"La Voz Bilingue": Clemson Smith-Muñiz

By Lennin Reyes

Bronx Journal Staff Writer

On Sundays during football season, Spanish language listeners could tune into Radio WADO 1280 AM and hear the voice of a bilingual Puerto Rican play-by-play announcer talking about cuantos lanzamientos Marco Sanchez tiró contra los Ravens, or how many passes Mark Sanchez threw against the Ravens.  That voice belongs to Clemson, the voice of Los Jets en Español, along with Los Knicks en Español, and other national sports endeavors. While Smith-Muñiz happens to serve a football team in one of the largest Hispanic markets in the United States, which also happens to feature a star Mexican quarterback in Sanchez, “this job almost didn’t happen,” Smith-Muñiz explained in a recent visit to Lehman College.

Smith-Muñiz was born in Puerto Rico. While his mother was from the town of Caguas, his father was from Philadelphia. This allowed the youngster to experience a bilingual culture first-hand. After graduating from high school, he attended college at the University of Pennsylvania. There, Smith-Muñiz had his first endeavor with sports by writing for their school newspaper. “While my first article was solid, the editor asked, ‘where are the quotes?’ I did not know what quotes were,” he said. Upon graduating, Smith-Muñiz sent out more than 80 resumés to several newspapers across the country, in hopes of being a foreign correspondent. He would get the call from the Hartford Courant in the early 1980s. After a two-year stint in the Metro desk, Smith-Muñiz would cover the New York Yankees and the Boston Celtics. He describes covering the Celtics. “Coach Bill Fitch would measure the beat writers by how much they attended practice,” he said. “If I said that Danny Ainge should be the starting guard over Gerald Henderson, Fitch would counter with, ‘have you been reading the stat sheet?’”

He would bounce between several jobs for the rest of the 1980s, including the New York Daily News, Sports Inc., a fitness magazine and El País newspaper in Spain. “El País wanted me to cover basketball since Barcelona was going to host the Olympics in 1992,” Smith-Muñiz said. “From my living room, I was a foreign correspondent, writing while wearing a suit pretending to be a big-wig reporter.” Around the 1992 Olympics, Smith-Muñiz also worked for ESPN International, which served Chile, Uruguay and Argentina.

He also covered St. John’s University basketball, a team that featured stars like Mark Jackson, Walter Berry and Dominican star Felipe Lopez. “Coach Lou Carnesecca knew several languages,”  Smith-Muñiz said. “He loved speaking to me in Spanish.” It was this language duality where Smith-Muñiz’s next opportunity would bear fruit. In the late 1990s, he called the New York Knicks, a team that recently shut down their Spanish language broadcasts, in hopes that they would revive them to serve the large Hispanic market in New York. After the relaunch, Smith-Muñiz became the lead play-by-play announcer for the team. In regards to this opportunity, he told Lehman College students, “You might be studying for an occupation that might not exist right now. If budgets don’t allow for television or radio to broadcast a college game, do a Web cast.”

Shortly after, Smith-Muñiz added the title of the voice of Los Jets en Español to his belt. It was there when he first found out that Mark Sanchez actually spoke Spanish. “We shot commercials with players for Los Jets en Español. Sanchez came and changed the script. He then asked, ‘did I get the tenses right?’” Smith-Muñiz said. With this opportunity, the Jets plan to become what Smith-Muñiz say as “the team of Las Américas,” countering the “America’s Team” mantra of the Dallas Cowboys. Thanks to Sanchez’s rising star power, more people are visiting the Jets en Español Web site than Dallas’ counterpart, despite the Cowboys having their own Latin quarterback – the more assimilated Tony Romo.

In the end, Smith-Muñiz feels that knowing two languages helped him in the long run. “We are a global village,” he said. “If you know more languages, you will be able to access more markets. For instance, there’s a demand for Japanese speakers for baseball and Russian speakers in basketball.”

On Sundays during football season, Spanish language listeners could tune into Radio WADO 1280 AM and hear the voice of a bilingual Puerto Rican play-by-play announcer talking about cuantos lanzamientos Marco Sanchez tiró contra los Ravens, or how many passes Mark Sanchez threw against the Ravens.  That voice belongs to Clemson Smith-Muñiz, the voice of Los Jets en Español, along with Los Knicks en Español, and other national sports endeavors. While Smith-Muñiz happens to serve a football team in one of the largest Hispanic markets in the United States, which also happens to feature a star Mexican quarterback in Sanchez, “this job almost didn’t happen,” Smith-Muñiz explained in a recent visit to Lehman College.

Smith-Muñiz was born in Puerto Rico. While his mother was from the town of Caguas, his father was from Philadelphia. This allowed the youngster to experience a bilingual culture first-hand. After graduating from high school, he attended college at the University of Pennsylvania. There, Smith-Muñiz had his first endeavor with sports by writing for their school newspaper. “While my first article was solid, the editor asked, ‘where are the quotes?’ I did not know what quotes were,” he said. Upon graduating, Smith-Muñiz sent out more than 80 resumés to several newspapers across the country, in hopes of being a foreign correspondent. He would get the call from the Hartford Courant in the early 1980s. After a two-year stint in the Metro desk, Smith-Muñiz would cover the New York Yankees and the Boston Celtics. He describes covering the Celtics. “Coach Bill Fitch would measure the beat writers by how much they attended practice,” he said. “If I said that Danny Ainge should be the starting guard over Gerald Henderson, Fitch would counter with, ‘have you been reading the stat sheet?’”

He would bounce between several jobs for the rest of the 1980s, including the New York Daily News, Sports Inc., a fitness magazine and El País newspaper in Spain. “El País wanted me to cover basketball since Barcelona was going to host the Olympics in 1992,” Smith-Muñiz said. “From my living room, I was a foreign correspondent, writing while wearing a suit pretending to be a big-wig reporter.” Around the 1992 Olympics, Smith-Muñiz also worked for ESPN International, which served Chile, Uruguay and Argentina.

He also covered St. John’s University basketball, a team that featured stars like Mark Jackson, Walter Berry and Dominican star Felipe Lopez. “Coach Lou Carnesecca knew several languages,”  Smith-Muñiz said. “He loved speaking to me in Spanish.” It was this language duality where Smith-Muñiz’s next opportunity would bear fruit. In the late 1990s, he called the New York Knicks, a team that recently shut down their Spanish language broadcasts, in hopes that they would revive them to serve the large Hispanic market in New York. After the relaunch, Smith-Muñiz became the lead play-by-play announcer for the team. In regards to this opportunity, he told Lehman College students, “You might be studying for an occupation that might not exist right now. If budgets don’t allow for television or radio to broadcast a college game, do a Web cast.”

Shortly after, Smith-Muñiz added the title of the voice of Los Jets en Español to his belt. It was there when he first found out that Mark Sanchez actually spoke Spanish. “We shot commercials with players for Los Jets en Español. Sanchez came and changed the script. He then asked, ‘did I get the tenses right?’” Smith-Muñiz said. With this opportunity, the Jets plan to become what Smith-Muñiz say as “the team of Las Américas,” countering the “America’s Team” mantra of the Dallas Cowboys. Thanks to Sanchez’s rising star power, more people are visiting the Jets en Español Web site than Dallas’ counterpart, despite the Cowboys having their own Latin quarterback – the more assimilated Tony Romo.

In the end, Smith-Muñiz feels that knowing two languages helped him in the long run. “We are a global village,” he said. “If you know more languages, you will be able to access more markets. For instance, there’s a demand for Japanese speakers for baseball and Russian speakers in basketball.”