Spanish-Language Announcers Add Spice to Angel Broadcasts : Radio: Ulpiano Cos Villa and Ruben Valentin have been teaming up for the past five seasons to talk <i> beisbol. : </i>

You say batter. They call him bateador. You know them as outfielders. To them, they are jardineros. You jump from your seat with a home run. They see it as a cuadrangular.

But no matter the language, the message remains the same in the game of baseball, or beisbol, when described by Ulpiano Cos Villa and Ruben Valentin.

For the past five seasons, Cos Villa and Valentin have teamed to broadcast Angels games in Spanish over XPRS Radio (1090 AM), though Cos Villa started with a different partner in 1982 when another station carried the games.

Figures provided by Golden West Broadcasters, which employs Cos Villa and Valentin and which buys air time from XPRS, show that the Angels’ Spanish-language transmissions reach about 324,000 people each game. Those numbers increased June 7 and 12 when Fernando Valenzuela’s first two--and so far only--games with the Angels were carried on an additional 80 stations in Mexico by the Publi Eventos Deportivos network. The network plans to air all games pitched by the Mexican left-hander when he returns from the disabled list.

Meanwhile, however, it’s business as usual for Cos Villa and Valentin.

Using what they term a Caribbean style for their play-by-play announcing, a style dominated by the baseball parlance common to that region and markedly different in terminology from the ones typically favored by Mexican, Central American and South American broadcasters, Cos Villa and Valentin work fluidly from their booth in the Anaheim Stadium press box or while recreating a game in the studios when the team is on the road.

“Ours is a jocose broadcast because baseball is not a serious game,” Cos Villa said. “The fans like the way we call the games and they understand it because that’s the style the great Spanish-language broadcasters created many years ago. We try to keep the audience from falling asleep.”

That’s no problem for these two. From the nicknames they give Latino players to their funny commentaries about a play, their broadcasts are far from yawners.

In the four-game series the Angels recently concluded against Texas at Anaheim Stadium, Cos Villa had a field day with the Ranger players. Rookie catcher Ivan Rodriguez became Ivan The Terrible. Outfielder Ruben Sierra was El Indio (Indian) Sierra. Muscular Juan Gonzalez was Igor or The Horse. Gary Pettis became La Bala (Bullet).

When a batter took a big swing, missed and spinned around, Cos Villa said the player struck out while dancing the rumba. Another time he said the Texas pitcher who struck out Dick El Pato (Duck) Schofield had sent the Angel shortstop back to the pond.

Cos Villa gets the act rolling by calling the action from the first through the third innings. He takes a two-inning break and returns for the sixth, eighth and ninth innings. Valentin works the others and does the pregame taped interviews with players and the post-game show. They switch every inning during extra-inning games.

When the Angels travel, Cos Villa and Valentin drive together to the Golden West Broadcasters studios in Hollywood to re-create the games by watching them on television. They both live in the Silver Lake District of Los Angeles; Cos Villa with his wife, Yolanda (he has a daughter from a previous marriage), and Valentin with his fiancee, Marcela Posada. Valentin, who has been married twice, has six children.

The re-creation of the games is an alternative both men said is a far cry from live coverage and one that can create problems.

“Cos was working a game once with another broadcaster and they were getting the feed from a nationally televised game,” Valentin said. “The guy called a play, looked down to write it in his scorebook, and then looked at the screen again in time to see someone hit a home run, which he reported as part of the game they were working. But the home run had actually been hit in another game to which the network had cut for an update.”

Valentin, too, has fallen prey to the pitfalls of re-creating games.

“I had never re-created games until I started with the Angels,” Valentin said. “The first game I did was an exhibition game against San Diego. I screwed up and called four outs in one inning.”

Cos Villa got his first taste of broadcasting in 1950 as a 14-year-old disc jockey at a small station in his native San Luis, on Cuba’s easternmost province of Oriente. He played catcher on teams in the Cuban amateur leagues and, after a brief attempt at professional ball with a Mexican minor league club in 1956, came to the United States a year later.

He landed a job as an assembler at the General Motors plant in Van Nuys in 1958. In the ‘60s and ‘70s, he also did baseball reports for KWKW Radio in Los Angeles. After he began broadcasting with the Angels in 1982, Cos Villa continued to work for GM as a quality control inspector for another three years. By 1985, he could survive on his salary from radio alone.

Also that year, Cos Villa got a new partner in Valentin, who had worked almost exclusively as a disc jockey but who knew baseball well.

Born in 1935 in Guayama, Puerto Rico, Valentin was 20 when he was signed to a professional baseball contract as a middle infielder by the legendary Howie Haak, a former Pittsburgh Pirates scout who combed Latin America searching for talent. Former players discovered by Haak included Panamanian catcher Manny Sanguillen, Dominican infielder Julian Javier, Panamanian outfielder Omar Moreno and Venezuelan outfielder Tony Armas.

But Valentin’s career never got off the ground. In fact, it barely got clearance for takeoff. With about 20 games left in his first pro season with the Lincoln Pirates of the old Nebraska Class-A league, Valentin broke his right leg and the club released him soon after. He tried out with the New York Yankees and a scout for the Kansas City Athletics showed some interest, but nothing came of those attempts.

However, Valentin used his baseball skills to get a job with a fabric-dyeing company in New York that wanted him for its team.

“They put me to work in the lab,” he said, laughing. “I didn’t do much. The supervisor would send me once in a while to get a dye sample or something.”

At the same time, Valentin decided to attend broadcasting school. He eventually caught on with a local radio station and worked there for a few months until it went bankrupt. From there he went to Philadelphia and then to San Francisco in 1962, where he began the salsa and contemporary rock programs that made him a popular radio personality there and in Los Angeles beginning in the mid-70s.

With salsa on its way out, Valentin grabbed the opportunity to work the Angels’ games with Cos Villa. He had done some Giants’ games one season and figured he could make the transition. Adios salsa; hello beisbol.

“I had actually done some games in Puerto Rico as an amateur,” said Valentin, who also has been the Spanish play-by-play man for the Rams since 1986 and who broadcast Buffalo’s 53-3 thrashing of the Raiders in the AFC championship game last year for CBS Radio. “But it had not been one of my ambitions to be a baseball broadcaster.”

Now, Cos Villa and Valentin have become a durable broadcasting team, one of several Spanish-language ones in the major leagues. They attempt not only to inform and entertain their audience but also to champion the contributions made by Latino players.

Valentin, for instance, focuses only on Latino players in his pregame shows. He feels the Latinos don’t receive equal recognition by the Anglo press and tries to balance the scales that way.

“I interview only Latinos because it’s the only opportunity they have to be on radio,” Valentin said. “Plus, our broadcasts are geared to the Latinos anyways.”

Both men have seen many outstanding plays and great players during their years with the Angels. For Cos Villa, who has also broadcast several American League and National League championship series, one World Series and four All-Star games on CBS Radio, the most unforgettable moment was the two-run home run hit by Dave Henderson, then of the Red Sox, that turned around the 1986 American League championship series.

“I also called Rod Carew’s 3,000th hit (on Aug. 4, 1985) and I saw the Griffeys (Seattle outfielders Ken Sr. and Ken Jr.) hit back-to-back home runs here last year (Sept. 14),” Cos Villa said.

Angel losses in the playoffs against Boston in ’86 and Milwaukee in ‘82, when they blew a 2-0 lead in the best-of-five series, were bitter defeats for Cos Villa, who openly roots for California.

“I like to see the team win,” Cos Villa said. “Otherwise, it’s tough to keep calling the game with the same emotion.”

For the fans who tune in to listen to the typically upbeat duo, that would be muy malo.