Baseball Changed When Clemente Came to Play
Robert Heuer     [Photo]

On Sept. 7 baseball celebrates Roberto Clemente Day. Each of the 30 big league franchises will honor an individual player who resembles Clemente both by excelling on the field and contributing to his community. Next month, at the World Series, one ballplayer will be presented with an award named for this extraordinary man.

Clemente and four others died in 1972 when their plane crashed into the Caribbean Sea after taking off from Puerto Rico. The 38-year-old Pittsburgh Pirate right fielder was planning to help distribute relief supplies for Nicaraguan earthquake victims.

Today, schools, hospitals, parks and avenues bear the Clemente name. Same goes for the only other guy whom baseball honors each year.

Every April 15, the baseball world recalls the day in 1947 when the Brooklyn Dodgers’ Jackie Robinson became the first African-American major leaguer of the 20th century. Fifty years later, in 1997, baseball remembered this event by retiring Jackie’s number 42.

Last April 17 was the golden anniversary of Clemente’s debut. Maybe the lack of fanfare was appropriate.

“Jackie did something very important in the United States by breaking the racial barrier,” Chicago White Sox manager Ozzie Guillén says. “But Roberto came here to play baseball, make his name and be a decent person. He didn’t come to break down barriers but he had to anyway. There was the barrier of being a black Latin and the language barrier.”

Four games into the 1955 season, he replaced Cuban Rubén Mejías in the Pirate lineup and, in his first at-bat, beat out an infield grounder for a base hit.

Stardom was years away. However, from the start, this proud, intelligent and sensitive man felt that U.S. citizenship should mean acceptance. Certainly he felt it entitled him to express outrage when sportswriters called him the “Puerto Rican hotdog” and used phonetic quotes that made him sound stupid.

Latinos had been playing major league baseball for four decades. Condescending treatment came with the territory.

Fellow Latinos advised the 20-year-old rookie to keep his mouth shut. But Clemente argued with reporters. He challenged white teammates who failed to defend him and fellow black Pirates who were the targets of racial epithets from the opposition.

Throughout his career, Clemente spoke out against injustices. He forced baseball to give Latino ballplayers some respect.

Clemente Day honors a man who died for a cause larger than himself. But the way he lived — tearing down the game’s cultural barriers — is also an important story to tell as major league baseball builds its global market.

Baseball Hall of Fame officials conceded my point in a phone conversation last January. Besides, Clemente was the first Latin American Hall of Famer. They briefly considered fitting the Clemente milestone into a series of events honoring the 50th anniversary of Brooklyn’s one world championship. Clemente originally signed with the Dodgers, but was drafted by the Pirates in November 1954.

Honoring Clemente a half century later would help show how Latinos have become such a dominant force in baseball. That was the pitch that Los Angeles Dodgers broadcaster Jaime Jarrín made to the team’s marketing people last winter. They said Clemente is a Pirate story.

Pittsburgh has Clemente Way, the statue outside PNC Park, and the roars inside every time Roberto’s image appears on scoreboard video clips. Native son Sean Casey wears his boyhood idol’s #21 for the Cincinnati Reds. Latinos feel truly honored to play for Clemente’s team. But Pirate officials concede that they didn’t notice the anniversary.

Clemente was also overlooked in 1999 when fans elected 30 players to an All-Century team. Major league baseball tried to correct this oversight by inviting fans to vote in a “Latino Legends” contest through Oct. 10 at mlb.com or participating Chevy dealers). Baseball officials say they’re honoring Latinos’ “storied history,” but make no mention of the Clemente anniversary.

Clemente’s name was in the news this summer after an auction house announced plans to sell pieces of the airplane in which he died. His widow and children protested.

Cancelling the auction was the right thing to do, insists Guillén. The first Venezuelan big league manager, Guillén views Roberto as a Latin Babe Ruth and has a room filled with Clemente memorabilia—including a chunk of the airplane wing acquired in exchange for a baseball glove.

”Doing this for money would be wrong,” Guillén explains, noting that the way that Roberto died ensured his place as a legend. “They found part of the plane, but never found his body. It’s all part of the mystery of Roberto Clemente.”

(Robert Heuer is an Evanston, Ill.-based journalist and consultant. He may be contacted by email at rjheuer@comcast.net)

© 2005, Hispanic Link News Service
09/04/05
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