Podcast: MLB.com’s Jesse Sanchez on human trafficking and covering young A-Rod

Welcome to another edition of Sportswriters Blues!

This time, in a bonus episode of the show, we have an interview with MLB.com reporter Jesse Sanchez, who specializes in baseball in Latin America. He sat down with The Times' Andy McCullough to talk about the experience of covering Young A-Rod, the menace of human trafficking and the scramble of breaking news in Cuba.  

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In case you'd like to read along as you listen, here are a few of the things we talked about:

How his specialization in Latin American baseball became a reality

Jesse’s early work at MLB.com was possible because Jesse Sanchez was not only able to speak Spanish, but had a passion for telling the often overlooked stories of Latin American baseball players.

What A-Rod was like before he was A-Rod

Jesse tells the story of the first A-Rod game he covered, and explains why he thinks A-Rod could have a great career in baseball even after he retires.

The horrors of human trafficking

Telling the stories about some players means writing about some painful things.

Jesse: “Leonys [Martin] told me a tiny bit where he was in basically a safe house, he was hidden in Mexico. He couldn’t leave, and it was a terrible time in his life. You could see in his face that he wasn’t hiding it. It was just a difficult thing to talk about.”

The stereotypes he sometimes sees when people talk baseball

Jesse: “I think people make the mistake of classifying people, putting people in categories, he’s a Cuban hothead, or this or that, which I just totally disagree with. But Puig is just Puig.”

So, how can we get to the point where we talk about players as individuals?

The phrase that Jesse Sanchez won’t copy-paste ever again

As a baseball writer, Jesse has written about players who had defected from Cuba often. But his recent trip to Cuba changed how he writes:

Jesse: "I’d written [about players’ defection as just a side note] so many times, over so many years, and then you see Jose Abreu with tears in his eyes, he’s going to see his five year old son for the first time in three years. It’s like, wow, this is heavy. You even see Puig, we joke about his attitude… But you see him go back to Cuba, and he’s just hugging his relatives… it’s really sentimental.”

“Just seeing these guys and what they go through…I’ll never do that copy-and-paste ‘defected in so-and-so’ again.”

Follow Andy on Twitter @McCulloughTimes, and Pedro @pedromoura. We’ll be back tomorrow with our take on what's happening with the Dodgers and Angels, and the world of sports in general. Don't miss it.

Sportswriters Blues is produced and edited by Dexter Thomas.