Roberto Clemente: Among First Puerto Rican Baseball Players

Roberto Clemente was an extraordinary baseball player with a presence that captivated fans, especially young people. Known for his powerful hitting, swift base-running, and an arm likened to a “rifle” for its strength and precision, Clemente left an unforgettable mark on the game. While he loved baseball, his devotion to his family and his homeland of Puerto Rico came above all else.

Today, baseball showcases players from many ethnic backgrounds, but there was a time when Latino players faced severe discrimination. Although Jackie Robinson’s entry into Major League Baseball in 1947 marked the beginning of integration, progress remained slow and uneven. For Latino players, even in the 1960s, segregation persisted, as they were often barred from staying in the same hotels or eating in the same restaurants as their white teammates during spring training in the South.

The Pittsburgh Pirates

Roberto Clemente (1934-1972) persevered, playing for the Pittsburgh Pirates for eighteen seasons. He won four national League batting titles; 12 Gold Gloves, recognizing his work as a defense player in right field. Remarkably, he achieved 3000 hits during his career (one of only ten players to do by 1972 when Clemente hit that record. He was also the first Puerto Rican to be voted Most Valuable Player (1971 World Series). Later, he was selected for the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Clemente’s values involved doing all he could for his country of birth. Whenever he had the opportunity, he ran baseball clinics for children there, as that was an opportunity that he never had.

During the baseball season, he visited children in the local hospitalswhere the team played.

He died during the baseball off-season when he was in a plane crash taking supplies to earthquake victims in Nicaragua on New Year’s Eve 1972.

Early Life

Roberto Enrique Clemente was the youngest of seven siblings born to Luisa Walker in Carolina, Puerto Rico. His father, Melchor, was a foreman for a sugar cane enterprise. Resources were tight, so Melchor Clemente’s sons often worked alongside their father. Sugar cane is heavy and hard to handle so the boys became strong doing the work.

Both parents set an example of hard work and discipline. His mother took care of the family but she and Melchor also committed to providing lunch to many of the sugar cane workers. Luisa rose early every day to prepare the midday meal.

In high school, Roberto Clemente was a great athlete. He became a track and field star, participating in high jump and the javelin throw. But his preference for sports play was baseball.

Baseball in the Barrio

Baseball was a popular street game in the barrios, but in the Carolina district, many of the children did not have money for equipment. Clemente and his brothers sometimes used a broomstick or a Guava branch as a bat.

They often lacked a baseball, so they used a paper ball, a rubber ball, or a lumpy sphere of strings and old rags, according to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. 

During one barrio game, Clemente was noticed by an executive with the Sello Rojo rice company. The company sponsored a softball team, and the fellow recruited Clemente to play for them.  

Getting Noticed By the Dodgers

While still in high school, he signed with the Puerto Rican baseball team, the Santurce Cangrejeros, a winter league team supported by the Puerto Rican Professional Baseball League. The first year he saw little play, but during the second year he was on the starting lineup. A scout for the Brooklyn Dodgers noticed him.

In 1954, the Brooklyn Dodgers offered Roberto Clemente a contract with a signing bonus. Following the Baseball League rules, players paid more than $4,000 as a signing bonus were considered “Bonus Babies.”  Clemente’s bonus was $10,000 to sign.

According to the League, the teams were to abide by certain rules with bonus babies. The signing  player was not to be shipped off to a farm team at the beginning of his contract. He was to stay with the team that signed him, playing when he could. In theory, this was a good idea, but bonus babies were young players and needed more opportunity to play before working with the Major Leagues, so in many cases, it was counter productive.

The Brooklyn Dodgers must have hoped that no one would notice that they placed Clemente with an affiliated team, the Montreal Royals. They wanted him to have more playing experience, but the coach of the Royals was told, “If you notice baseball scouts in the crowd, bench him.”

They knew Clemente was special, and they didn’t want him seen and possibly drafted by another team. 

Return to Puerto Rico For the Winter League

Customarily, Black and Latino players finished the regular baseball season in the U.S., and then joined a team to play for a Latin American country for the winter season. These players made less money than their white counterparts. They loved the game, but it also offered the opportunity to increase their income.

After Clemente finished his second season with the Royals, he returned to play ball with a Puerto Rican team as he always did. It was probably there that he was spotted by the Pittsburgh Pirates. According to Rule 5 in baseball, if the team that signed a “bonus baby” violates the contract, then Rule 5 permitted other teams to make offers.

Someone with the Pirates must have known that Clemente was playing for the Montreal Royals, so they bought out Clemente’s contract with a payment to the Dodgers of $4,000.

