Roberto Clemente

Roberto Clemente (1934-1972), Puerto Rican baseball player and humanitarian. Roberto Enrique Clemente Walker was born in the Puerto Rican city of Carolina, the son of a homemaker and a foreman on a sugar cane plantation. After centuries of exploitation by Spain and then the U.S., his family and most other Puerto Ricans suffered from socioeconomic inequality. This was especially true for blacks. Although slavery had been less widespread and racism was less rigid than on the U.S. mainland, black Puerto Ricans were still firmly implanted at the bottom of society, and many identified as white. In spite of this, his parents instilled a sense of pride as a Puerto Rican of African descent and an unwillingness to accept inequality; as he later recalled, “My mother and father never told me to hate anyone or they never told me to dislike anybody because of race or color.” Clemente showed early promise as a javelin thrower, but his greatest talent was in baseball. Making a bat from a tree branch and a glove from a coffee bean sack, he joined in a professional league at the age of fourteen, and while he was still in high school he began playing with the Cangrejeros de Santurce (“Santurce Crabbers”) of the Puerto Rican Professional Baseball League. Two years later in 1954, he was scouted and signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers. Baseball was the most popular sport in Puerto Rico and other parts of Latin America that had been conquered by the U.S. Many Latin Americans saw the sport as a way to escape from poverty, but this opportunity was more limited for those of African descent. Major League Baseball banned black players, and so while black and white players competed together in the integrated leagues of Latin America, in the U.S. white Latinos were able to join MLB while Afro-Latin players competed in the Negro Leagues. When Jackie Robinson broke the color line in 1947, this also created new opportunities for Afro-Latin players. Of the sixteen men who were the first black players on each Major League team, four were from Latin America.

After playing one season with the Dodgers’ minor league team in Montreal, Clemente signed a new contract with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1955. At that time the Pirates were one of the worst franchises in baseball, having finished in last place for three consecutive years. He hit a promising .284 in his first year and in the next became the first player in baseball history to end a game with an inside-the-park grand slam. He gained increasing attention around baseball for his hitting and especially his defense in right field, where his powerful throwing arm enabled him to finish near the top of the league in assists for throwing out baserunners, including one occasion when Ron Santo of the Cubs hit the ball into the right field corner at Wrigley Field and ran around the bases to third, only to find the ball there waiting for him after Clemente had fired it nearly 400 feet. The Pirates team also improved in the late 1950s, enjoying their first winning season in a decade. Finally, in 1960 he was named an All-Star for the first time and the Pirates went to the World Series. Facing the heavily favored Yankees, he got at least one hit in every game, batted .310 overall, and helped the Pirates become baseball champions for the first time since 1925. This was the beginning of a decade of dominance for Clemente. During the 1960s he won four batting titles, got more hits than any other player, won the Gold Glove every year, and was named the Most Valuable Player in 1966, becoming only the second Latinx player to win the latter award. During the off seasons, Clemente served in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, played in the Puerto Rican league, and did charity work on his home island, following his oft-stated creed that “If you have the chance to make things better for people coming behind you and you don’t, you are wasting your time on earth."

Despite his many successes, Clemente often struggled with life in Pittsburgh. The city had a large African American population that embraced him but few Spanish speakers, and blue-collar whites were less welcoming despite sharing his class background. Author Richard Peterson, for instance, later recalled that he had been unable to overcome the hostility instilled by his “shot and beer neighborhood defined by its ethnic enclaves, its steel mill mentality and its deep distrust of minorities.” Clemente was often called “Bob” on his baseball cards and by reporters, who also printed his words in a quasi-phonetic style that made him look foolish. After he drove in the winning run in the 1961 All-Star Game, for instance, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ran the headline “I GET HEET. I FEEL GOOD” and the words “I jus’ try to sacrifice myself, so I get runner to third if I do, I feel good. But I get heet.” He was also criticized for missing games due to back trouble, which had begun in his rookie season after a drunk driver hit his car. In response, he insisted on being called “Roberto” and became reluctant to speak to reporters, telling one “The farther away you writers stay, the better I like it. You know why? Because you’re trying to create a bad image of me… you do it because I’m black and Puerto Rican, but I’m proud to be Puerto Rican.” This led them to criticize him for being moody, prideful, and lazy, thus invoking stereotypes of the unmotivated black and the emotional Latin American. When the sportswriters voted for Most Valuable Player in 1960, he finished eighth. At the same time, he was a hero in Latin America. When he returned home after the 1961 season, 18,000 people waited at the airport to cheer him. He also inspired many Puerto Ricans to take greater pride in their black heritage, and major league teams began scouting for other Latin American players more heavily, causing a steady increase in their numbers. He embraced his responsibilities as a role model, telling one reporter in his last ever interview that “I am Puerto Rican. I am Black and I am between the walls. So anything that I do first, it would be reflected on me because I’m Black, and second, it would be reflected on me because I am Puerto Rican.”

