Roberto Clemente Research Papers

Sean Settle

Mrs. Suttan

Spanish 1

October 14, 2015

Roberto Clemente Roberto Clemente, the star baseball player with the Pittsburgh Pirates from 1955-1972, was born in Barrio San Anton in Carolina, Puerto Rico on August 18, 1934. Multiple Gold Glove winner and Hall of Fame inductee was a Puerto Rican hero and was the first Latin American player to forever change the big leagues. Roberto Clemente was born into poverty and was a descendant of a bloodline of sugar cane farmers in Puerto Rico. He was the youngest of six kids of Melchor Clemente and Dona Luisa who ran a small grocery and worked for a local sugar cane company. He was introduced to baseball at a young age, and played using sticks they were able to find, smashed milk jugs as baseball

He made his major league debut on April 17, 1955, and was put on the roster as Bob. Although he was not the first Hispanic ball player, the club thought Roberto sounded too foreign. He entered the game as a right fielder and wore the number 21 which remained for the rest of his career. Clemente often struggled in his first few years in the major league with problems on and off the field. In his first five seasons, he was never able to hit above .300, which was poor behavior compared to the rest of his career. Clemente struggled with English and reporters being able to understand him and often misquoted him. The new player also had many confrontations with the manager at the time, leadings to many disagreements throughout the club. In 1960, Clemente led the pirates to one of the most famous World Series in his breakout season. After Bill Mazeroski’s walk off homerun, Clemente was not awarded the Most Valuable Player that year, in which he believed was bias against Latino players. After winning the batting championship in ’61, Clemente became known as the ‘Pride of Puerto Rico’. Towards the end of his career, he led Pittsburgh to another World Series in 1971. During the final game of the series, he hit one homerun and won MVP of the series. After his remarkable season, he believed he got the satisfaction he

He supported Puerto Rico even once he was a star, and helped many young people reach their potential. On December 31, 1972, Clemente was doing something he did regularly, helping others and was killed in an airplane accident. A major Earthquake destroyed many parts of Nicaragua days before his death, when he insisted on aiding victims and delivering supplies to the people. The plane carrying relief supplies, crashed shortly after taking off from the capital of Puerto Rico, San Juan. The plane Clemente was riding, was struck by lightning earlier that month which may be to blame although some speculate too much