By the mid-1950s, Clemente was on his way to Pittsburgh.

Father Comes to a Few Games

 Melchor Clemente was a hard-working man. He loved his family but he didn’t have time for side interests or hobbies.  Finally, when Roberto was playing in the winter league and making a name for himself, Melchor agreed to come to a game. In an anecdote from David Maraniss’ book, Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball’s Last Hero, Maraniss writes that Melchor did not understand baseball.

After one of the games, Melchor told his son he was very sorry that he was relegated to run around to all the bases when most of the others got up to bat and then got to sit down.

Joined the Marine Reserve

Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens by birthright. Because Roberto Clemente was a patriotic man to both Puerto Rico and America, he was proud to sign up for the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve in 1958. His training involved six months active service, split between Parris Island, South Carolina, and Camp LeJeune, North Carolina.

He ultimately said that the strength training he did with the military helped him overcome back problems he suffered since his car had been hit by a drunk driver when Clemente was only 20.

Personal Life

While home in Puerto Rico, Roberto Clemente became smitten by a young woman he met. It took persistence for Clemente to get Vera Zabala to agree to go out with him. Then when it worked out between them, he worked hard to persuade Vera and her father to agree to a marriage.

The couple was married in November of 1964. It was a great marriage. They had three children. The discriminatory atmosphere in the United States made both Vera and Roberto very uncomfortable. Vera visited when Clemente was in the U.S. but tended not to stay long

Both Vera and Roberto felt strongly that their children should be born in Puerto Rico, so each time, she was pregnant, she returned home.

The two were also united in the charity work that Clemente found important and rewarding.

Segregation

Both Latino and Black players continued to face discrimination in the United States, even as late as the 1960s.

Because Clemente was one of the first Latino players to qualify for a major league team in the United States, he often encountered discrimination. Three Latino baseball players, Victor Pellot, Hiram Bithorn, and Luis Olmo, known as the Three Kings—preceded him. There were still many obstacles to overcome.

When the team traveled, he could not travel or eat or stay with the team because of “whites only” restrictions. The practice was that the Black and Latino players wait on the bus while the white players went into a restaurant for a meal. When the team came out, they would bring food for the waiting team members.

Clemente was both saddened and angry by this and felt that there should be no “second class” team members.

By 1961, Clemente was sick of this treatment and complained bitterly. The Pittsburgh Courier, a Black newspaper, took up his campaign. Team management finally responded, but the solution was not to let the men join their white friends. They were provided with a station wagon. Instead of traveling on the bus, the minority players were able to drive themselves to the next destination and look for restaurants where they could be fed.

He and the team’s Cuban shortstop were placed with Black families in Pittsburgh because they could not stay with the team.

Visceral Understanding of the Civil Rights Movement

Clemente became friends with Martin Luther King, Jr, and the two men enjoyed the opportunities they had to talk together.

King was in Memphis in April of 1968 to aid the sanitation workers who were on strike. He was assassinated while there.

Clemente was beside himself at the loss of his friend and the civil rights leader. King was to be buried on April 9, and yet Clemente and his team were to start the new season on April 8 of that year. Led by Clemente, the Black players refused to play unless opening day was moved to April 10 so the players could attend the funeral.

As the Major League management saw what had happened, they wisely moved the opening day for all teams. Despite that, the early games took place against the backdrop of civil unrest in more than 100 cities. 

Demons

Roberto Clemente was first to admit that he had many demons. The car accident when he was only 20 dislodged three of the discs in his lower spine. Low back pain followed him the rest of his career. Every game was preceded by a trip to the team trainer.

He had great difficulty sleeping, perhaps partly because of the back pain. His disrupted sleep was particularly vexing during baseball season when he couldn’t get the rest he needed.

In all likelihood, the chronic pain led to many of his other health concerns. However in the winter of 1965, he came down with malaria and was seriously ill. He was hospitalized and lost almost 25 pounds.

To have been seriously ill only compounded his anxiety about his aches and pains. The media sometimes wrote of him as a hypochondriac. This further angered him.

Baseball Achievements

As a baseball player, he was beloved by the public and seemed to have a magnetic appeal. Clemente was known for excellent out fielding. He could catch and throw whatever came his direction. He had a strong arm, powerful wrists, and one writer described him as having eyes in his fingertips—his catches were so uncanny.

He earned 12 Gold Gloves for outstanding fielding, and he emerged from his career with 3,000 hits and was a four-time batting champion. He was also selected as outstanding player of 1971 World Series. (For complete statistics on Roberto Clemente, see his Major League Baseball page.

