Last week Major League Baseball honored Jackie Robinson Day by allowing all of the players to wear his retired No. 42. Today, I would like to talk about a player who may have been just as important to the way baseball looks today—Roberto Clemente.
I have long been interested in Roberto Clemente largely because of Sammy Sosa. Recently I read a great book about Clemente entitled Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball’s Last Hero by David Mariniss.
The book chronicles Clemente’s life and career in detail. it is about 350 pages long. But this is not a review of the book, but rather a brief look back at how great and important Clemente was as a baseball player and ambassador to the game of baseball.
Clemente and Robinson share similar pasts. Clemente was signed by Branch Rickey’s Dodgers and placed on their AAA team, the Montreal Royals. The same Royals that Robinson played for before he changed the course of history.
As a young, raw kid he did not make the major league Dodgers and thus was unprotected in the rookie Rule Five draft. The Dodgers tried to hide him; he wasn’t a regular starter and was used mainly off the bench. The Pittsburgh Pirates drafted him with the first selection in the draft in November 1954.
His first spring training with the Pirates was difficult for him because their spring training home in Florida was segregated. Clemente couldn’t eat, sleep, or go out with his teammates. This persisted for many years until the Pirates became more and more diverse and the owner threatened to move to another city for spring training.
