Roberto Clemente, Humanitarian – Society for American Baseball Research

March 22, 2025

244 19 minutes read

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“Any time you have an opportunity to make a difference in this world and you don’t, then you are wasting your time on Earth.” – Roberto Clemente Walker

For a sports figure to be idolized for his or her greatness is not uncommon. Roberto Clemente received the accolades and adulation of many in his native Puerto Rico and his adopted home of Pittsburgh. Yet Clemente may have been revered even more for his compassion and altruism than his baseball career. It was in his DNA to care deeply for others, particularly those less well off. He brought an unremitting drive to excel on the baseball diamond. This same relentlessness fueled his passion to do good. Clemente’s fundamental character underpinned this passion. Wrote biographer Kal Wagenheim, “[H]e believed passionately in the virtue and dignity of hard work … that a man should revere his parents, wife and children, his country, and God. He believed just as fiercely in his personal worth and integrity.”1 These values would foreshadow, indeed form his motivations on and off the playing field.

Any elaboration on Clemente’s humanitarianism can best consider him and his legacy in three ways. First was his generosity, his dedication to the well-being of those whose needs were under-addressed by the communities in which they lived. This compassion would eventually bring about his early death, and he shared privately with family and friends that he knew this would happen.

Second was his attentiveness to civil rights, seen through the prism of a Puerto Rican Latino and as a Black man in American society in the 1950s and 1960s.

Third was that his exemplar of humanitarianism was shared, embraced, and practiced by his wife, Vera, and his sons, Roberto Jr., Luis, and Enrique. The Clemente Foundation is one manifestation of this, but Vera’s work with the Roberto Clemente Sports Complex in Puerto Rico prior to the foundation’s creation is equally profound. Added to the family’s embodiment of Clemente’s selflessness is recognition by Major League Baseball of Clemente as the face of its own humanitarian initiative.

As Clemente’s baseball talents emerged and flourished in the late 1950s and into the 1960s, so too did the attention that was paid him by fans and the media. Publicly Clemente was a reserved man. His seeming aloofness and his detachment were accentuated and often misinterpreted by an audience that did not share his native language of Spanish. On the diamond, Clemente was the consummate two-way player, as both his offensive and defensive numbers portrayed. This was fueled by his passion for excellence. That same passion motivated him to fight inequity and hardship, and it rallied in him an equal intensity to improve of the lives of others.

In Puerto Rico Clemente, as one of the first Latino superstars in the majors, was revered. Yet he used this sentiment not to feed his own ego but to seek change in the barrios of San Juan and beyond.

When it came to his charitable commitments, these were reflected both in individual ways and in wider settings. Throughout his career in Pittsburgh, he would tirelessly sign autographs for the fans, focusing often on the young. A little more than a week after the opening of Three Rivers Stadium on July 16, 1970, a park some christened “The House That Clemente Built” by virtue of his being the face of the franchise for a decade, the Pirates honored him with Roberto Clemente Night on July 24. True to Clemente’s character, while he accepted the honor graciously, he also requested that the Pirates incorporate a benevolent element and raise funds for Pittsburgh’s Children’s Hospital.

According to biographer Bruce Markusen, “[W]ith the help of a local sports organization, Roberto had asked all fans to make donations to a fund in his name. ‘I want the money to help poor kids,’ said Clemente, who made sure that all $5,500 in donations were designated for crippled children whose parents could not afford medical costs.”2 In fact, the selection of Children’s Hospital was not coincidental. “‘One of the things he really liked to do was go to Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh and visit kids,’ recalled Joe Christopher, a former teammate of Clemente’s and later a Pirates official. ‘That’s something that many people don’t write about. That’s where his real passion was – making other people feel important.’”3 He was also known to visit the sick in hospitals on the road as well. Pirates general manager Joe Brown summed it up: “I don’t think Clemente turned down many people who wanted his help – if anybody.”4

After the July 24, 1970, game played in his honor, he spoke to the press. “We are on the field doing what we love to do,” he said.” [The fans] have to work in the mill or other places eight hours a day and work much harder than us and they pay their way in.”5