Clemente also fought for equal rights on multiple fronts. One African American teammate recalled that “Our conversations always stemmed around people from all walks of life being able to get along well, or no excuse why that shouldn’t be…He had a problem with people who treated you differently because of where you were from, your nationality, your color, also poor people…He preached like a Baptist minister. He would say, ‘How can the rich have so much and there are people starving?’ This was his mindset…His spirituality.” The Pirates and other teams held spring training in southern states, where black players were banned from the same hotels and restaurants as their white teammates. The common practice was for white players to eat in the restaurants and then bring food to their black teammates on the bus, but Clemente refused to comply and instead forced the Pirates to get a station wagon for the black players so that they could drive to restaurants that served them. He later said of this protest, “They say, 'Roberto, you better keep your mouth shut because they will ship you back.’ [But] this is something from the first day I said to myself: I am in the minority group. I am from the poor people. I represent the poor people. I represent the common people of America. So I am going to be treated like a human being. I don't want to be treated like a Puerto Rican, or a black, or nothing like that. I want to be treated like any person.” Although his relationship with the white press was unpleasant, black newspapers regularly printed his thoughts on desegregation. In 1962 he attended a speech by Martin Luther King in Puerto Rico and then invited King to his farm to discuss civil rights. Six years later Dr. King was assassinated just before the start of the baseball season. Clemente led his team in voting unanimously that the start of the season should be postponed until after King’s funeral, issuing a statement that read “We are doing this because we respect what Dr. King has done for mankind…Dr. King was not only concerned with Negro or whites but also poor people. We owe this gesture to his memory and his ideals.” This encouraged other teams to make the same decision. His son later summarized all of this by simply stating “[Dad] did not ask to be treated better, he demanded to be treated equally, which is very different.”

In 1970, the Pirates became the first major league team to field an all-black starting lineup, featuring Clemente, a Panamanian, a Cuban, and six African Americans. That year the team also held “Roberto Clemente Night,” during which he was presented with a list of 300,000 signatures gathered in Puerto Rico (this comprised more than ten percent of the island’s total population) and the team donated thousands of dollars to charity. A year later the Pirates won the World Series, again as a heavy underdog. In the World Series Clemente hit .414, made several key defensive plays, and drove in the only runs in the final game with a home run; in a sign of how things had changed since his early career, the pitcher who gave up the home run was a fellow Afro-Latin. He was named World Series Most Valuable Player, the first Latinx player so honored, and in postgame interviews he responded to reporters’ questions in Spanish before switching to English. In 1972 he battled through numerous injuries before getting his 3,000^th hit near the end of the season, becoming only the eleventh player to ever do so. That turned out to be his last regular season hit. In December 1972 Nicaragua was hit by an earthquake that killed at least 4,000 people, and left hundreds of thousands more injured, homeless, and in danger of starvation. Clemente sent three planes and a ship carrying food and supplies, but these resources did not reach the people who needed them, and it was rumored that Nicaragua’s dictator was hoarding the donations. Clemente reasoned that if he personally accompanied the next shipment, his presence as one of the world’s most famous Latin Americans would ensure that the donations were distributed properly. He and several family members had premonitions that the flight would not go well, and since Dr. King’s death he had come to believe that he would also not live to an old age, but he insisted on going. He was unaware that the plane he chartered from Carolina had recently suffered engine damage and was carrying 4,000 pounds more than the allowed amount. On the night of December 31, the plane crashed just after takeoff. At the age of thirty-eight Roberto Clemente was dead, along with the four other people on board were killed. His body was never found.

In addition to his 3,000 hits, Clemente had a lifetime batting average of .317, which is the seventh highest of any player in the integration era, the fifth highest of any black player, and the third highest of any Latinx player. He was named to fifteen All-Star teams and won twelve Gold Gloves, the most of any outfielder. He is also ranked seventeenth all time in outfield assists, and every player ranked ahead of him played in the late 1800s or early 1900s when assists were more common. The Pirates retired his No. 21, making him the second player in team history so honored. The journalists who voted for the Baseball Hall of Fame and who had often clashed with him in life now waived the rule that players could not be elected until five years after their retirement. He became the fifth black player and the first Latinx player elected, although his plaque further symbolized their lack of cultural awareness by listing his full name as “Roberto Walker Clemente” rather than “Roberto Clemente Walker.” That same year, the annual award given to the player who “best exemplifies the game of baseball, sportsmanship, community involvement and the individual's contribution to his team" was renamed for him. Recipients of the Roberto Clemente Award have money donated to the charity of their choice and to Roberto Clemente Sports City, which provides recreational activities for children in Carolina. In 2020 the Pirates instituted Roberto Clemente Day, on which every player wore No. 21 and distributed charity to Pittsburghers suffering from the COVID-19 Pandemic. There is also a movement to retire his number around the league, similar to what was done for Jackie Robinson and to recognize his pioneering legacy. In 1956 only 6% of players starting on Opening Day were Latinx, but in 2020 that number had climbed to 37%. Eighteen more Latinx players have won the MVP award, along with fifteen other batting champions, four other members of the 3,000-hit club, nine other World Series MVPs, and fifteen other Hall of Famers. In addition, seven Latinx players have won the Roberto Clemente Award. One of those was his fellow black Puerto Rican Carlos Delgado, who said in 2020 that “It’s incredible when you have a Hall of Famer with not only that trajectory in baseball, but in humanitarianism and his willingness to fight for human rights. He had great pride and integrity as a Black Puerto Rican and Latino, claiming his place in a very, very complicated environment. You look at it now and I can’t even imagine what it was like in the ‘60s to be Black in a clubhouse with mostly white people, with white reporters constantly bothering you, making fun of your accent.” Delgado and others also firmly believe that if Clemente was still alive, he would be a force in the rising wave of social activism. The director of the Roberto Clemente Museum in Pittsburgh, which hung a Black Lives Matter banner on the outside wall, said that “Clemente would have been out there leading these protests,” while Clemente’s son asserted that “I truly believe my Dad would be saying what he always said, ‘We don’t wanna be treated as a Puerto Rican, or as African American, we don’t want to be treated as anything but an equal.’”

©David Brodnax, Sr.