Saint John. Free Diary
“When you have the opportunity to improve any situation, and you don’t, you are wasting your time on Earth.”
Roberto Clemente
On December 31, 1972, 53 years ago today, in a plane crash on a DC-7 cargo plane, Puerto Rican baseball player Roberto Clemente Walker (El Cometa de Carolina) died at the age of 38, while carrying humanitarian aid to the inhabitants of the city of Managua, Nicaragua, which had been destroyed by an earthquake.
Clemente, with his orthodox way of hitting, won four batting titles. He won the MVP award in 1966, but his greatest dimension came in the 1971 World Series where he averaged .414.
The news was a sword that stabbed into the hearts of millions of sports followers, a devastating blow.
Clemente was called the ‘Pelé of Baseball’. In Venezuela, the sports newspaper Meridiano said that “Clemente was born in Puerto Rico, but was property of America.”
When Clemente died, Major League Baseball, to honor his memory, set a precedent to take him to the Cooperstown Hall of Fame, violating the five-year regulation to be included in the ballot. Members of the Baseball Writers Association of America received a special ballot with only one candidate: Roberto Clemente. On March 20, 1973 with a vote of 94 percent, he became the 134th member of Cooperstown and the first Latino to achieve that honor.
In the work “Baseball Hall of Fame Cooperstown,” journalist Howell Reindenbaugh criticized the election method for violating the regulations, although he recognized the greatness of the Puerto Rican slugger.
Roberto Clemente was the 27th player to reach 3,000 hits, and he completed the feat on September 30, 1972 at the old Three River Stadium in Pittsburgh, a double off the pitches of Jon Matlack.
Roberto Clemente was unique, and we will always keep him in mind.