Clemente’s passion for racial equality always existed, but according to Markusen, “[I]n the mid-sixties, a little-known encounter with one of the country’s most famous civil rights leaders provided Clemente with a further insight on the subject of racism.” Sportswriter and family friend Luis Rodriguez Mayoral remarked, “Somewhere along the road in his major-league career, he befriended Martin Luther King. I think that was also a key relationship in the development of Roberto Clemente the fighter for social equality.” The men met in 1964 in Puerto Rico, “when King went down there to a little farm that Roberto had in the outskirts of Carolina.” Markusen further reflected, “Although one was African American and the other Latino, the two men found common grounds of interest” and became friends. Clemente was later quoted in a 1972 interview: “I believe that this man [King] not only changed the lifestyle of the American black, he changed the life of everybody.”6 Clemente was once asked about his heroes and he placed King at the top of the list.7

Clemente’s dedication to racial equality was both personal and societal. It was personal because of the segregationist practices he and other minorities on the Pirates faced when playing in the South, most notably in spring training. Clemente protested these conditions to Pirates officials, including Brown, who eventually introduced measures to work around local laws, including the team renting its own hotel during spring training.

But Clemente also advocated for the status of all minority players, Black and Latino alike. He believed they suffered from a two-tier status when it came to recognition, and remarked to reporters that “the Latin American player doesn’t get the recognition he deserves. Neither does the Negro player unless he does something really spectacular like Willie Mays.”8 He added, “I am an American citizen … [but] to the people here, we are outsiders, foreigners.”9 This bigotry troubled Clemente deeply and energized him to serve as a spokesman for all people of color in the game. For that, he was revered not only by his fellow Puerto Ricans, but by those from elsewhere in Latin America and African Americans as well.

The assassination of Martin Luther King in April 1968 precipitated a movement by several teams, spearheaded by the Pirates, to not play on Monday, Opening Day, April 8, out of respect for King. After lengthy deliberations, both major leagues canceled the first two games (April 8 and 9, the latter the day of King’s funeral). Clemente and other minority players, while supportive of the outcome, were disappointed with the indecisive way in which their teams and the leagues responded to the tragedy. Clemente remarked later, “If you have to ask Negro players (whether or not to play), then we do not have a great country.”10 Clemente lamented that the shared, common values a nation should aspire to were still lacking.

Later in his career, Clemente acknowledged and celebrated the progress to open sports to minorities, citing the 1971 Pirates squad that included a dozen Black (including Latino) players. At the same time, he advocated for Curt Flood’s challenge to baseball’s reserve clause and its restrictive contractual arrangements that owners held over the players, White and Black alike. He called on owners to hire Black managers and on sponsors to offer more endorsements to minority players, and he disputed the media’s characterization of minorities insofar as “they made it look like we were entirely different from the white players.”11

In October 1972, on the heels of his 3,000th hit, and then a disappointing playoff loss to the Cincinnati Reds that kept the Pirates from returning to the World Series, Clemente held a wide-ranging interview with a Pittsburgh reporter. He ended by saying, “My biggest worry – to live for my kids to be people that people look at them and respect them and they respect other people.”12

Clemente’s connection to Nicaragua was a long-standing one, what with his relationships with many Latin American ballplayers from the Caribbean and Central America. But it was heightened by his 1972 postseason travel to the country in his capacity as the manager of the Puerto Rican national team that played in the Amateur World Series in Managua from November 15 to December 5. Cuba won the series and the United States finished second. Puerto Rico finished with a 9-6 record, tied for sixth.13 Clemente’s short stay left him finding the Nicaraguan people warm and embracing of him. While there, “Roberto had become attached to a teenage orphan [Julio Parrales] who had lost both his legs and for whom he [and others on the Puerto Rican team] arranged to be provided artificial limbs.”14 Clemente promised to make him batboy for the Puerto Rican team the next year. His sensitivity to the plight of the young knew no boundaries.

When the December 23 earthquake wrecked Managua, Clemente felt a personal mission to lead relief efforts from Puerto Rico. Reflected Osvaldo Gil, a close friend of Clemente’s, “When the earthquake occurred, Roberto called his Nicaraguan friends, who told him they were in great despair for there was no food, clothes, medicine. These words struck Clemente very hard and from that moment on [he] promised himself to do whatever, even the impossible, to help his friends.”15 About Clemente’s stay in Nicaragua, his wife, Vera, reflected, “He liked to talk to the poor people. He used to tell me it was the same way Puerto Rico was years ago.”16 She later wrote, “We lost some very good friends in the earthquake.”17 Clemente “committed himself so fully to the effort that he regularly refused meals, barely slept, and never opened the Christmas presents that he had received. He even visited the houses of the wealthier sections of San Juan – literally going door to door – asking people to make donations.”18 Thanks significantly to him, the relief effort generated more than $150,000 and 26 tons of supplies.

