Roberto Clemente, a leading Latin player, honored in baseball

Major League Baseball honored Roberto Clemente Thursday night, honoring a player who has arguably done more to expand access to the sport for people of color than anyone else except Jackie Robinson.

“Roberto Clemente is just as Latin as Jackie Robinson was to African Americans,” Carlos Correa, the short-lived Puerto Rican player, said in 2019.

Both players faced discrimination—Robinson, after breaking the baseball color barrier in 1947, and Clemente, as a black Latino who debuted in the league in 1955, often speaking out against racial segregation at Jim Crow.

Clemente, the star of the Pittsburgh Pirates, died in a plane crash at the age of 38 on New Years Eve 1972, when the freighter he had chartered to transport relief supplies for earthquake victims in Nicaragua crashed in the Atlantic Ocean shortly after taking off from San Juan, Puerto Rico .

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His death came just two months after Robinson died on October 24, 1972, at the age of 53.

In 1973, Clemente, born and raised in Puerto Rico, became the first Latina player to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, 11 years after Robinson became the first African American to be inducted. The Hall of Fame waived Clemente’s usual five-year wait; The only other player to have done so was Lou Gehrig. At the induction party that summer, Clemente’s widow, Vera Clemente, said, “This is Roberto’s last victory.”

“As the patron saint of Latin baseball,” Clemente biographer David Maranis wrote, “the first to reach the Hall of Fame, coming after only Jackie Robinson among the players whose social importance has outstripped the sport itself.”

Robinson, 42, retired from baseball in 1997, on the 50th anniversary of his debut, but has resisted calls to do the same for Clemente. Commissioner Rob Manfred told ESPN a few years ago that the sport honored Clemente with the Roberto Clemente Award, which was presented to the player who best represents baseball “through exceptional character, community engagement, philanthropy, and positive contributions, on and off the field.”

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“We thought it was the most appropriate way to honor him,” Manfred said. “We don’t think we should have a one-size-fits-all approach to honoring our stars.”

On Thursday, the start of National Hispanic Heritage Month, the MLB celebrated its 21st annual Roberto Clemente Day, which features retired players who have won the Clemente Award at Citi Field in New York, along with members of the Clemente family.

Roberto Clemente’s humanistic handwriting is well documented. The New York Times reported at the time that he had led Puerto Rico’s efforts to help victims of the Nicaragua earthquake, and had decided to travel there himself because he suspected the beneficiaries were getting supplies. After the incident, the governor of Puerto Rico declared three days of mourning for Clemente, who was loved on the island.

He capped his brilliant career just three months earlier with his 3,000th hit on September 30 — double the midfield gap at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh against the New York Mets — becoming only the eleventh player to score. a job. Mets star Willie Maes came to the pirate’s lair to offer congratulations when Clemente exited the game.

Clemente decided to rest the last three games of that season to prepare for the playoffs (although he appeared as a defensive substitute in one of those matches), freezing his overall career at 3,000. His career hitting average of 0.317 was the highest among active players at the time. The Buccaneers lost the National League Championship Series to the Cincinnati Reds.

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He made his debut two decades ago when he was 20 years old in 1955, and had some decent but not amazing early seasons. Clemente began his peak years in 1960, when he hit .314 with 16 domestic runs and led the Buccaneers to a world title over the Yankees, hitting .310 at the Fall Classic.

The following year, he won a batting average of 0.351 — the first of four hitting titles in a seven-year period — hitting 23 home runs, and taking home the first of dozens of consecutive Gold Awards. He was one of the best right field defensive players of all time, with a howitzer to his arm.

“He played a kind of baseball that no one had ever seen before. Roger Angel wrote…as if it was a form of punishment for everyone else on the field.

Clemente’s performance did not decline with age. In 1971, at the age of 37, he hit 341, then won the World Player of the Year award by beating 0.414 in the Pirates’ seven-game win over the Baltimore Orioles. The following year, his final season, he hit 0.312.

He achieved these achievements while adjusting to a society that was not always so welcoming.

In a 2015 story about Clemente, presidential historian Michael Bichlos wrote: “Not only was Clemente Latino, he was black as well. Faced with mainland American culture after what he considered the most racially harmonious Puerto Rican, he later said he felt like a double stranger.”

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