The color commentator for the Spanish-language radio broadcasts of Tampa Bay Devil Rays games has never seen a baseball game.
By JEFF KLINKENBERG, Times Staff Writer
Published April 24, 2005
[Times photos: James Borchuck]
Henry Oliu, left, holds his cane while listening to batting practice before a game between the Devil Rays and Blue Jays.
Henry, left, works a game with play-by-play announcer Jose Rafael Colmenares Anzola, for the Spanish Beisbol Network at Tropicana Field. “We’ve been working, like, 1,000 years together,” Henry said of his co-worker after their first day together.
Henry Oliu makes his way to Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg before a recent Devil Rays game. Henry does analysis on Spanish-language broadcasts of Rays games.
Henry, right, and substitute play-by-play announcer Angel Martinez laugh with former Devil Rays bullpen coach Orlando Gomez, now with the Baltimore Orioles. Henry has many friends in baseball who give him material for his broadcasts. “You build these relationships through time,” he says.
Henry, second from right, joins the media for a session with Rays manager Lou Piniella before a game. Henry’s hero is announcer Jack Buck because, “He reacted to games.”
Angel Martinez leads Henry through the Devil Rays dugout at Tropicana Field before a game against the Toronto Blue Jays. Henry gets anecdotes for his broadcast by talking to the players and coaches during batting practice and in the locker rooms before the games.
Henry gets a hug from his wife, Debbie Perry, in the radio booth before a recent game. Debbie, who works in the Devil Rays benefits office, sometimes sits in the booth and gives Henry information in English.
ST. PETERSBURG - Henry Oliu is the ears, though not exactly the eyes, for the Spanish-language audience that listens to major league baseball on WZHR-AM 1400 radio in Tampa. "Aubrey Huff at the plate," Henry announces in mellifluous Spanish as the Devil Ray outfielder glares at the pitcher at Tropicana Field. "Aubrey is the best hitter on the club. This pitcher is not going to give him a good pitch to hit."
Born in Nicaragua and raised in Florida, Henry as a boy learned baseball by listening to a transistor radio tucked under his pillow and letting at least his imagination run wild around the bases. For him, an informed word is worth far more than a thousand pictures. He has been blind from birth.
At 42, the St. Petersburg resident is what they call the "color" man on the broadcasts of Devil Rays games. While his partner supplies the play-by-play, he provides analysis and context. It is almost impossible to stump him on statistics or history or strategy. When he talks about changeups and the value of speed over the long ball, and the art of the hit and run, and when to sacrifice bunt and when to hit away, never mind, you can bank on it. His fans know they are listening to a master.
"We have a fast infield at Tropicana Field," he barks into his press box microphone. He is explaining how ground balls can ricochet like bullets off the artificial turf and explode past unprepared infielders. "I'm sure Julio Lugo is ready, and he is ready for a bad hop."
Henry is not guessing. Before games he and his white cane explore the field. He has touched the very seam where artificial turf and infield dirt come together, the place where a bouncing ball can take an unexpected trajectory toward a shortstop's Adam's apple. He also has spoken with Lugo about the challenges of playing on artificial turf. An hour before the first pitch he taps his way into the clubhouse, seeks out No. 23 and asks "Que pasa?" Even a casual "What's up?" can lead to something he might use on the broadcast.
Many who hear him on the radio have no idea their expert has never set eyes on a baseball diamond. Those who know are in the dark about how he does it.
"Sometimes he is so on the money it seems unworldly, impossible," says Danny Martinez, who was Henry's radio partner for three seasons before moving this year to Philadelphia and the Phillies. "Just by the sound of the ball hitting the bat he sometimes seems to know where the ball is going and what might or might not happen. "Tough catch out there by the wall!' I hear him say. I used to wave my hand in front of his face because I didn't quite believe he is blind."
A gifted memory
"THIS IS HOWARD COSELL SPEAKING!" blares Henry, descending steps at Tropicana Field with a big grin. If he has heard a broadcaster on television or radio, he can imitate him. He can do a Jack Buck, a Mel Allen, a Harry Caray.
He started listening to them when he was a small boy. Sometimes he was in his bedroom in Nicaragua and later he was in his bedroom in Florida, where he attended the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind in St. Augustine. The constants in his life always have been sports and family.