Even during his relief efforts, Clemente kept his commitments to run a series of baseball clinics in Puerto Rico. “On the 27th,” according to Yuyo Ruiz, “Roberto went to the Colon Baseball Park in Aguadilla to offer what would be his last technical clinic.”19 It was, according to Ramiro Martinez, a local sports announcer, one more opportunity for Clemente “to please children as they deserved.… For him, it was much more important to give than to take, to please than be pleased.”20

The rest of the story is tragic: Clemente arranged for a broken-down supply plane that should never have been okayed to fly, sending him and the four others on the plane to their death in the waters north of San Juan just minutes after takeoff at 9:23 P.M. on New Year’s Eve. Roberto thought it was crucial that he fly with the supplies because of the rampant corruption of the Somoza regime in Nicaragua and Clemente’s belief that he could personally ensure that the supplies would not be commandeered by the dictator’s cronies.21

Pirates great Willie Stargell spoke for many – players and fans alike – when he tearfully reflected immediately after the news, “Clemente’s work with the relief effort was typical. Roberto was always trying to help someone.… Just the way he lost his life, leaving home on the 31st of December.… It’s [January 1st] one of the most sacred days in Puerto Rico; it is a very religious day. It’s when families traditionally are together. He somewhat broke that tradition because he felt the need to go to Nicaragua to help those families who were victims of the earthquake. As a result, he gave his life.…”22

Clemente’s death shook Puerto Rico deeply. And it left its imprint across the United States. President Nixon somberly reflected, “He sacrificed his life on a mission of mercy.” Nixon himself donated $1,000 to the Roberto Clemente Memorial Fund.23

Vera Clemente reflected on her husband’s final days and how his heroic efforts were memorialized:

“When he passed away, all the funds that were raised were used to build a pediatrics wing at the Masaya Hospital [in Nicaragua]. That expansion for a pediatrics department was built with those funds, with the collaboration of engineers over there, and we’d transfer funds to them.… A lot of people from [Puerto Rico] went to that inauguration.… The hospital was decorated, it had air-conditioning, color TV, very pretty, pediatric, it was for children”24

In the months after Clemente’s death, Nixon presented Vera with the Congressional Gold Medal in his memory. Thirty years later, she similarly accepted the Medal of Freedom from President George W. Bush at the White House.

In the last years of his prematurely shortened life, Clemente had focused his energies on the notion of a sports city in Carolina, his home, southeast of San Juan. Said Efren R. Bernier, a family friend, “He felt that sports were one of the best ways to imbue in youth the values of good citizenship.… With sports the child learned in a natural way, at an important stage of his life, that one must sacrifice a bit for the common good.”25 Clemente remarked at the time that the government spent “millions for dope control in Puerto Rico, but they attack the problem after it is there. Why don’t they attack it before it starts? It would help to get kids interested in sports and give them somewhere to learn.”26 Clemente’s vision was clear and is worth repeating from Wagenheim in detail:

He dreamed of building a large complex where children from all social classes could stay for weeks at a time. “I want to have three baseball fields, a swimming pool, basketball, tennis, a lake where fathers and sons can get together, all kinds of recreational sports. It’s not enough to go to a summer camp and have one or two instructors for a little time and then you go home and forget everything. You go to a sports city and have people like Mays and Mantle and Williams, and kids would never forget it. If I was president of the United States, I would build a sports city and take in kids of all ways of life. What we want to do is exchange kids with every city in the United States and show all the kids how to live and play with other kids.”27

In early 1972 Clemente worked with local authorities to solicit support and learned that a US naval base in San Juan would soon be turned over to the commonwealth, providing facilities already in place that could house Sports City. The land was deeded to Clemente just weeks before he died. Clemente did not see his vision fulfilled, but his death provided impetus for the Puerto Rican government to provide land to start the complex. Vera Clemente embraced the project, and it became her own – Ciudad Deportiva.28

Vera Clemente’s New York Times obituary in 2019 shared what had been her resolve to fulfilling Roberto’s, indeed their joint, dream of a sports community for Puerto Rico’s youth.

