- published: 17 Sep 2013
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Alfonso Ramon "Al" Lopez (August 20, 1908 – October 30, 2005) was an American catcher and manager in Major League Baseball, and was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1977.
Lopez was the son of immigrants from Asturias, Spain who went to Cuba, then settled the Spanish-Cuban-Italian immigrant community of Ybor City, Tampa, Florida in the late 1880s. His Spanish-American heritage and "gentlemanly nature" earned him the nickname "El Señor".
He established a major league record for career games as a catcher, and later became the only manager to interrupt the New York Yankees' string of American League pennants from 1949 to 1964. With a .584 career winning percentage, he ranks 4th in major league history among managers of at least 2000 games, behind Joe McCarthy (.615), Frank Selee (.598) and John McGraw (.586). Over the course of 15 full seasons as manager, he never had a losing record.
Al Lopez was born in the immigrant neighborhood of Ybor City in Tampa, Florida. The cigar industry was most important in Tampa at the time, and Lopez's father, Modesto Lopez, worked in a cigar factory. Al visited his father's workplace as a child and "hated" the smell of tobacco that permeated the factory building. "I vowed never to work in one," he said later. Modesto died of throat cancer when Al was a young child.
George Lopez (born April 23, 1961) is an American comedian, actor, and talk show host. He is mostly known for starring in his self-produced ABC sitcom George Lopez. His stand-up comedy examines race and ethnic relations, including the Mexican American culture. He was the host of the late-night talk show Lopez Tonight on TBS until its cancellation on August 12, 2011.
Lopez was born on April 23, 1961 in Mission Hills, California. He was deserted by his father when he was two months old and by his mother when he was 10 years old, but was raised by his maternal grandmother, Benita Gutierrez, a factory worker, and step-grandfather, Refugio Gutierrez, a construction worker.
In 1999, Lopez hosted a major morning radio show for Clear Channel Communications in Los Angeles. He was the first Latino to have headlined the keystone morning radio slot on an English-language station in LA—the nation’s top radio market.
In 2000, after several years of performing stand-up comedy, Lopez was approached by actress Sandra Bullock for Lopez to produce and star in a comedy. Bullock was concerned about the lack of Hispanic-oriented sitcoms on American television and pushed to get a sitcom on television that starred Hispanics without being exclusively about the Hispanic American community. Long criticized by Hispanic American groups for lack of Latinos on their television shows, ABC quickly picked up the television series. In 2002, Lopez became one of the few Latinos to star in a television comedy series, following in the footsteps of Desi Arnaz, Freddie Prinze, and John Leguizamo. George Lopez is an American situation comedy that originally aired on ABC from 2002–2007. Lopez is the co-creator, writer, producer, and star of the show.