When Roberto Clemente Jr. woke on the morning of Dec. 31, 1972, he instantly tiptoed to his mother and father’ bed room to see whether or not his father was up.

The elder Clemente, considered one of baseball’s greatest stars, suffered from insomnia, so Roberto Jr., then 7, was at all times cautious to not wake him — not to say his father had been busy organizing reduction efforts for victims of a catastrophic earthquake in Nicaragua. Clemente’s spouse, Vera, had put in room-darkening window shades to assist her husband sleep, so Roberto Jr. felt round on the mattress to ensure his father wasn’t there.

He discovered his mother and father on the eating room desk and provided them the standard greeting that Puerto Rican kids give their mother and father: “Bendicion.” A request for a blessing.

The elder Clemente responded as he at all times did: “Que Dios te bendiga.” Could God bless you.

For causes Roberto Jr. nonetheless doesn’t perceive, he then instructed his father, “Dad, don’t get on the aircraft, as a result of it’s going to crash.”

“There was no method for me to know he was flying,” he mentioned. “He hadn’t instructed me that he was flying and there was no register our home that he was flying.

“I mentioned it once more, and he instructed me to not fear, however I walked out and was crying, and he adopted me and mentioned, ‘I’ll see you after I get again.’ And that was the final time I talked to him.”

That night, 50 years in the past Saturday, the aircraft Clemente had organized to fly provides to Nicaragua crashed simply off the coast of San Juan. His physique was by no means discovered. The grief over his loss of life at age 38 was undoubtedly most acute in his native Puerto Rico, however the shock and disappointment prolonged nicely past the island.

Throughout his 18-year main league profession, all with the Pittsburgh Pirates, Clemente had turn out to be a legend, a Nationwide League most respected participant, a World Sequence MVP, a four-time batting champion and a 12-time Gold Glove winner who completed with precisely 3,000 hits. He additionally was blessed with maybe the strongest, most correct arm of any proper fielder who performed the sport.

But it surely was off the sphere the place Clemente stood aside much more. He was a humanitarian who devoted numerous hours to serving to folks in want, notably in Latin America, and to educating kids at baseball clinics that had been about far more than hitting, catching and throwing. He additionally was instrumental in serving to youthful Latino gamers navigate life within the large leagues and was one of many early leaders of Main League Baseball’s gamers’ union.

Three months after Clemente’s loss of life, the Baseball Writers’ Assn. of America elected him to the Nationwide Baseball Corridor of Fame and Museum after waiving its customary five-year ready interval. Lou Gehrig is the one different participant to be inducted below these circumstances.

“His presence on the Corridor of Fame is so vital that that’s one of many three statues that we now have whenever you stroll in as a result of it defines character and braveness,” mentioned Corridor of Fame President Josh Rawitch. (The opposite statues are of Gehrig and Jackie Robinson.) “And that’s what makes Roberto Clemente completely different from so many others, what he did off the sphere as nicely. And from our standpoint, it’s simply an unbelievable honor for him to be one of many first faces you see whenever you stroll within the door.”

Clemente’s and Robinson’s legacies are intertwined due to their super influence on baseball and American tradition, with Robinson breaking Main League Baseball’s shade barrier in 1947 with the Brooklyn Dodgers and Clemente growing into MLB’s greatest Latino star.

“There are such a lot of parallels between Jackie and Roberto,” mentioned former Dodgers basic supervisor Fred Claire, who knew Robinson. “They’re distinctive in a historic method, not simply as gamers however in what they stood for and for who they had been as folks.

“They need to by no means be forgotten. Followers and gamers ought to perceive how higher served the sport is due to them. You merely can’t do an excessive amount of to honor them. Like Jackie, Roberto’s best legacy is how he served others and what he believed in.”

What he believed in, mentioned Luis Clemente, the second of Roberto’s three sons, was aiding the much less lucky, individuals who didn’t obtain a lot consideration from society, whether or not it was due to their race, an absence of formal training or their financial circumstances.

