It’s possible to define the greatness of Pittsburgh Pirates right fielder Roberto Clemente with numbers.
Precisely 3,000 hits. Twelve Gold Gloves. Two World Series titles with a franchise that hadn’t won one in the 30 years before Clemente’s arrival. One World Series Mvp and one National League Mvp. The first Latino player to be inducted into the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.
The numbers for Roberto Clemente are fairly phenomenal.
But they’re inadequate.
Roberto Clemente is in a pantheon of sports figures because of the trail he blazed for Latino and specifically Caribbean players. He’s revered because his commitment to humanitarian causes was so all-encompassing that his death, at the age of 38, came while transporting supplies to earthquake victims in Nicaragua. He’s iconic because the things he did on the field that couldn’t always be measured statistically — his throwing arm, his on-field intensity — bordered on Bunyanesque.
Precisely 3,000 hits. Twelve Gold Gloves. Two World Series titles with a franchise that hadn’t won one in the 30 years before Clemente’s arrival. One World Series Mvp and one National League Mvp. The first Latino player to be inducted into the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.
The numbers for Roberto Clemente are fairly phenomenal.
But they’re inadequate.
Roberto Clemente is in a pantheon of sports figures because of the trail he blazed for Latino and specifically Caribbean players. He’s revered because his commitment to humanitarian causes was so all-encompassing that his death, at the age of 38, came while transporting supplies to earthquake victims in Nicaragua. He’s iconic because the things he did on the field that couldn’t always be measured statistically — his throwing arm, his on-field intensity — bordered on Bunyanesque.
- 3/12/2024
- by Daniel Fienberg
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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