“When he died, I felt the responsibility to at least make a reality of a sports city, to give children the opportunity not just to become stars but good citizens,” she told the Times in 1994. “My main purpose was to do what he was planning to do.”29

She said she was compelled to carry out her husband’s wishes not only because of the way he died but also because of the way he had lived. “If he had died in a common way, people would still remember him,” she said. “But December 31, it was a special day, and his was a special mission. I admire him for that, as a person, as a human being. So his image I keep alive. I feel happy doing what I am doing.”30

The family’s hard work eventually led to a sports and recreational complex spanning 300 acres with the range of sports fields and supporting infrastructure that Clemente hoped for. According to the Roberto Clemente Foundation website, the complex included a baseball park, football and soccer fields, a swimming pool, tennis courts, an athletic track, and a batting-practice field. It also had an entertainment area, a gym, and meeting rooms.31

Ciudad Deportiva/Sports City served thousands of youths in its earlier years, but recently the complex, poorly situated to begin with on marshland, has suffered from extreme weather (most recently 2017’s Hurricane Maria), and due to the economic problems it has faced to keep it going, has been all but shut down. Occasional use is procured by local residents.32

Nonetheless, the Clemente family has continued to embrace Roberto’s legacy, taking the long view in serving Clemente’s two extended families, in Puerto Rico and Pittsburgh. Roberto Clemente Jr. offered this tribute to his father in O’Brien’s 1994 remembrance of Clemente:

My father was much more than a baseball player. He was a man with humanitarian vision – a dream of a better life for all children through sports and education. His dream was first manifested in 1974 with the creation of the Roberto Clemente Sports City in Puerto Rico. Hundreds of thousands of children have benefited from its sports and educational programs. We established the Roberto Clemente Foundation to provide children in the Pittsburgh area with the opportunity to learn, enjoy, and participate in sports of all kinds in order to instill in them the qualities of responsibility, character and leadership. The foundation will emphasize the importance of education through supplemental tutoring and will rehabilitate local parks, playgrounds, and ballfields.33

Roberto Clemente conducting a sports clinic in 1972 with the youth of his native Carolina, only months before his tragic death. (Courtesy of The Clemente Museum.)

Roberto Jr. helped establish Major League Baseball’s Reviving Baseball in the Inner Cities (RBI) program in Puerto Rico in 1992 and then returned to the mainland in 1993 to help set up the foundation in his father’s name. Roberto Jr. learned that Pittsburgh did not have its own RBI program and was involved in its establishment in 1994.

“I don’t do community service just because my father did it,” Roberto Jr. said. “I do it because I can make a difference. I know what it’s like to grow up without a father, and I can relate to kids when I tell them my story.”

The founding of the Roberto Clemente Foundation in the early 1990s provided a focal point for the Clemente family and charitable donors to serve those in need. The foundation’s website frames its purpose as follows:

The Roberto Clemente Foundation is a 501.C.3 nonprofit organization founded to honor and perpetuate the legacy, legend and courage and character of Roberto and Vera Clemente. The Foundation maintains the values which Roberto embodied on and off the field of hard work, faith, love, service and helping those less fortunate. The Foundation promotes sport and play, particularly through baseball and softball and has conducted numerous clinics with several partners. In addition to hospital and school visits, the Foundation has led disaster relief efforts, military and veteran support initiatives, conducts equipment drives and supports the Clemente Cup for NAIA and Division III college baseball teams.34

In 2009 the Public Broadcasting Service released as part of its American Experience series a documentary of Roberto Clemente’s family and legacy. In it, son Luis Clemente said:

I would like for people to see my father as an inspiration. To see him as a person who came from, you know, not a rich neighborhood or anything, but from a noble house in Puerto Rico. Probably with no hopes of knowing what he was going to become but carrying himself in such a way that always had – you know, the values. That was always first. The caring and respect for the parents and siblings, and towards people. Zero tolerance against injustice. Not putting up with being put down. Becoming an activist and letting his message get across very strongly. That should be an inspiration to everyone … understanding how a single individual really truly makes a difference.35

Another lasting tribute to Clemente is the Roberto Clemente Award. The award “is given annually to the major-league player who ‘best exemplifies the game of baseball, sportsmanship, community involvement and the individual’s contribution to his team,’ as voted on by baseball fans and members of the media.… Originally known as the Commissioner’s Award, it has been presented by Major League Baseball since 1971. In 1973, the award was renamed for Clemente after his death.”36

The story of Clemente’s humanitarian ideals remains alive and a 2020 collaboration between the Clemente Museum in Pittsburgh and the Roberto Clemente Foundation created a temporary exhibit in San Juan to share in depth Clemente’s life and legacy. Delayed in its opening by the worldwide pandemic, when it opened in October 2021, it was said the exhibit “highlights the humanitarian and charitable initiatives of the Roberto Clemente Foundation … and captures the story of Vera Clemente, a leader and humanitarian in her own right.”37

Wrote Luis Clemente in the announcement of the exhibit’s opening, “It was time to honor both of their legacies; we haven’t dropped the ball; we continue to work on his legacy and all that he stood for.”38

Today, the focus by brothers Roberto Jr. and Luis on their father’s two homes keeps them attentive to the needs of both communities. The Roberto Clemente Foundation continues to inform their work on the mainland; likewise, their father’s vision for Sports City, despite its current problems, remains the beacon of service, community, and opportunity for the streets and fields of Carolina and beyond. Revitalizing Ciudad Deportiva is uppermost in their minds.