Throughout his 18-year main league profession, Roberto Clemente was a Nationwide League most respected participant, a World Sequence MVP, a four-time batting champion and a 12-time Gold Glove winner.

(Photograph by Related Press; Photograph illustration by Tim Hubbard / Los Angeles Instances)

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“Dad knew he had a mission when he began taking part in,” Luis Clemente mentioned. “He at all times mentioned that he was going to symbolize those who didn’t have a voice. … He knew he was representing the underdog in life and I feel that resonated with many individuals. He was an actual individual and there was nothing faux about him.”

Clemente shared that philosophy with the nation’s main civil rights determine, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. King was impressed with Clemente’s activism and requested if he may see him at his farm in Puerto Rico when King visited the island. That somebody of King’s stature wished to speak with knowledgeable athlete about social justice speaks volumes about Clemente’s affect.

“Dad was re-energized as a result of Dr. King wished to sit down down with him,” Roberto Clemente Jr. mentioned. “It bolstered for him that he was right here for a cause, and that was to assist folks.

“We had an enormous mango tree on our farm, the largest mango tree I’ve ever seen, and I’ve little question that Dad and Dr. King sat below that tree and had a really attention-grabbing dialog.”

Whereas he was utilizing his superstar to impact social change, Clemente by no means stopped working to turn out to be one of many main leagues’ prime gamers and, above all, assist his crew win. Manny Mota noticed that firsthand as considered one of Clemente’s Pirates teammates from 1963 to 1968, earlier than he performed for the Dodgers and developed into top-of-the-line pinch-hitters in MLB historical past.

“He was proud to be top-of-the-line gamers within the main leagues and he labored very onerous at it on a regular basis,” Mota mentioned. “He was a person of nice pleasure who cared loads concerning the sport.”

In a sport at Forbes Subject, the Pirates’ ballpark on the time, a batter hit a ball down the right-field line and it took an odd bounce and eluded Clemente, Mota mentioned. What ought to have been a single become a double.

“After the sport, Roberto mentioned, ‘Manny, I need you to fulfill me on the ballpark early tomorrow and get a bag with 75 balls.’ I mentioned, ‘What are you speaking about? Why do you wish to do this?’ He mentioned, ‘I wish to determine how that man hit the ball previous me.’

“So the following day we received to the ballpark early and he goes out to proper area and says, ‘I need you to attempt to hit the ball to me similar to final night time.’ I hit him 40, perhaps 45 balls and he calls me out to proper area. He had discovered a small piece of wooden that the ball had bounced off the night time earlier than and that was why he missed it. He mentioned, ‘Go forward and hit me the remainder of the balls. I wish to ensure that by no means occurs once more.’ And that’s why he was one of the best proper fielder in baseball.”

Within the early Nineteen Seventies, when Clemente was within the twilight of his profession however nonetheless an all-star, he offered further motivation to a Pirates outfield prospect, Dave Parker, after they performed collectively throughout spring coaching. Parker finally succeeded Clemente because the Pirates’ proper fielder, gained two NL batting titles and was the NL most respected participant in 1978.

“When he threw a bullet to 3rd, I threw a bullet to 3rd. When he hit a house run, I wished to hit a house run,” Parker mentioned. “He influenced me loads and it drove me to be nice.”

Pirates followers stroll previous a statue of Roberto Clemente on the finish of his namesake bridge outdoors the center-field gate to Pittsburgh’s PNC Park on Sept. 9, 2018.

(Gene J. Puskar / Related Press)

The Pittsburgh Pirates put on No. 21 on Main League Baseball’s Roberto Clemente Day on Sept. 9, 2020.

