Roberto Clemente

Roberto Clemente was born in Carolina, Puerto Rico on August 18th 1934. From his early childhood Roberto showed signs of great athletic ability. At school, he won regional competitions, once tossing the javelin 190 feet--the world record in 1953 was just over 263 feet. He was also very fast on the track competing in both sprinting and hurdling events.

But baseball was his passion.

At the age of 14, little more than a boy, Clemente played softball with men on the Sello Rojo team, sponsored by a large rice-processing company. He quickly moved up to a very competitive amateur baseball league, playing for a team known as Ferdinand Juncos.

Roberto's mother wanted him to seek a career in engineering and hoped he would pursue the profession. But in 1952, before he finished high school, Roberto was offered a professional baseball contract. Engineering would have to wait.

At age 18, Clemente made the huge leap from amateur status to the Puerto Rican professional league. He signed with the Santurce Cangrejeros in 1952 for $40 per week, with a signing bonus of $400. The Cangrejeros were good. Although Roberto played sparingly, they won the Puerto Rican championship in his rookie year. In his is second year (1953-54), Roberto was able to concentrate on his growing skills by playing every day. His game improved. He hit a respectable .288 for the season and attracted the attention of major league scouts.

In February of 1954, Clemente signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers and reported for duty to their top minor league team, the Montreal Royals. The man who signed Clemente, scout Al Campanis, had pleaded with Dodger management to place him on the major league roster right away. Otherwise, Roberto might be lost to another major league team after only one season. The Dodgers would come to regret their decision.

After a disappointing season in Canada, Clemente returned to Santurce to play in the winter league of 1954-55. The Cangrejeros brought together a constellation of stars headed by Willie Mays. They leveled the competition in Puerto Rico and went on to win the Caribbean World Series. Dubbed "Murderers Row" and "Escuadrуn del Pбnico (The Panic Squad)," the '54-55 Cangrejeros are considered by many to be the best Caribbean baseball team of all time.

Playing in left field and batting second in the lineup, Roberto was one of only four Puerto Ricans on the team. He responded to the challenge by hitting a stellar .344.

During his one season in Montreal, Roberto Clemente didn't play much. There were two basic and interrelated reasons: he had vast ability, and the Dodgers wanted to hide that immense talent from other interested teams.

In 1947 the Dodgers made history by signing Jackie Robinson, at last breaking the color barrier in professional baseball. By the time Clemente signed in 1954, there were several starting-caliber black players on the roster in Brooklyn. Because of an unstated quota system that was in place, Dodgers management resisted fielding more blacks than whites, thus was in no hurry to move Clemente up from Montreal. Meanwhile, hidden in the minors, his talent was off the market for the competition--if only for one season.

The Dodgers tried to keep Clemente under wraps, but his talent was difficult to hide.

When he did play, he often excelled. When he excelled, he was benched. Before season's end, Roberto was so frustrated he was nearly ready to quit.

Legendary baseball executive Branch Rickey moved from the Dodgers to the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1951 and immediately nabbed Clemente from Brooklyn. Roberto heard the news back in Puerto Rico and later admitted, "I didn't even know where Pittsburgh was."

Clemente's true baptism into the majors came on April 17, 1955, when he connected for a single--against the Dodgers--in his first game.

But playing the game was only part of Clemente's major league experience. He found himself surrounded by the racial politics, the brutal scrutiny of the press, and the business of the big leagues.

As if a strange language and a new culture were not challenges enough, Clemente also met racism and discrimination in their crudest forms. He quickly became an active defender of his rights and the rights of others. In one of his first games as a professional, he protested angrily when fans yelled racial insults at one of his teammates.

He became a union leader in the incipient Major League Baseball Players Association and defended players' rights to demand better working conditions and benefits.

Clemente's relationship with the press was marked by racial tension. Some members of the press were rude or scornful simply because he was black and Latino. Some made fun of his heavy Latin accent, quoting him with phonetic spelling rather than merely reporting what Clemente said.

From 1955 to 1972, Clemente played eighteen seasons for the Pittsburgh Pirates and participated in fifteen seasons of Caribbean baseball. At a late career stage when the performance of most players begins to wane, Clemente was still setting records.

Clemente's bat and base running mastery made him an offensive powerhouse. He racked up a lifetime batting average of .317 and a season average of over .300 in twelve of his last thirteen seasons. He notched four 200-hit seasons, twice leading the National League in hits and once in triples. In one game, he achieved the near impossible: three triples. Of his 3,000 career hits, 846 were for extra bases (440 doubles, 166 triples, and 240 home runs).

Clemente tied the National League record by ripping a total of ten consecutive hits over the course of two consecutive games.

His speed was always a threat, both on offense and defense. On the base paths, Clemente combined speed with aggressiveness and cunning, lengthening many hits into extra bases. He studied the way balls bounced off fences in various parks so that he could stretch his hits into doubles and triples unlike other, more ordinary baserunners.

Clemente's right-field defense was unrivaled. With lightning-quick reflexes and footspeed, he repeatedly robbed batters, by tracking down drives into the gap between right and center field.

Of all his gifts, Clemente's throwing awed fans and observers most. He possessed one of the most powerful and accurate arms in the history of the game, leading the league in assists by outfielders in five different seasons.

In fifteen seasons with the Santurce Cangrejeros, Caguas Criollos, and San Juan Senadores, Clemente compiled a batting average of .323. He competed in five championships: two with Santurce, two with San Juan and one with Caguas. In the