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REMEMBER HOW ROBERTO CLEMENTE LIVED, NOT HOW HE DIED  
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Dave Zirin
January 14, 2025
The Progressive Magazine
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_ Thinking about the legacy of the humanitarian and star as his
island home sits in darkness from power outages. Clemente’s
solidarity with the less fortunate came from his life experience. _

Roberto Clemente pictured for the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1965., Wally
Gobetz (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) // The Progressive Magazine

 

On December 31, 2024, I stared at the ocean past Puerto Rico’s
Piñones Beach. It was the anniversary of the day when, fifty-two
years ago, Roberto Clemente’s plane went down just past the Piñones
as he attempted to deliver food and medicine to earthquake-ravaged
Nicaragua. 

Nicaragua’s U.S.-backed dictator, Anastasio Somoza, had looted
previous planes sent by Clemente, which were loaded with aid and
medicine. The renowned baseball player believed his presence as a
Latin American icon would pressure Somoza’s thugs to back off so
that the aid could be distributed to those who desperately needed
it. 

I think a great deal about what was going through Clemente’s mind
when he woke up on the morning of New Years Eve, preparing to board
that flight, not knowing that he would never live to see 1973. He was
thirty-eight years old, at the height of his career, and surrounded by
the love of his family and community—and he still boarded that
plane, even with a crippling fear of flying, because he didn’t see
another way. “When your time comes, it comes. If you are going to
die, you will die,” he reportedly told
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wife, Vera, who tried to stop him from going. “And babies are dying.
They need these supplies.”

Clemente’s solidarity with the less fortunate came from his life
experience. Born in Carolina, Puerto Rico, in 1934, young Clemente was
a tempest of baseball talent. In 1954, he was drafted by the Brooklyn
Dodgers, joining their minor league team and traveling in the Jim Crow
South—a place where he later said he had learned
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the first time that he was Black.

But even with the Dodgers—Jackie Robinson’s team—a dark-skinned,
Latin American player only just starting to learn English was going to
struggle to get to the big leagues. Disregarded by Brooklyn, Clemente
ended up in blue-collar Pittsburgh, where he became an improbable
icon. With perhaps the greatest throwing arm in history, Clemente was
beloved for his artistry on the field
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winning twelve straight Gold Glove awards, leading the 1960s in hits,
and playing on two World Series-winning teams. In his final game in
1972, he achieved his 3,000th base hit. 

In Puerto Rico, Clemente was the ultimate sports trailblazer
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He was the first player from the Caribbean and Latin America to win a
World Series as a starter; the first to win a Most Valuable Player
Award; and the first to win a World Series MVP.

Clemente was also beloved in Puerto Rico for never forgetting his
roots, putting money back into his community with a focus on the poor.
He was most comfortable off his pedestal, walking with the masses. He
made people proud to be from Latin America, refusing to be rebranded
as “Bobby Clemente
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and insisting to be known as Roberto. He was a union leader who
successfully fought to delay the start of the 1968 season following
the assassination of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. 

Clemente was blessed to be married to his great love Vera, with whom
he raised their three sons. And yet he still got on that plane. 

One wonders what he would have thought on December 31, 2024, looking
back from the waters at Puerto Rico over my shoulders. Power was out
across the island; the privatized electrical grid had short-circuited
before Nuevo Año parties could commence. The landscape looked like a
Lite Brite grid of haves and have nots, with a cacophony of buzzing
generators maintaining electricity for some while most rang in the new
year in near total darkness. The glaring inequality would have enraged
Clemente, who always demanded that workers and the poor receive
dignity and assistance.

Clemente would have seen this patchwork of lights from the ocean as
the face of an island in turmoil. He’d have heard that the Puerto
Rican people were slandered as “garbage” at a rally of the winning
U.S. presidential candidate; a candidate whose wealth, waste, and
white nationalism is anathema to the principles that defined
Clemente’s life. He would have seen Puerto Rico elect a leadership
that supported this candidacy. He would see this political maelstrom
of hate and division capture the mind
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campaigned for an autocrat who sees Puerto Rico as a punchline. He
would have seen other members of his family express disgust
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his son’s actions. For a man who believed in Latin American
unity—a man from Puerto Rico who died trying to save lives in
Nicaragua—seeing his own family divided over a racist billionaire
would surely be heartbreaking. 

We don’t need Clemente with us in order to feel devastated by this
state of affairs: an island in near darkness, a family divided, a
legacy fighting to be heard beyond statues or sanctification. As I
turned away from Piñones beach one last time, I had to think that
Clemente at this moment would care less about us remembering how he
died, and more about how he had lived: with a fierce pride meant to
inspire anyone who might need to look their boss in the eye and say,
“Don’t call me Bobby. My name is Roberto.”

_[DAVE ZIRIN writes about sports for The Nation and The Progressive
and hosts the Edge of Sports podcast and “Edge of Sports with Dave
Zirin” on The Real News. His most recent book is “The Kaepernick
Effect: Taking a Knee, Changing the World
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* Roberto Clemente
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* Puerto Rico
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* baseball
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* sports
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* Nicaragua
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* colonialism
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* imperialism
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* neo-colonialism
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* power outages
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