White Sox reach out to Latino community, gain attendance

Manager Ozzie Guillen, a Venezuelan native, gives Spanish-language interviews.
CHICAGO (AP) -- To most baseball fans, the team appearing in its first World Series since 1959 is known as the Chicago White Sox. But to a growing, adoring Latino fan base, the players are also known as "Las Medias Blancas."
The White Sox feature a roster filled with Spanish-speaking players and a Venezuelan manager whose accent is as hearty as a plate of arroz con pollo.
They also have a front office who reached out to the Latino community with the first Spanish-language radio broadcasts in six years and events such as "Dia Del Ninos" (Kids Day).
Feels connected
Adriana Rodriguez, a 20-year Chicago college student and longtime Sox fan, said she admires the team for its perseverance.
"They represent what I'm for: the underdogs. The people who don't get the recognition they deserve and have to fight for what they believe in," she said. "As a Latina, I feel like I have to do that everyday."
The White Sox are ahead 2-0 heading into Game 3 Tuesday night against the Astros in Houston. Before Game 4 Wednesday night, Major League Baseball will present a Latino Legends Team, chosen by fans.
Chicago's playoff roster features 10 players and staff from Cuba, Venezuela, Puerto Rico or the Dominican Republic, including pitchers Jose Contreras and Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez (both from Cuba) and Freddy Garcia (Venezuela).
The White Sox have enjoyed a healthy Latino fan base for years -- at least partly because the Chicago area is home to one of the largest Mexican communities in the country. But this season, the team's front office counted a spike in Latino attendance at the ballpark.
Segment rises
Traditionally, an average of between 4 and 6 percent of the fans at U.S. Cellular Field are Latino, White Sox spokesman Scott Reifert said. That number increased during the regular season this year to between 6 and 8 percent.
"It's been a big boom," Reifert said.
The rise was no accident, however, with the team making specific marketing efforts aimed at Latinos.
White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen, a Venezuelan native, gives Spanish-language interviews and commentary to local, national and Latin American media outlets.
In addition to the radio broadcasts of the games in Spanish, a newly formed Latino advisory committee helped organize events at U.S. Cellular Field, such as Kids Day and a college night that featured reggaeton, hip-hop and other music popular with Latino youths.
"We decided that we're not necessarily talking to the 40-something or 50-something-year-old guy who is working two or three jobs, regardless of race," Reifert said. "That guy's plate is full. But the kid who gets the benefit of how hard his parents have worked, and goes to school, and has some disposable income is just as reachable."
Padres do it
Similar efforts in San Diego have helped the Padres, who compete for fans with the Los Angeles Angels and Los Angeles Dodgers. Bounded by rival teams to the north, a desert to the east and the Pacific Ocean on the west, San Diego has looked to nearby Mexico for fans.
Under one promotion this year, Padres fans in Tijuana paid $20 for a ticket to the game, a roundtrip bus ride to the ballpark, a soda and a T-shirt. Tijuana is about 15 miles south of San Diego, directly across the Mexican border.
"We feel it's important to go out into the Latino community, not just throw out a Spanish-language ad and sit around hoping that they will come out. It's about relationships," Padres spokeswoman Jenifer Barsell said.
Barsell said a recent survey showed that Latinos accounted for just over 20 percent of attendees at Petco Park between August 2004 and July 2005.
For the White Sox, the Latino fan base first started to take shape in the 1950s, when the team's roster included several pioneers of the sport, including Chico Carrasquel, the first Latin American player to appear in an All-Star Game, Minnie Minoso, one of the first black Latino Major League stars, and Venezuela's Luis Aparicio, the 1956 Rookie of Year who was later inducted into the Hall of Fame, said Dominic Pacyga, a history professor at Chicago's Columbia College.
Spanish link to pennant
In 1959, the last year the White Sox won a pennant, their manager was Al "El Senor" Lopez, the son of Spanish immigrants.
"Today, the population in baseball as a whole -- and the White Sox in particular -- is more Hispanic than ever before," Pacyga said. "It's really a sort of multiethnic polyglot of a team that appeals to a lot of people."
Self-described "Sox junkie" Melissa Perez wore her "Hecho en Mexico" (Made in Mexico) T-shirt to the Latino college night and got her picture posted on U.S. Cellular's Jumbotron. The 20-year-old said the White Sox are a source of pride and admiration.
"You see that Latinos can do more," she said. "We know how to play baseball. We know how to play other things besides soccer."