Roberto Clemente

Roberto Clemente was not just a hero that helped people and kids; he was a great baseball player.

Roberto Clemente Walker was born in Barrio San Anton in Carolina, Puerto Rico on August 18, 1934. He was the seventh child of Melchor and Luisa Clemente. His father, Melchor, worked in a sugercane mill and his mother, Luisa, ran a grocery store for plantation workers. "I am from the poor people," he said. "I represent the poor people. I like workers. I like people that suffer because these people have a different approach to life from the people that have everything and don't know what suffering is." He and his family were poor but they always had something to eat and something to wear. His family always had something to cry about too, though: one of Roberto's sisters, Ana Iris, died when she was five years old when her silk dress caught on fire, two of his brothers died of cancer when they were small, and then Roberto's eldest sister died during childbirth.

Roberto excelled in track and field: he won medals in the javelin throw and on short distance races. Roberto was so good that they invited him to join Puerto Rico's 1952 Olympic team, but he was not intersted in track and field; his true love was baseball.

At the age of 17,while he was attending Lorenzo Vizcarrondo High School Roberto was playing for the Santurce Crabbers, a professional Puerto Rican baseball team. When he was 18 years old, Al Campanis(a Brooklyn Dodger)held a tryout for 71 players. Al sent everyone else home; Roberto was the only chosen one. "He was the greatest natural athlete I have ever seen," he said. That's when the Dodgers offered him $10,000 so that he could play with them. Then his contract was bought on November 22,1954 by the Pittsburg Pirates for $4,000.

Roberto played right field for the Pirates. He played in two World Series, batting .310 in 1960 and .414 in 1971. He was awarded twelve Golden Gloves, selected National League MVP in 1966 and was chosen as the MVP in the 1971 World Series. On November 14,1964,he married Vera Zabala. Considered "the most beautiful woman in Puerto Rico,and the most famous man," they had three sons: Roberto Jr.,Luis Roberto, and Roberto Enrique.

Roberto Clemente did not just play baseball,he had a big heart. He often went to vist kids at the Children's Hospital. In Puerto Rico he would run clinics for poor kids and help out in kids' programs. He was touch by a little boy in Nicaragua that needed to be fitted for artificial legs,and he paid for his operation.

Then a couple of months later when a earthquake hit in Nicaaragua on December 23,1972 killing 10,000, injuring 20,000 and leaving 250,000 homeless,Roberto contributed to Puerto Rico's relif effort. On Dec. 31,1972 Clemente got on a plane, a DC-7 owned by American Air Express Leasing Co. The copilot had his license suspended 180 days that year and during that month he had smashed that same style plane, the engineer was an unqualified mechanic,and the plane Clemente was on was two tons over the limit. On New Year's Eve, December 31st,1972, tragically,Clemente's life ended at the age of 38. He was the victim of a plane crash; his plane never got past the border of San Juan. The plane had crashed 30 feet into the water of the Caribbean Sea, and Roberto Clemente's body was never found.

A man that was loved by the whole nation was now gone. He was gone in the flesh, but he will never be forgotten.