Jorge Lima, Sr. grew up in Cuba, where future major leaguers Minnie Minoso and Tony Taylor were his best friends. He got to know Luis Tiant Sr., and like most of his countrymen he lived for baseball.
In pre-revolutionary days, he owned a bus company, and traveled to Georgia to buy used vehicles. But when told by a former employee dressed in military fatigues and carrying guns that his business was now the property of the communist government, Lima, Sr. set in motion a series of steps that led to his future son broadcasting two sports in two languages in two of the United States’ biggest markets.
“My father called my mother,” said his son, Rickie Ricardo, “and said, ‘Get everything out of the bank, pack what you got, we’re out of here, because this is over.’” A month before the last flights out of Cuba were shut down, his father and mother – who was pregnant with him – arrived in the United States.
Ricardo (a stage name) has been involved with some of the nation’s largest radio markets as a DJ, helping to turn dying classic rock outlets into Spanish-language music formats. He then made the switch to broadcasting MLB games in Spanish with the Florida Marlins.
“When I was six, my father took me to my first baseball game at Yankee Stadium to see Mickey Mantle,” recalled Ricardo, who has done the Yankees’ Spanish broadcasts since 2014 at WADO. This year he handled English broadcasts as well.
