La Vida Voices: Ray Suarez

Ray Suarez set the tone for important conversations on politics, immigration and race relations in the United States as host of NPR’s Talk of the Nation from 1993 to 1999. He continued his important work as a senior correspondent and, later, chief national correspondent for PBS NewsHour from 1999 to 2013.

Suarez’s voice and perspective mattered deeply to Latinos like me. First, he was a Latino host on a national broadcast on an English-language network. Just as significant, he knew firsthand the types of issues we dealt with growing up in a working-class family in New York.

Growing up in New York during 1960s also exposed him to the passion for baseball within the Puerto Rican community and among New Yorkers. He witnessed some of baseball’s greats perform at Yankee Stadium and on television.

I connected with Ray recently. I learned that he is a proud Boricua and a true baseball fan. Let’s discuss Latinos, baseball and your work as a journalist.

Adrian Burgos, Jr: You’re a proud “Brooklyn Boy” (hence the name of your communications company), yet you’re a Yankees fan. Tell us who inspired your passion for baseball? Who were your favorite players?

Ray Suarez: When I was a boy, my father was a barber at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. One of his regular customers was FDR’s right-hand man, former chairman of the Democratic Party and cabinet member James Farley. Mr. Farley had a season, four-seat box adjacent to the Yankee dugout at the Stadium. Sometimes after a haircut Mr. Farley would hand my father tickets and say, “Take your boy to the game.” So, until I was about nine years old I watched the Yankees play from the front row. After Mr. Farley died we started sitting where barbers from Brooklyn and their sons usually sit … a little higher up in the Stadium. At a time when my father worked a lot of hours, on his feet all day, a ballgame was a way to relax and be together for nice, long, leisurely time.

I was lucky enough to grow up at a time when giants walked the earth. As a kid I watched (Roberto) Clemente, (Mickey) Mantle, (Willie) Mays, (Henry) Aaron, (Sandy) Koufax, (Bob) Gibson, and (Whitey) Ford play the game. When I was a young fan, going to Yankee Stadium with my father and collecting baseball cards, and watching games on TV I even saw ‘50s stars like Stan Musial and Warren Spahn in the final years of their careers. I guess I’d have to say Mickey Mantle, the wounded Yankee hero who still hit towering home runs after he switched from the outfield to first base and practically limped onto the field from the dugout. I was there when he hit his 500th home run at Yankee Stadium, back when very few people had reached that milestone.

AB: Many of us became familiar with you through NPR’s Talk of the Nation and PBS NewsHour. What inspired you to become a journalist?

RS: When I was growing up in the 1960s, there were few (very few) Latino reporters on New York television, or working in English on New York radio. One of my favorites was JJ Gonzalez, who I actually got to meet when I started covering stories for my college radio station, WNYU. I guess I was pretty strategic about it for a young guy. I asked myself what I was good at, how I wanted to live, what job seemed like it would offer variety and excitement for the long haul. By the time I was in my first year in high school I knew I wanted to be a reporter.

AB: At La Vida Baseball, we find that many Latino baseball fans have a Roberto Clemente story. As a Puerto Rican, what does Clemente represent to you? What memories do you have of him as a player and humanitarian?

RS: I got to watch him play at Shea Stadium, and (I) followed him from afar on TV and in box scores. He was one of the dominant players of my youth, but (he) transcended that in the way he died and what it told the world about the way he lived. You might say Puerto Ricans lived parallel lives in America, then as now. Our heroes were largely unknown or under-known in the culture at large. Clemente was loved as player, sure, but many fewer people knew about his pride, his dignity, his anger and unwillingness to bend the knee to America’s racial neuroses. I remember the day he died like it was yesterday.

AB: Ray, you’re known for your award-winning book Latino Americans: The 500 Year Legacy that Shaped a Nation. Tell us how baseball fits into that narrative through your lens. What parallels can we see in the experience of Latinos in baseball with the broader Latino American story?

RS: The progress of Latinos in U.S. baseball tracks well with the rise in prominence of Latinos in America’s population and in the country’s cultural life. Baseball has always reflected America’s immigrant mix since it was always a way for the children of the struggling classes to rise. Late nineteenth century into the early twentieth? Irish, Germans, and Scandinavians. World War I and beyond? Eastern Europeans and Italians. Then, after World War II, when more American players were spending a part of their year playing in Mexico and the Caribbean, here comes Minnie Miñoso, Vic Power, Luis Aparicio, then Clemente, Juan Marichal, Tony Perez and Luis Tiant. Many of these stars were able to make their way north because Jackie Robinson broke the color bar in 1947. Then the floodgates opened as the Latino population in the U.S. continued to grow rapidly. Today, more than a quarter of all Major League players are Latinos, and they reflect the mix of Latino residents: foreign-born and native-born, Caribbean, Central, and South American, raised and coming of age in every corner of the country. In the dugout and between the lines, their story is our story.

AB: Thanks for taking the time to chat. I truly appreciated our conversation, Ray. Be sure to follow Ray Suarez on Twitter to stay in the know about the national events and issues affecting Latinos.

Featured Image: Ray Suarez Twitter