Because he stayed in such good shape throughout his career, reporters were always looking for answers to his eating and exercise routine. He got tired of answering the question as he got older and started telling writers that he put in a hard 3-hour workout during the off-season. In fact, nothing could have been further from the truth. He was more likely to be at home doing small repairs on the house than at the gym exercising.

The Bats He Preferred

At the time, Clemente became one of the baseball players that had 3000 hits in his career, he was one of only ten players. (Today that number is only 33 players. It’s an exclusive club.)

Fans loved watching him when he came up for bat. He preferred heavier bats. They were a challenge to lift, but Clemente made it look easy.

He originally used a bat made by Hillerich & Bradsby, commercialized as the Louisville Slugger bat.  Later in his career, he came to prefer a bat that was made by the same company but was originally made for a baseball player named Bernard Bartholomew “Frenchy” Uhalt. Uhalt played in the Pacific Coast League, and while his career spanned only 57 games in the minor leagues, he became well-known because Roberto Clemente came to favor his bat.

At the end of the season, Clemente generally met with a representative from Hillerich & Bradsby. He knew everything about the bats he liked, and one of the points he made was that the bats should be made of wide grains, He knew that wide grains were from summer growth, and that was what he preferred.

He tested the bats by swinging them against each other and could identify based on the sound.

Just before his death, the company was at work on a new model for him. In late December, they sent two versions of the bat so he could choose. Sadly, he likely never held either in his hands.

At the Plate

Fans loved watching him approach home plate when it was his turn to bat. He never smiled. He sometimes took with him two or three bats to the on-deck circle. According to Davad Maraniss, he carried them all in one hand and then put one knee down to check the bats again. He then made his selection, and clearly his system worked

Good Works

While Roberto Clemente’s time for other activities was limited during the baseball season, one deed he could do was visit children in hospitals, which he faithfully did. He generally sorted through the letters himself to decide which place he had time to visit.

After his career, he aspired to build a “sports city” in Puerto Rico so that kids would have opportunities he never had. Even before he retired, he ran clinics for kids whenever he could. (Today 30 percent of baseball players are Latino, the largest group of players in the MLB.)

Pride in Puerto Rico

Clemente took to heart that Puerto Ricans were U.S. citizens, and he couldn’t understand the condescending attitude he encountered time and again.

His love for his home country was sincere, and he wished to be respected for his patriotism to his place of birth. When the Pittsburgh Pirates won the World Series in 1971, Clemente made his first remarks in Spanish, paying homage to the values and skills that he learned there.

Even once he had been in the Major Leagues for a time, he always tried to return to play in the winter league in Puerto Rico. He wanted to do all he could to make the lives of his people better.

He and Vera also wanted all three of their children born there, so even if she was with Roberto for part of the year, she went home before her due date was near.

Good Works

While Roberto Clemente’s time for other activities was limited during the baseball season, one deed he could do was visit children in hospitals, which he faithfully did. He generally sorted through the letters himself to decide which place he had time to visit.

After his career, he aspired to build a “sports city” in Puerto Rico so that kids would have opportunities he never had. Even before he retired, he ran clinics for kids whenever he could. (Today 30 percent of baseball players are Latino, the largest group of players in the MLB.)

Earthquake in Nicaraugua

In late 1972, Roberto Clemente served as manager of the Puerto Rico national baseball team at the Amateur World Series. The games ended in Managua, the capital of Nicaragua.

When Managua experienced a massive earthquake in December of 1972, Clemente was deeply affected by the difficulties the country faced. He immediately started collecting food and supplies the people would need, in addition to raising money

The goods began being shipped to Nicaragua, but soon word came to Clemente that the money and the supplies were not getting through to the residents most affected by the disaster. Political graft was siphoning off money and supplies.

With that information, Clemente decided he had no choice but to take the latest collection of supplies to Nicaragua himself. A friend helped him find a plane he could charter. Neither of them knew that the airplane had been poorly maintained, and the pilot who was hired at the last minute had no experience with this particular plane.

The results were disastrous.  With Clemente on board, the plane took off. Almost immediately the aircraft dove into the water. All was lost and Roberto Clemente’s body was never recovered.

It was a sad day for baseball; a sad day for America, and an absolute tragedy for his family and the people of Puerto Rico who revered him.

Hall of Fame

The sports world was so stunned by the tragedy, they opted out of the five-year rule on when players were eligible for the Hall of Fame. Eleven weeks after the plane went down, Roberto Clemente was inducted into the Hall of Fame.

Clemente once said:
“If you have a chance to help others and don’t, you are wasting your time on this earth…” 

Also read about Roy Campanella.

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