Mets fan favorite José Iglesias becomes first Latino MLB player to cross over to Broadway

Welcome back to Talkin’ Gaysball where the Mets are our favorite Max Bialystock production…

While Tarik Skubal to the Dodgers was the trade that drew the biggest headlines, there was another under-the-radar deadline deal this week that’s exponentially more relevant to baseball and show tunes gays.

The New York Mets have sent former infielder José Iglesias to Broadway.

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Of course this being the Mets, the return was probably the rights to “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.”

After a 13-year big league career that saw him play for eight teams as a utility infielder, Iglesias will be making a bit of theater history by joining the cast of the musical “Buena Vista Social Club” as the Narrator on Aug. 27.

That night, he will become the first Latino MLB player to trod the boards in a Broadway show.

Though if some producer wants to stage a revival of “Hair” starring Javy Báez…

…let’s just say I’d be camping out overnight at the TKTS booth.

“Buena Vista Social Club” premiered in 2023 and began its Broadway run in 2025. It interweaves the story of four legendary Cuban musicians and how their lives intersected with a collaboration on an iconic 1997 album that the show is named after.

When Iglesias joins the cast, the show will also make Broadway history as the first musical with five Tony Awards and 13 Wins Above Replacement.

The casting is not as random as it sounds. During his career, Iglesias had a side hustle recording Latin pop music under the stage name Candelita.

When he produced one of his best seasons in 2024 hitting .337 for the NLCS-bound Mets, his single “OMG” became a team anthem and a fan favorite. 

His teammates would pose with a giant orange and blue “OMG” in the dugout after home runs and Iglesias even performed the song live at Citi Field following a Mets victory.

(I’ll leave it to you to insert your own “another historic first” line here.)

Upon viewing the video for “OMG,” it’s pretty clear Iglesias doesn’t possess anything close to Idina Menzel-level range. 

But, and this is vital for musical theater, the song still comes across as extremely fun and jubilant because he knows how to sell it like Bette Midler belting “Rose’s Turn.”

As he explained to The Athletic’s Evan Drellich, “When you have a normal conversation, in theater, you disappear, so you have to exaggerate every movement, everything you say, and how you say it and the intentions behind it. I know how to hit a sinker, I know how to take a sweeper away, and crush four-seamers. But it never crossed my mind to do such a great thing.”

I’ve always said that my favorite players are the ones who are equally comfortable being coached by Terry Francona and Uta Hagen.

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While Iglesias is the only player making the MLB to Broadway leap in recent memory, it used to be more common in baseball’s early days when star players would take advantage of their name value with offseason touring plays and vaudeville sketches that would include stops in NYC.

Drellich’s piece notes that 19th century Hall of Famer and First Team Terrible Human Cap Anson strode the Broadway stage in something called “A Runaway Colt,” presumably because he ran out of time waiting for producers to green light “Birth of a Nation: The Musical.”

About a decade later, no less than famed sociopath Ty Cobb took a show entitled “The College Widow” to New York’s Lyceum Theater. 

During the run, the show’s publicist tried to grab some headlines by hiring a fake cop to pull over The Georgia Peach in Central Park. Unfortunately, the unsuspecting Cobb responded to the faux traffic stop by genuinely beating the hell out of the poor man.

Now you know why it took so long for Broadway to cast another ballplayer. This is not something you have to worry about for the cast of “The Lion King.”

Iglesias’ run with “Buena Vista Social Club” should go much smoother and is scheduled to last six weeks. Several of his old teammates have promised to be in an attendance to catch his debut, including Francisco Lindor.

If he succeeds in the role, Iglesias will put a smile on every Mets fan’s face in 2026. Which is more than anyone currently wearing the uniform can say.

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