He was the first child of Enrique and Marilyn Oliu, who at the time of his birth were farming a coffee plantation. He came into the world too early, and too undeveloped, and for a while his parents feared he might not survive. Doctors took one look at his pale retinas and announced there was no possibility of a cure. What his parents and his siblings learned to provide was tough love.
"Our main rule at the house was no "poor Henry,' " says Marilyn Oliu, a widow who now lives in Brandon. "Even when he got into fights with his brothers, my husband and I would let them alone unless they were killing each other."
Henry lea rned to roller skate, water ski and ride a bicycle.
"My dad loved me a lot," Henry says. "He'd tell me, "Anything you want to do, you can do.' I remember sometimes people would, you know, want to reach over and cut my pancakes or my meat for me, and my dad would say, "No, let the little son-of-a-bitch do it.' I know that sounds shocking, but he was being funny and loving. He'd say, "Henry, your mom and I won't always be around to take care of you. You'll have to learn to do for yourself.' I have."
Henry always had a retentive mind. Henry's mother remembers him talking, talking, talking about baseball when he was little, repeating what he had heard on the radio or on television. He also was fascinated with family history. He would ask questions, then repeat the answers until he got everything straight. Within days he could name grandfathers and great-aunts and lost cousins and explain their branches on the family tree.
Sometimes his brothers called on him to settle arguments. They called him "the Living Encyclopedia."
"Okay," one of them would say in the dark heat of a dispute. "It's time to ask Henry."
Henry is paid to broadcast baseball, but he also has a second job, in downtown Tampa, where he works in the office of the Hillsborough County Public Defender, as a liaison between attorneys and prisoners awaiting trial. Henry sits before a computer in a dark office - "Why would I need the lights on?" - and scoops up the phone about 40 times a day. "Yes, Mr. Alvarez," he says to somebody hoping to be sprung from jail. "I understand. I understand your concern completely. In fact, you have my sympathy. I will write a note to your lawyer."
He attacks the computer keyboard furiously and taps out an e-mail. If he hits a wrong key, the computer tells him. If the computer fails, there is always a Braille machine at his fingertips.
Then he walks out on Twigg Street and boards the bus to take him to his home in St. Petersburg or to the ballpark. He likes to sit as close to the bus driver as possible so he can ask questions. He has learned a lot about the logistics of driving a bus from interrogating bus drivers. Not long ago, he helped break in a new driver, who was having trouble with the windshield wipers.
Henry told him how to turn them on.
A desire to learn
Henry's parents enrolled him at the blind school in St. Augustine when he was 10. Former teachers still talk about him - the kid who never stopped asking questions. His old math teacher, Tuck Tinsley, who is now the president of the American Print House for the Blind in Kentucky, often accompanied him to sports events or watched them with Henry on television.
"I remember one time listening to a basketball game on the radio," Tinsley says now. "Henry asks, "So what's a jump shot from the corner?' So I stood him up and walked him through a jump shot. He'd do the same with other sports. Ask questions and soak up the answers like a sponge."
In high school, he played baseball.
His coach was Marvin Sanford who is now the dean of students at the Tennessee School for the Blind. "I would start them by playing kickball, which has the same rules as baseball," Sanford says. "Then we'd go into the classroom and learn the rules and theory of baseball. When the boys had that down we'd take them on the field."
They hit a rubber ball off a tee with a short aluminum bat. A coach stood on each base and called so the batter would know where to run. Henry will tell you he is a decent hitter and a good baserunner but admits having a weak arm. "Blind people have trouble throwing," he says. "Unless you have actually seen someone throw a ball, it's hard to imagine how it's done unless someone grabs you and positions your body and your feet. It's quite a skill."
His old coach remembers Henry as being as crafty as Lou Piniella.
"Henry always liked to bunt," Sanford says. "He knew that a blind fielder was going to have trouble fielding a bunt. Pretty soon he had all his teammates bunting and we had to change the rules and outlaw the bunt."
Later, Henry studied communications in Hillsborough County at Florida College and at the University of South Florida. His many friends included baseball players who treated Henry as one of the boys.
If you were driving on a lonely road, at night, in east Hillsborough County, about two decades ago, and encountered a car wobbling back and forth across the lanes - say a prayer of thanks.
