With the start of the 2025 baseball season Luciano Rodriguez and Gustavo Salazar are star players, not on the field, but in the broadcast booth. They are the Spanish play-by-play and color commentator respectively who began their run with the Nationals in 2024 and are back with the storylines for all 162 games this year.
The talented duo, with decades of experience, was brought together by Costa Media, a Spanish regional East Coast radio network, that targets the Hispanic market. The company owns stations in Boston and Washington, D.C., with affiliates in Richmond, Virginia,
Twenty-two [of the 30) Major League Baseball teams broadcast in Spanish. Costa Media has license agreements as the official Spanish-language radio partner with the Nationals and the Boston Red Sox. This new programming follows growth trends among Hispanics. In our region, according to the latest census figures, Latinos make up over 20% of the population in Montgomery County and 12% in Washington, D.C.
The games air on DC 87.7 FM and La Pantera 100.7 FM/1220 AM, both Costa Media stations. They are also streamed live on the MLB app for its subscribers.
Costa Media’s programming president Gerado Lopez says the move connects advertisers with a new audience. “We know that the Hispanic is a sports lover. When there is a team, they follow and support it,” he said. “So, it was like we were looking for one another.”
The play-by-play agreement with the Nationals has been renewed beyond the 2024 trial season, allowing the company to build a fan base with promotions that attract newcomers, like VIP treatment with on-field pregame passes. Costa Media market manager Raul Lopez-Bastidas says that fans might also meet Rodriguez and Salazar, whom he describes as his dream team.
“I knew Luciano back when he did play-by-play for the Nationals from 2005 to 2011, and for the Orioles before that,” he said. Salazar, he adds, brings with him a long resume as color analyst in Spanish for the Eagles and the Ravens and as an anchor in Latino radio with “Reyes de La Mañana,” a zany news, music and entertainment morning show weekdays on DC 87.7 FM.
“And, when we put the two talents together, there was an immediate affinity between the two,” he said.
Chance Meetings and Lucky Breaks
Rodriguez’s storied career began with an AA team in Venezuela, his home country. After an injury ended his days as a player, he joined a Milwaukee Brewers scout looking to sign Venezuelan talent. But in the 1980s when the recruiter died, Rodriguez was left in Gaithersburg without a job. Walking one day through a local ball field, a coach, noting his Brewers cap, asked him whether he played baseball. The coach recruited him as a volunteer for the then Gaithersburg Sports Association.
“I became famous because my team won championships two years in a row,” he said.
In quick succession Rodriguez began a two-year stint as a VISTA Volunteer, first with the Department of Bilingual Education in the D.C. public schools system and later with the D.C. Department of Recreation, serving a growing Latino community as a coach and umpire for baseball, soccer, football and basketball. Another chance meeting landed him a weekly sports column in the El Latino Spanish newspaper, which caught the attention of the owners of Radio Borinquen 900 AM in Laurel, also in Spanish.
“And, before I knew it, I was on the air with “El Coquín Deportivo,” a sports show aimed at new arrivals from Central America. They called me El Coquín,” he said, English for the small tree frog native to Puerto Rico and a symbol of the island. “And I stayed there for 20 years, while also working by day at the D.C. rec department, returning to the station to do color commentary in Spanish with the Orioles from 1992 to 1995.”
By then Rodriguez was well-established on the sports scene in Spanish. He went on to work for CBS Hispanic Baseball Network and later as radio field reporter on Fútbol de Primera with the legendary sportscaster Andres Cantor. Rodriguez also covered sports for Sirius XM Radio, which included his first run as analyst for the Nationals.
When that contract expired in 2011, he turned to music, and hired out as a drummer, notably at Cubanos Restaurant in Bethesda on Friday nights. You might also see him as front desk manager at Wheaton Indoor Tennis, in Wheaton Regional Park. That routine changed in 2024 with a surprise call from Costa Media to bring him back to béisbol.
Natural Narrator
Gustavo Salazar, the youngest of nine siblings, joined his Bolivian family in Rockville in 1983, at age five. He always had a passion for narration, filling in the gaps with color commentary on video games he played as a child. After high school he worked off and on in his father’s construction business while simultaneously taking courses in broadcast media at Montgomery College and elsewhere.
“Like everything, it just came second nature to me,” he said.
His can-do attitude opened doors, first with CBS radio in Washington, then at an open call for a Spanish station in Philadelphia where he beat out more than 1,000 applicants. “I [told them] I can do whatever you need in English and in Spanish. I can edit, I can host, whatever you want,” he said.
There he began working with Ricky Ricardo (no, not that Ricky Ricardo) on Rumba FM owned by iHeartMedia, now the nation’s largest audio network. He says it also expanded his resume. “I got to work with the hip-hop station, the R&B station, the pop station, the rock station, whatever was needed. I was your man,” he said, establishing a reputation that would bring him back to Washington and WDCN, where he started his daily morning show in 2012. He continues that job alongside his grueling baseball schedule at Nationals Park, including the away games which are brought into the studio in a live video stream.
Also, in these last two decades, Salazar has piled on contracts with CBS Radio in D.C. and Clear Channel (iHeart) in Philadelphia and with play-by-play in Spanish for the Ravens and the Eagles. The former of which ended with the 2017 season; the latter with the Eagles Super Bowl win in 2018.
Broadcast Synergy
What emerges in the broadcast booth is an animated volley between two friends. “Luciano is going to tell you what’s happening at the moment. I mean, he’s covered baseball for 40 years and I’m always painting a picture,” Salazar said. “This is my passion. I love doing this kind of work.”
Rodriguez says he carefully crafts each broadcast to educate and entertain. “In sports journalism you have to be a gentleman and help inspire those who are just beginning to listen to baseball in Spanish,” he said. “This is what destiny had in store for me.”
Veteran Nationals TV announcer Bob Carpenter says Rodriguez and Salazar have been wonderful additions to the Nationals broadcast family, establishing an extraordinary relationship with the team’s 18 Latino players, coaches and manager. “Their passion and love for the game are unmatched and their exciting calls have become instant classics for our Spanish fans,” he said. “They have brought tremendous energy to their work. On a personal level, it has been a pleasure getting to know them and I hope they are a part of Nationals Baseball for many years to come.”
And for the fans it’s been a joy to listen to the sport in Spanish, especially to Rodriguez’ signature call for a home run: “Se va, se va, se fué la fruta.” Literally translated. “It’s going, the fruta [the fruit, or ball] is gone!”
