Blindness isn't slowing down Enrique Oliu: Spanish radio sports broadcaster

Tampa Bay Spanish radio broadcaster, Enrique Oliu has been a witness to almost every great play Devil Rays have turned at Tropicana Field, ever since he joined the broadcast crew in 1999. Oliu, a native of Nicaragua, has been blind since birth. He fell in love with baseball as a child and followed games via his small transistor radio. <br><br>He became a student of the game along the way by studying the theories of sport and playing baseball. He got his first chance to call a game when he appeared with the Minor League Jacksonville Expos, calling one inning of play-by-play and three innings of colour commentary in 1989. He also worked 20 games as the colour analyst for the St. Petersburg Pelicans of the Senior Professional Baseball League. <br><br>As the colour analyst, Oliu teams with play-by-play man Jose Rafael Colmenares, a native of Venezuela, and provides insight and analysis to Colmenares' calls. He prepares daily on a specially designed computer by reading stories online, researching current statistics and trends, and simply talking baseball with players and managers from the home and visiting teams. <br><br>Oliu's uncanny ability to recognise where a pitched ball has been hit because of the sound it makes coming off the bat has surprised many. Call it a sixth sense combined with his second nature – baseball. Oliu knows the sport because he played it. <br><br>Devil Rays gave Oliu an audition as a Spanish radio broadcaster in 1999. He never looked back and has been in the job ever since. "The advantage is you get to meet people and maybe get the interview a little faster than another person would," Oliu said. "These players can say, 'I don't want to talk to a blind guy,' but once they get past that, they get inspired and we make good friends.”