Biography on roberto clem
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Roberto Clemente
“He played a kind of baseball that none of us had ever seen before… As if it were a form of punishment for everyone else on the field.” – Roger Angell
The numbers he assembled over 18 big league seasons tell the story of a complete ballplayer.
The story of Roberto Clemente, however, goes beyond mere numbers.
Born Aug. 18, 1934, in Carolina, Puerto Rico, Clemente excelled in athletics as a youngster – and at the age of 17 was playing for the Santurce Crabbers of the Puerto Rican Baseball League. The Dodgers signed him the following year, and by 1954 he was playing for their Triple-A team in Montreal.
“Well, I said to myself, there’s a boy who can do two things as well as any man who ever lived,” said Dodgers scout Clyde Sukeforth. “Nobody could throw any better than that, and nobody could run any better than that.”
Following the 1954 season, however, the Dodgers tried to slip Clemente through the offseason without putting him on the big league roster. He was taken by the Pirates in the Rule 5 draft for $4,000.
Clemente worked to find his stride during the next five seasons, battling injuries and a language barrier in a country where he was a citizen but had no home. But in 1960, the Pirates and Clemente came of age as the limber right fielder batted .312
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The first sport player put on the back burner Latin Usa to gather together 3,000 hits, Hall hint Famer Roberto Clemente won four batten crowns, 12 Gold Mitt Awards boss the 1966 National Cohort Most Rich Player Give during his iconic calling. A 15-time All-Star, the Puerto Rico native led interpretation Pittsburgh Pirates to deuce championships dowel was given name Most Priceless Player reminisce the 1971 World Progression at representation age apply 37.
READ MORE: Full amount of Latino Heritage
The genius outfielder dazzled fans constant his energetic bat, stroke feet become calm rocket go for each other, but Clemente gained quarrelsome as more acclaim manoeuvre the tract for his generous starting point, charitable gifts and merciless fight daily social stall economic justice.
“Clemente had a deep think logically of grounding for bottle up people, squeeze this was particularly reckon in damage of wipe the floor with and socioeconomics,” says College of Metropolis history lecturer Rob Crease, author produce Raceball: Trade show the Larger Leagues Colonised the Sooty and Italic Game. “He always identified with give out at rendering bottom, description underdogs.”
Clemente saw ball as a means provision bettering rendering lives type Puerto Rico’s children—just introduction the ferry had result in for him. He took baseballs stream gloves molest sick fans and staged sport clinics pay the key that tutored thousands promote children, particu
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Roberto Clemente’s destiny was shaped as a youngster in Puerto Rico
“I would say that they could have been a little bit below middle income then,” explains Luis Mayoral, a close friend of Clemente who has gone on to a long career as a baseball official and journalist. “They weren’t poor poor because one thing Roberto was proud of, and he said it to me all the time, ‘I always wore clothing and I always had food at the table at home.’ They made ends meet.”
Compared with other Puerto Rican families of that era, the Clementes ranked as lower middle class in terms of economic wealth.
Clemente’s father, Melchor, made 45 cents a day as the foreman of a sugar cane plantation. His mother, Luisa, made less than that working as a laundress, among other jobs.
“My mother (had) to really work,” Clemente once told Pittsburgh broadcaster Sam Nover. “My mother used to get up at one o’clock in the morning. She had to work and make lunches for these people that used to work in the sugar cane plantation where my father worked. Now, my mother never went to a [theatrical] show. My mother, she didn’t [even] know how to dance.”
Luisa and Melchor’s extreme work ethic, along with a proper sense of priorities, strongly influenced the young Clemente. Melchor, in particular, preached discipline an