Bill Kulik: The Gringo Malo Speaks the Language of the Game

Abstract

His introduction to the game of came at the age of seven, on a summer vacation while visiting his cousins in Rhode Island. William Kulik was born in New Jersey but moved with his parents at a very young age to South America. He spent nine years living in Argentina, Bolivia, and Colombia, none of which are bastions of baseball. When Bill played Wiffle ball with his cousins, his teammates stood behind the backstop because after he swung at the ball, he threw the bat. Attending his first major-league game at Shea Stadium, Bill thought Wayne Garrett was God's gift to baseball because he hit a home run and Bill caught the ball. He thought every time you went to a game, you caught a ball. Being behind the other kids in learning the subtleties of the game almost worked out to his advantage later on. Playing soccer at high elevations in both Bolivia and Colombia, he was becoming a fine-tuned athlete. Returning to New Jersey for four years of high school, his inexperience with the game was welcomed by the coaches who proceeded to mold him. He played varsity ball in high school and at Bryant College in Rhode Island, mostly as an outfielder and pitcher. Currently, Bill anchors the three-person Spanish-language broadcast team for the Philadelphia Phillies. They rotate their responsibilities doing three innings each of play-by-play and color analysis. I interviewed him at Citizen's Bank Park in August 2011. How did you become interested in broadcasting? After graduating from college, I went to work in the fledging telecommunications field in Boston, building the New England Sports Network tower and installing pay-per-view systems in hotels. Later on working for Comcast, I headed up an innovative distance-learning program between the Museum of Science and the Cambridge public schools. Deciding that if I was going to stay in the cable television business I wanted to do something I really loved, I started a weekly show called Forever Baseball that got carried on many Comcast local-access stations. Before I knew it, I was in five million homes. One afternoon, my crew and I went to Fenway Park to do a feature. The Yankees are in town and Dan Duquette has just acquired Pedro Martinez, who is going up against Roger Clemens. I happen to be standing within earshot of Dan and some folks, and Dan sounds like he's annoyed because there is no Hispanic coverage of any sorts. So I took a deep breath, walked over to the group and told Mr. Duquette that I might be able to help. The next thing I know it's, Sit down, son. Watching the game from Mr. Duquette's box, a deal is cut. I quit my job and started a company called Spanish Baseball Productions (SBN) which began carrying Spanish-language broadcasts in Boston. How did you wind up in Philadelphia? We were in Philadelphia during an interleague series. After watching us, the Philly brass wanted to know if I could do the same thing here that I was doing in Boston, which had a much smaller Hispanic community. I thought, if I could be close to my high school home and double the sales efforts, why not? So we expanded. How did you get nicknamed Gringo Maio? We were doing our pre-game show, which includes a call-in portion. This is back in 2003 around the time of the Sammy Sosa illegal-bat incident. I was only producing then in Boston and was rarely on the air. My announcer was Dominican and said very emphatically that Sammy didn't use the bat intentionally and he didn't know the bat had been doctored. There's a lull in the calls, so on the air I say to my colleague, Hey, an illegal bat is an illegal bat. Sammy has to be suspended for it. My colleague says, Ay, ese Gringo Malo. (Oh, that Terrible Gringo.) And don't you know the phone lines light up and everyone now is on my case. So, if you ask the Hispanic ballplayers in Boston or Philadelphia whether they know who Bill Kulik is, they'll say, No. …