Video Surfaces of Retired MLB Player Nate McLouth Speaking Near-Perfect Dominican Spanish

If you closed your eyes and listened to former MLB star Nate McLouth speak Spanish, you’d think you were listening to un dominicano, instead of a gringo from Michigan. Even though he’s no longer playing baseball, a video from 2012 where he conducts an interview in Spanish is now circulating online, and people are shook that he speaks in near-perfect Dominican Spanish.

Learning a second language is an amazing feat, especially if you start after the age of ~7. As a high school student, McLouth could either take German or Spanish. Though he has German ancestry, he decided to learn Spanish, a move that served him well when he pursued a career in baseball. In an interview with Semana Deportiva’s Felix DeJesus, Nate credited his Dominican and Venezuelan teammates in the minor leagues with getting his Spanish right.

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Almost a year later, Fox Sports interviewed his teammates and they were as impressed as we are with his Spanish. Pedro Stop said, “It’s the best Spanish that I ever hear in an American guy. There’s some guys who speak Spanish, but you can hear their accents… But he’s just fluent, like straight up Dominican.” Alexi Casilla added that Nate is probably just faking his identity and that he’s really a man named Manuel Peralta.

But no one reacted better than the internet. Check out a few reactions below.