I wonder why, since they’re animal names, “Rays de Tampa Bay” and “Marlins de Florida” don’t get translated as “Tigres de Detroit” and “Cardenales de San Luis” do?
Also interesting that names of NFL and NBA teams are left untranslated on ESPN Deportes (same place Colibri linked to above). ESPN Deportes doesn’t seem to have any information on NHL teams.
Yeah, what they said.
As a kid, most sports commentators would translate every single term to Spanish. Then they were English terms sounded in Spanish, then they went to all English.
Home runs went from “cuadrangulares” to “jonrones” to “home runs”
This is why older teams have Spanish translation while the newer teams do not (Diamond Backs, Tampa, etc).
As for the White Sox. “medias” is “socks” and most Latins, whether they use it or not, will understand the term.
As for the “los”, although “medias” are female, ball teams are male, and the article is not referring to the socks but to the team.
Holy cow! I commonly see “jonrones” in the Mexican press (no Spanish press in the USA to speak of), but… “cuadrangulares”? If I saw that in print, I’d think they were writing in a foreign language! (or blame it on Spanish Spanish, right or wrong.)
In US Spanish, then, is it “baseball” or “béisbol”? Or (German inspiration here), “juegodeganarcuadrangulares”?
Sad that I’m a white bread American and live in the USA, and know more Mexican Spanish than US Spanish.
Home runs are cuadrangulares in Panama too.
The one I never understood was *un chocolate *for a strikeout.
Never heard the chocolate one. In Venezuela they say “una arepa” for an inning with no runs and “nueve arepas” for a “blanqueada” a game lost with zero runs. “Arepas” being round as a zero (they are a corn meal biscuit there, different from the Puerto Rican ones).
Balthisar, the list of Spanish Spanish terms in beisbol is long and entertaining. Campo corto, abanicadas, receptor, imparable, dobletes, and everyone’s favorite: el toque de bola.
Cuadrangulares back in PR, too. What is kind of funny is that you can read/listen to commentators switch between cuadrangulares and jonrones and other terms during a broadcast/column/series of column. 
I guess whatever flows out of the tongue at the moment goes.
Perhaps analogous to “cup of coffee” in American baseball slang?
“Cup of coffee” doesn’t mean “strikeout” in America, though, but it does mean a brief stint in the major leagues – maybe only a game or two. Perhaps un chocolate is based on “a brief stint at bat, time enough pnly for a cup of chocolate”?
Or not 
Very close in connotation to “a donut”.