José Iglesias, the infielder whose walk-up anthem once shook Citi Field, is swapping his glove for a script. Iglesias will make his Broadway debut on August 27 as the Narrator in Buena Vista Social Club at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre in New York City, a six-week limited engagement that turns a Cuba-born ballplayer into a first for Major League Baseball.
According to the New York Daily News, Iglesias said the opportunity caught him off guard completely, and that he accepted it with no hesitation whatsoever. Fellow athletes and friends, per the same report, initially assumed he was lying when he told them he was headed to Broadway. Iglesias also said he first thought the producer who reached out to him had dialed the wrong number.
The casting carries real historical weight beyond the surprise of it. As reported by MLB.com, Iglesias will become the first Latino Major League Baseball player to perform on Broadway when he takes the stage this month, a milestone that lands squarely at the intersection of his baseball career and his Cuban heritage.
A Story That Mirrors His Own Journey
Buena Vista Social Club is about a legendary musical group from Havana, and the production highlights Cuba and Latin American culture more broadly, per the Daily News. Developed by director Saheem Ali and book writer Marco Ramirez, the musical toggles between 1956 and 1996 in Havana, following Cuban musicians affected by Fidel Castro's revolution who reunited decades later to record their landmark 1997 album, according to Exeunt Magazine. The show features an all-Spanish score paired with English dialogue.
Iglesias himself is a Cuba native who defected from the island at age 18 in July 2008, while competing with the Cuban national junior team at the World Junior Baseball Championship in Edmonton, Canada, the Edmonton Sun reported. He had come up through Cuba's national junior baseball system starting at age nine before signing with the Boston Red Sox in 2009. The parallel between his own path out of Havana and the fictionalized musicians at the center of the show gives his casting an unmistakable personal resonance.
The production itself arrives on Broadway with serious pedigree. Buena Vista Social Club won five Tony Awards in 2025, including Best Choreography for Patricia Delgado and Justin Peck, and picked up the 2026 Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album, as Hoodline previously reported in connection with the show's touring run through Miami's Arsht Center. The musical transferred to Broadway following a sold-out Off-Broadway run at Atlantic Theater Company.
From Citi Field Anthem to the Great White Way
Iglesias' road to Broadway runs directly through Queens. Playing for the New York Mets in 2024, he released a single called “OMG” under his stage name Candelita, and the song became the team's unofficial anthem during their playoff run. The Daily News notes that Iglesias performed the original song for Mets fans himself.
The numbers behind that moment are striking. “OMG” debuted at No. 1 on Billboard's Latin Digital Song Sales chart in July 2024, according to Billboard, marking his first career entry on any Billboard chart — a song he wrote during the offseason at his home near Miami. On June 28, 2024, following a 7-2 Mets win over the Houston Astros, Iglesias performed the track live near shortstop at Citi Field in front of 32,465 fans, flanked by teammates holding “OMG” signs, per WFAA. The track was played at Citi Field after every Mets home run and win that season. Iglesias later brought the same performance to Major League Baseball's All-Star Game festivities in Arlington, Texas, in July 2024, a set broadcast internationally during All-Star week, according to Sports Illustrated.
That Mets stretch came after Iglesias was recalled from Triple-A Syracuse on May 31, 2024, when the club sat at 23-33; the team went 66-40 the rest of the way to secure an NL Wild Card berth, with “OMG” serving as the rallying cry of that postseason push, per New Times Miami. It's the kind of run that explains why his Broadway debut, just blocks from where Mets fans once chanted his song, feels like a homecoming of sorts for New York audiences.
A 13-Year Career Still Not Finished
Iglesias has played for eight different teams across 13 MLB seasons from 2011 through 2025, including the Red Sox, Detroit Tigers, Cincinnati Reds, Los Angeles Angels, Colorado Rockies, Baltimore Orioles, San Diego Padres and the Mets. Across that span he compiled a .279 career batting average with 1,207 hits in 1,212 games, earned an American League All-Star nod in 2015 with the Tigers, and finished second in 2013 AL Rookie of the Year voting, according to Baseball Reference.
His most recent season, spent with the Padres in 2025, saw him post a .229 average with three home runs and 36 RBIs across 112 games before he entered the 2026 season as an unsigned free agent, per Larry Brown Sports. That open free-agent status is what makes the six-week Broadway run possible in the first place.
Despite the stage lights, Iglesias has made clear this isn't a farewell to the diamond. He said the Broadway role is not the end of his baseball career, and per the Daily News, he does not plan to retire in the near future. For now, though, the shortstop-turned-recording-artist has one more role to play — six weeks as the Narrator, telling a story of Havana that isn't so far from his own.
.jpg){kind=link}