By GEORGE ESTRADA
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

SEATTLE — When Amaury Pi-Gonzalez was a boy in Cuba, he would stand a broom upside down on his porch and pretend to call baseball games. Now he’s living his dream in the radio announcer’s booth in two different major-league ballparks.

Pi-Gonzalez, 60, does Spanish-language play-by-play for the Seattle Mariners and the San Francisco Giants, which leads to lots of frequent flier miles.“I know most of the pilots on Alaska Airlines,” Pi-Gonzalez said.

Last weekend, Pi-Gonzalez, who lives in Fremont, Calif., was in San Francisco calling Giants games. This week he’s in Seattle doing broadcasts for the Mariners.

“The fact that he can do this dual broadcasting job is incredible,” said Marty Gonzalez, a weekend anchor for KRON-TV in San Francisco and a longtime admirer of Pi-Gonzalez. “He’s doing two different teams in two different leagues, which means he has to know every player in major-league baseball.”

Only a handful of announcers have worked concurrently for two major-league teams, including legends Jack Brickhouse and Harry Caray.

By the time the season ends, Pi-Gonzales will have worked 81 home games for the Mariners and 25 for the Giants. Former San Francisco infielder Tito Fuentes takes his spot when Pi-Gonzalez is in Seattle.

Randy Adamack, vice president of communications for the Mariners, said that the feedback about Pi-Gonzalez from fans has been very positive.

“His delivery is exciting, and the enthusiasm he brings to the booth is great,” said Adamack. “It’s something you can’t teach.”

When Pi-Gonzalez gets rare time off to spend at home in the San Francisco Bay Area, he works on the autobiography he hopes to finish later this year.

In it, he will recount the highlights of his 30 years of broadcasting major league baseball to Spanish-speaking audiences. He has also done Spanish broadcasts for the Golden State Warriors of the NBA and the Oakland Raiders of the NFL.

Pi-Gonzalez began his career in 1975 doing baseball game re-creations in Spanish, and started broadcasting live in 1979 with the Oakland Athletics.

Pi-Gonzalez recalled that when eccentric Oakland A’s owner Charles Finley first hired him, he sent a messenger to tell him to “go ahead and broadcast the games in Mexican.”

After 17 years with the A’s, Pi-Gonzalez started doing play-by-play for the Giants in 1994, and began doing double duty with the Giants and the Mariners in 2003. In Seattle, he is joined in the broadcast booth by former Mariner Julio Cruz.

In his book, Pi-Gonzalez will also tell of his childhood years in Cuba, when as a passionate young fan, he used that broom to emulate the voice and style of legendary announcer Rafael “Felo” Ramirez, who broadcast Cuban Winter Professional League baseball games for many years.

He later collaborated with his childhood hero in a 1998 playoff game in the United States. Ramirez, 82, now calls games in Spanish for the Florida Marlins.

One of only four Cubans currently broadcasting in the major leagues, Pi-Gonzalez was inducted last year into the Cuban Sports Hall of Fame in Miami, which he said was “the thrill of a lifetime.”

Pi-Gonzalez has interviewed many great Latin players during his career, but he counts Tony Perez, Fernando Valenzuela and Jose Canseco as the most charismatic. But he said his most memorable interview was with a non-Latin player, home-run king Hank Aaron.

The most thrilling moment in his career came during the 1989 World Series between the Giants and the A’s when a 7.1 earthquake struck the Bay Area before game three. He was doing A’s play-by-play for a San Jose station.

“Tenemos un terromoto,” he shouted over the air. (“We’re having an earthquake.”) The station went off the air moments later.

“Candlestick Park was shaking on all sides, the monitors were rocking,” Pi-Gonzalez recalled. “I thought it was the end of the world.”

More recently, Pi-Gonzalez was calling a game in Seattle when Rafael Palmeiro of the Baltimore Orioles became the first Cuban player to reach 3,000 career hits. Pi-Gonzalez said it was the first time he’d had the chance to call such an achievement by a Latin player.

“ESPN also joked that I was the first Cuban announcer ever to call the first Cuban ever to hit 3,000,” Pi-Gonzalez said.

As for the Mariners, Pi-Gonzalez thinks highly of the organization’s pool of Latin talent, including Adrian Beltre, Jose Lopez, Raul Ibanez, Eddie Guardado, Miguel Olivo and minor league pitching phenom Felix Hernandez.

“Latinos could be the future of this team, and these young players will help the Mariners in the growing Hispanic community,” Pi-Gonzalez said. He noted that the Spanish-speaking population has doubled in the state of Washington in the past 15 years.

“If you provide Hispanic superstars, the Hispanic fans will come,” he said.

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