Both acknowledged that development in the first years of Sports City was slow; the marshland deeded for the project was a lackluster property requiring significant expenditure to make it usable. The local community saw little progress – emerging structures were not visible from the road and vital early momentum was lost. In recent times, efforts by the nonprofit board overseeing Sports City to bring improvements to the complex have failed to gain government acceptance. One idea was a partnership with Legacy Sports USA, whose complex in Mesa, Arizona, offered a model for Sports City. Instead, the Puerto Rican government has sought to reclaim the land on which Sports City is located, and with it, establish direct government control replacing the nonprofit organization’s oversight.

Recent legislative actions have further muddied the waters with the passing of a law to collect revenue through the sale of commemorative Clemente license plates and the mandatory purchase of registration stickers highlighting Roberto’s accomplishments and values. Revenue would go in part to a Fondo del Distrito Roberto Clemente (not to be confused with the family’s foundation). According to Julio Pablon:

Clemente’s middle son, Luis Clemente learned of this sticker, [of the] license plate with his father’s image, like everyone else, he saw it in the news. He was taken aback and went on social media with the following statement: “Not even the Roberto Clemente Foundation, much less my family, has any influence on that charge, and even more so, we are not the beneficiaries of this fund.” He added, “In fact, our approval was not sought for the use of our father’s image on the commemorative registration stickers and license plates. Image to which we legitimately have the rights to use. In addition, the government of Puerto Rico did not seek or obtain the approval of other entities that claim the rights involved in the image.”39

Guest columnist Mayra Montero for El Nuevo Día at the time the legislation was announced wrote:

“The situation is very simple: as politicians find it increasingly difficult to raise money for their luxuries, their legislative offices full of party friends, their trips, petty cash, whims, and those campaign promises that, because this is a bankrupt country, they cannot and will not comply, they have found a way to rob citizens and extract $5 a head. That to start. It is an experiment that could be extended.40

It is worth asking what is next. In 2022, time is understandably set aside to celebrate Clemente’s 3,000th hit and then honor the 50th Anniversary of Roberto’s ultimate sacrifice, dying while delivering relief supplies to earthquake torn Nicaragua. Major League Baseball, the Pittsburgh Pirates, the city of Pittsburgh, and yes, the people of Puerto Rico will all stop and reflect on the life and loss of a great icon. However, real measures can and should accompany these remembrances. The Clemente brothers continue to tell their story and seek partnerships and collaboration that will reestablish Sports City and take it to the next level. They know that the people of Puerto Rico and the fans of Roberto are ready, willing, and able to honor Roberto properly by taking the “opportunity to make a difference in this world.” May a genuine partnership among all who hold Roberto’s legacy dear take place.

THOMAS E. KERN was born and raised in Southwest Pennsylvania. Listening to the mellifluous voices of Bob Prince and Jim Woods in his youth, how could one not become a lifelong Pirates fan? Ariba Roberto! He now lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, and sees the Nationals and Orioles as often as possible. He is a SABR member dating back to the mid-1980s. With a love and appreciation for Negro League baseball, he has written SABR bios for Leon Day, John Henry Lloyd, Willie Foster, Judy Johnson, Turkey Stearnes, Hilton Smith, Louis Santop, Andy Cooper, and Buck Ewing. Tom’s day job is in the field of transportation technology.

Notes

1 Kal Wagenheim, Clemente! (New York: Olmstead Press, 2001), 3.

2 Bruce Markusen, Roberto Clemente: The Great One (Chicago: Sports Publishing, Inc., 1998), 195.

3 Markusen, 196.

4 Markusen, 196.

5 Markusen, 196.

6 Markusen, 125-127.

7 David Mariniss, Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball’s Last Hero (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006), 148.

8 Markusen, 150.

9 Markusen, 151.

10 Markusen, 173.

11 Wagenheim, 179.