Gracias, Señor Clemente

June 1, 2016 7:03 AM

Roberto Clemente was a fierce critic of both baseball and American society. "He was as likely to ruminate about civil rights as about the curveballs of Sandy Koufax or Juan Marichal." (May 31st, 2016, was Roberto Clemente Day)
posted by jillithd (11 comments total)

I wanted to name my son Roberto in honor of Mr. Clemente but my wife nixed calling the son of two white Jewish people Roberto. I really liked him as a player, but more importantly, I respected him as a person. I was only 10 when his plane went down, but I knew the importance of the event because of the reason for the flight. The fact that a ball player was using his off season to bring aid to those who needed it was a far cry from the headlines I would read about my NY Yankees on the society pages of the local tabloids. To this day, my kids wonder why a kid from the NYC suburbs, a kid who was and remains a diehard Yankee fan, would root for the Buckos. Roberto Clemente is why.

Thanks for the post.
posted by AugustWest at 7:53 AM on June 1, 2016 [7 favorites]

He was a huge loss. I wonder though if he had stayed alive if he would have ended up with the awkward principled parts of him sanded off by time in the same way Muhammad Ali has.
posted by srboisvert at 7:59 AM on June 1, 2016

Roberto Clemente was a unique talent on the field and by almost all accounts a solid guy off the field. He could perform defensive plays that were never duplicated before or since--running at full speed, breaking in two steps, turning and firing off an accurate strong throw. Bill James says he hopes somebody comes along one of these days who can do it or nobody will believe what he did was humanly possible.

There are a couple good ones on youtube but he was past 30 and not quite peak-Clemente so they look merely excellent.
posted by bukvich at 9:05 AM on June 1, 2016

He was one of the best; it was shocking to lose him so suddenly. Thanks for the post.
posted by languagehat at 9:08 AM on June 1, 2016

One of the best ever. He is missed.
posted by jonmc at 9:31 AM on June 1, 2016

David Maraniss has an excellent biography of Clemente that I recommend.

I remember seeing a baseball card of Clemente from the late 1960s that called him "Bob" Clemente. Did he ever call himself that, or was that just Topps being insulting?
posted by tallmiddleagedgeek at 9:39 AM on June 1, 2016

I learned just yesterday from the Blue Jays - Yankees telecast that the Pirates picked up Clemente from the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1954 Rule 5 draft.

That means the Dodgers didn't see enough potential in Clemente to protect him on their 40-man roster, although they did try to prevent his Rule 5 acquisition by purposely under-utilizing him in the minors to keep his stats down.

He's easily the best player ever to be picked up in a Rule 5 draft.
posted by rocket88 at 9:44 AM on June 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

I remember seeing a baseball card of Clemente from the late 1960s that called him "Bob" Clemente. Did he ever call himself that, or was that just Topps being insulting?

A lot of white people - such as Pirates radio guy Bob Prince - called him Bob or Bobby, even though he did not wish to be called that.

I have mixed feelings about his post-death deification by Pittsburgh and the Pirates. He faced a lot of local racism during his career that I think has been ignored.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:47 AM on June 1, 2016 [2 favorites]

That means the Dodgers didn't see enough potential in Clemente to protect him on their 40-man roster

This was all prior to the amateur draft being introduced in 1965, and under the rules at the time, players like Clemente who signed for bonuses greater than $6,000 actually had to be protected on the major league roster, not an expanded roster, for at least 2 years or be subject to the Rule 5 draft.

So it was actually a decision between trying to hide him in the minors to get as much development time as he could, or exposing him to big-league pitching as a 19 year-old. Many teams in those days faced that decision with a lot of their big time amateur prospects, and most opted to let them sit on their major league bench for two years before sending them down.

There is apparently some debate about whether the Dodgers were just trying to be sneaky or if, as Dodgers general manager Buzzie Bavasi has since claimed, race was a factor as well. Bavasi also was on record as saying the Dodgers' aim in acquiring Clemente to begin with was primarily to block him from the Giants, which would have been served regardless of whether or not the Pirates picked him up.
posted by AndrewInDC at 1:21 PM on June 1, 2016 [2 favorites]

That's a fine article; thanks for the post. One of my fondest ballpark memories is of a game in Pittsburgh long ago where the batter hit a ball into deep right field and – thinking he could maybe get a double out of it — made a wide turn at first. From the fence, Clemente threw behind him directly to first, so that the runner, when he decided not to go to second, came back to the bag to find himself tagged out.

Perhaps not believing that throw was humanly possible, the runner yelled at the umpire for a bit and then returned to the dugout where, from our vantage point, we could see him kick the water cooler viciously, exploding it all over the dugout.
posted by LeLiLo at 1:32 PM on June 1, 2016 [3 favorites]

A really great short book about Clemente, and his impact on at least one family. Makes a great gift too to anyone who likes Baseball. (I'd bet it's been on MeFi before)

A Drive Into the Gap
posted by DigDoug at 8:58 AM on June 2, 2016 [1 favorite]