BOSTON RED SOX 2003-PRESENT

Uri Berenguer (born 1982 in Panama) is the play-by-play announcer for the Boston Red Sox Spanish Beisbol Network.  He is a graduate of the Boston Latin Academy and Northeastern University. He was a member of Latin Academy's baseball, football and track teams. His uncle Juan Berenguer played in the major leagues from 1978-1992.

Given his history, that's an extraordinary statement. When he first came to Dana-Farber in November 1985 from his native Panama, neither he nor his mother, Daisy, could speak English or knew anybody in the city. Three-year-old Uri was suffering from a tumor in his right leg, and doctors back home had told the family it would need to be amputated. Daisy Berenguer-Ramos insisted on a second opinion, so she and her son headed alone to America.  Uri's first surgery immediately followed, and he remembers waking up and asking his mom if his leg was still there (it was). They returned briefly to Panama City, but after his first relapse they came back to Boston to stay. Uri began school, punctuated by weekly checkups and chemotherapy treatments, and he and his mother moved to Dorchester. Over time, his older sister and father joined them.

In spite of his medical challenges, Uri developed into a fine athlete. Perhaps inspired by his uncle Juan Berenguer, a major-league pitcher in the 1980s and '90s, he picked baseball as his favorite sport and was delighted when members of the Red Sox and other local teams visited the Jimmy Fund Clinic. It was during one such trip that the then-13-year-old Uri first met Red Sox broadcaster Joe Castiglione, who was immediately taken with the young man's spirit. Their friendship led to Castiglione's radio booth at Fenway Park, where he put young man on the air just long enough to discover "the kid was a natural."

By high school, Uri was a regular statistician for Castiglione and his partner, Jerry Trupiano, on WEEI-850 AM and was competing in baseball, football, and track for Boston Latin Academy in Dorchester. Since the Jimmy Fund is the official charity of the Red Sox, there were also opportunities for Uri to make more on-air appearances promoting various fundraising events. Red Sox management was impressed enough by what it heard that then-team president (and Dana-Farber trustee) John Harrington worked with Castiglione and Roger Giese, PhD, director of Northeastern University's Environmental Cancer Research Program, to help secure Uri a full Northeastern scholarship starting in fall 2001.

The next spring, however, Uri received a unique opportunity. While still a college freshman, he was offered a full-time job covering the Sox for WLYN and The Spanish Beisbol Network. The position would require him to work all 162 of the team's games in 2002, home and away, from April through September. Interviewing players in either English or Spanish – the Red Sox have several who speak the latter – he would then translate for his listeners when necessary. He would be responsible for a pre- and post-game show, two innings of play-by-play alongside two senior broadcasters, and engineering duties such as cueing ads and music during the rest of the game. With the help of Castiglione, whom he calls "my guardian angel and second father," and Giese at Northeastern, Uri was able to work out arrangements for making up all classes and exams he missed.

He joined the Spanish Beisbol Network in 2002 as a statistician, engineer, pregame and postgame host, and play-by-play announcer. In 2003, her became a full-time announcer upon the departure of Juan Oscar Baez. At 21, he was one of the youngest full-time broadcasters in the history of the major leagues. In May 2005, Berenguer became the lead announcer following the death of broadcast partner Juan Pedro Villamán. In 2009, Uri was one of five announcers used by the MLB Network to call the Caribbean Series.