Last Friday night, San Marino resident Jaime Jarrin became just the twelfth person inducted in to the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Ring of Honor, a significant honor accomplished by a local man who has starred for a global brand.
What is the Ring of Honor?
Next time you visit Dodger Stadium, look around until you see the names and numbers mounted around the inside of the stadium. This is the Ring of Honor and it includes some of the most famous people ever to be associated with the game of baseball.
Throughout the rich history of the Dodgers, only eleven individuals have been placed in the Ring of Honor. Jarrín joins Pee Wee Reese, Tommy Lasorda, Duke Snider, Jim Gilliam, Don Sutton, Walter Alston, Sandy Koufax, Roy Campanella, Jackie Robinson, Don Drysdale and Vin Scully in having his name permanently affixed inside Dodger Stadium.
“I was 22 years old when I started with the Dodgers,” said Jarrin, the Dodgers’ Spanish-language radio announcer. Jarrin has been the lead play-by-play man for the team’s Spanish flagship station KWKW. “How many people get to work in the profession that they love! It’s been 60 years!”
Jarrin was astonished when reminded that since the franchise began in 1884 the Dodgers have only retired eleven other people and/or players’ numbers.
“I am overwhelmed!” Jarrin said. “In my wildest of dreams I never thought this would happen, and to be in between two of my cherished dear friends, Don Drysdale and Vin Scully, it is just too much. I love baseball. Everything about it. The game, the people and the history. It is the game of America and I feel so privileged to have been an eyewitness to the past 60 years of it. I have seen and called some of the biggest games and it never gets old. I am so lucky that Mr. O’Malley decided from the beginning to include the Spanish-speaking people of Los Angeles into the game of baseball. You know, when I was in Quito working in my field of news and sports reporting, I had dreamed of coming to America and bringing Blanca, my wife, and my son Jorge. Look at me now! I’m getting this great honor with the one and only team I have ever loved in the sport I love and working every day with the son I love. Yes, I am very, very blessed! You could say I was a dreamer and with hard work, love and luck my dreams have been answered.”
Jarrin has been a San Marino resident since 1965, where along with his wife Blanca, the Jarrins raised their three sons, Jorge, Jimmy and Mauricio. Jorge works the broadcasts with his Dad.
“San Marino is a great community, we love it very much,” Jaime Jarrin said. “All of our children went to Stoneman Elementary School, Huntington Middle School and then San Marino High School. It’s where my friends and family are. It’s where my favorite restaurants are. San Marino is my home.”
The Dodger franchise began in 1884 as the Brooklyn Atlantics. It participated as the Brooklyn Grays from 1885-1887, and experienced seven other name changes before becoming the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1932. In 1958 the Brooklyn Dodgers moved out west with the New York Giants to establish two west coast teams, one team in Los Angeles and the other in San Francisco.
In 2008, Jarrin received the Ford Frick Award from the Baseball Hall of Fame. Jarrin, who will turn 83 in December, recently received a two-year contract extension.