It was not an intoxicated driver behind the wheel of that meandering hunk of Detroit steel. Henry had expressed curiousity about the mechanics of driving a car. Henry's friends, of course, tried to satisfy that curiosity.
Love for the game
Henry is addicted to radio and to televised baseball. He listens constantly to books on tape about a variety of subjects, especially baseball, and not long ago read Ball Four, the Jim Bouton classic about the Mickey Mantle-era Yankees. He called his first professional baseball game for Jacksonville's minor-league Expos in 1989; later he was the "color" man for the Senior League Pelicans in St. Petersburg, broadcast a few Buccaneers football games and continues to provide analysis for the Tampa Bay Storm, the arena football team.
It is baseball that gets his heart racing. He has broadcast Devil Rays games since 1999. At night, he turns on his computer and finds the place on the Internet where baseball stories and box scores are read to blind patrons. In the morning, his wife, Debbie Perry, reads him the sports section in the St. Petersburg Times and the baseball column in Sporting News.
Henry and Debbie met, inevitably, on a blind date. They attended a professional hockey game and began seeing each other regularly. They have been married five years. Debbie is a retired Air Force intelligence specialist who now works in the benefits office of the Devil Rays.
Sometimes, when Henry is in the booth, his left ear is tuned to the Spanish being spoken by his broadcast partner and his right ear to his wife, who is feeding him baseball information in English.
"I was always a sports fan and a tomboy," she says. "But I never thought I would be immersed in the world of sports like this."
At home, she cooks, and he washes the dishes. She drives, alas, but he cleans the bathrooms. Henry likes to go to the symphony and to the theater. For years, he cajoled her to take him to the movies. "I resisted, because I was brought up to sit quietly in a movie theater and not talk," she says. "But it hasn't been much of a problem. I whisper from time to time to make sure Henry is following the plot."
Recently they went to see an Academy Award-winning film about the life of another graduate of the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind, Ray Charles. Henry was enthralled with Ray.
"There was this fascinating thing that Ray did in the movie," Debbie says. "When he'd shake the hand of a woman he'd run his other hand up her wrist and up her arm and supposedly could tell if the woman was beautiful. One night I noticed Henry shaking hands like that - but with a guy. I said, "So, Henry, are you courting that beautiful man?' and we laughed and laughed."
Henry enjoys this interesting turn in the conversation.
"I can always tell when I am talking to a beautiful blond woman," he says as his wife grins. "It's intuition."
Henry is an attractive man with chiseled features who stands about 5 feet 9 and weighs 150 pounds. He has razor-cut salt-and-pepper hair and seldom bothers with sunglasses. He dresses neatly in dark slacks, a blue shirt and a tie. He used to wear clip-ons until he got married and Debbie learned how to tie a tie.
On game day she often is his escort. He holds her shoulder and follows her from place to place, except to the locker room, where a sportswriter accompanies him. Debbie waits outside for his return. "Five steps," she says, and he ascends the stairs into the press box.
His seat is behind a Mitsubishi television that blocks the view - not that he cares. He says he is never nervous during a game, though he looks nervous. Between commentaries he rocks back and forth like Ray Charles at the piano and wrings his hands. But when it is time to talk he stops rocking, stops wringing, and lets loose.
His partner this year is Jose Rafael Colmenares Anzola, a veteran broadcaster from Venezuela. Two days before opening day he learned that his partner was a blind man.
"It scared me a little," he says. "But it has not been difficult. It's a joy working with a pro like Henry who knows so much baseball. I think this is going to be a wonderful experience, a great life lesson for me."
Commercial over. Back to work.
"Carl Crawford in the batter's box," the sightless announcer is saying. "Carl was an All-Star last season, led the league in triples with 19 and stole 59 bases."
Carl Crawford, indeed, is a cheetah in cleats. He is the fastest guy on the field running to first base. Carl only bunted twice last year for singles. Henry knows a bunt single is as good as a grounder up the middle.
A bunt may be frowned upon in blind baseball, but it is perfectly legal for a player in the big show. Perhaps he should talk to Carl about bunting a little more. It always worked for Henry.
- Jeff Klinkenberg can be reached at 727 893-8727 and klink@sptimes.com
Special thanks to Angel Martinez of WZHR radio for translating.
