Cardinals played against the Cincinnati Reds. Two games in Monterrey. That was a fantastic trip. A couple of years ago, again, the Cardinals against the Cubs in London. West Ham Stadium, you know, London where West Ham plays. That's where the Cardinals and the Cubs played a couple games also in London. This year, they stopped a little bit this season, but hopefully in the future they continue to do that. But MLB has been in the American public, Mexico, China, Korea, Japan, Australia, London. So it's a global sport. And perhaps they're trying to mimic, they're trying to mirror what the NFL is doing. Well, see, you know, if you think of the two most American sports, it's American football and baseball. And the rules are very particular. And so I wonder if international audiences need to be educated, need to see the game happen a lot more so that they understand what's going on. You have no idea. when i was in london cricket that's what they play over there in london and that part of europe people were cheering for foul balls thinking that foul balls were a point like i had to explain i had a long conversation with a bunch of people that at one point i said you know what i am going to record my this conversation and show it to somebody else because i had to explain to people that a foul ball yes the bat hits the ball but it's not a hit and i guess in cricket when you hit the ball it's a point or something but in baseball no you have to hit the ball between the lines or else it could be an out if it's a foul ball but if they get to the stands you get to keep the ball and that's another thing they don't do in cricket you have to return the ball just like soccer and i told them no if you hit a foul ball you catch that foul ball and we talked about that hit that story yeah a couple of days ago uh it's a foul ball whatever you keep it and it's yours to keep now again that's my baseball i'm gonna keep it here but don't take it home