(Gene J. Puskar / Related Press)

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5 many years after his loss of life, Clemente’s affect continues to be being felt within the baseball world and past. Streets, bridges, parks and colleges are named for him, and never solely in Puerto Rico and Pittsburgh. MLB’s Roberto Clemente Award is given yearly to the participant who “finest represents the sport of Baseball by extraordinary character, group involvement, philanthropy and constructive contributions, each on and off the sphere.”

Clemente continues to encourage the game’s present stars too. Francisco Lindor, the four-time all-star shortstop who performs for the New York Mets, grew up in Puerto Rico studying concerning the “Nice One” at school.

“He’s part of our historical past. We speak about him on a regular basis; we might speak about him in school,” Lindor mentioned. “All people in Puerto Rico is aware of about Roberto Clemente.

“He was at all times attempting to make the world a greater place, and whenever you’re from Puerto Rico, you’ve got a bit of little bit of that in your DNA. You attempt to discover methods to assist folks.”

Lindor mentioned that when he’s on the sphere, “I really feel like I’m not solely representing Clemente, but additionally the greats who got here after him who had been most likely impressed by Clemente.”

Danny Torres, a contract journalist and highschool instructor from the Bronx, N.Y., began a podcast in 2020 referred to as “Talkin’ 21,” which is dedicated to Clemente and named for his uniform quantity. He first heard of Clemente when he was 6 years previous and he watched his father, carrying that day’s New York Day by day Information, strategy his mom within the kitchen of their house and say softly, “Are you aware that Roberto died?”

“I may inform by my mother’s response and the appears on their faces that this was a very large deal,” mentioned Torres, whose mother and father moved to New York from Puerto Rico within the early Fifties. “Later, the door to their bed room was partially open and I noticed my dad sitting there with the newspaper on his lap, crying. That was the primary and solely time I noticed my dad cry.”

To today, followers communicate of Clemente with a reverence bordering on the spiritual. Amaury Pi-Gonzalez, vice chairman and co-founder of the Hispanic Heritage Baseball Museum Corridor of Fame, has witnessed this phenomenon within the Bay Space.

Roberto Clemente in 1967

(J. Spencer Jones / Related Press)

“The museum had an exhibit on Clemente a while in the past on the San Francisco Foremost Library and other people would kneel and pray in entrance of it,” mentioned Pi-Gonzalez, a longtime Spanish-language broadcaster presently with the Oakland Athletics. “He has turn out to be virtually a saint. Due to the way in which he died and his physique by no means being discovered, he lives eternally within the minds of the followers.

“Roberto Clemente is the primary Hispanic famous person in Main League Baseball. For us, he’s like Babe Ruth and Ted Williams all wrapped up in a single.”

Maybe there may be cause to consider that Clemente was not totally of this world. In 1994, photographer Duane Rieder purchased a former firehouse in Pittsburgh that he would finally flip into the Clemente Museum. Twenty-one years later — 21, Clemente’s quantity — he discovered that the Pittsburgh hearth division had shut down its operations there at 9 p.m. on Dec. 31, 1972, simply as Clemente was making ready to board the fateful flight.

“I couldn’t consider it,” mentioned Rieder, who continues to be the museum’s government director. “It’s like this was all simply meant to be. I feel Clemente is wanting down at us and smiling.”

One different eerie notice: Gehrig, one other baseball legend who died in his late 30s, spent the night time in that firehouse through the 1927 World Sequence when he was visiting a pal who was a firefighter, Rieder mentioned.

4 days earlier than he died, Clemente held a youth baseball clinic in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico. Sooner or later, he stepped into the batter’s field towards an area pitcher, about 18 years previous, recollects Roberto Jr., who was there. Individuals within the stands yelled to Clemente, “Roberto, wager you’ll be able to’t hit a homer.”

On the teenager’s fifth pitch, within the final at-bat of his life, Clemente swung and despatched the ball hovering over the outfield fence 350 ft away. The “Nice One” handed the bat to the younger pitcher as a memento, mentioned goodbye to the children after which ready for his journey to Nicaragua.