Derek Jeter, the Yankees legend and current part owner of the Miami Marlins, is instituting a program within his organization that will require English-speaking players and coaches to learn Spanish, just as Spanish-speaking players and coaches have always had to learn English, according to an ESPN report.
"I've been to the Dominican and Venezuela," Jeter said. "I went to Cuba with Major League Baseball in 2016. So I've been to those countries and tried to learn as much as I could about their cultures. Everybody expects the Latin players to make an effort to speak English. Well, especially here in Miami, if you don't speak Spanish, you don't fit in. I think it's important."
Jeter is said to be learning Spanish as well.
According to a 2017 Racial and Gender Report Card put together by The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports at the University of Central Florida, 31.9 percent of the players in Major League Baseball are Latino, and most of those players don't speak English as their first language.
In 2015, MLB began an initiative to get every team to have a Spanish-speaking interpreter on staff.
"It's important," Carlos Beltran told the New York Times at the time.
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