Sports and the Racial Divide: African American and Latino Experience in an Era of Change

8. Roberto Clemente: Images, Identity, and Legacy

  Roberto Clemente Images, Identity, and Legacy —Samuel O. Regalado Roberto Clemente did not come to the United States mainland with the purpose of pioneering change. He came to pursue his dream of success in the major leagues. Driven by his competitive spirit, when he left Puerto Rico in , he carried with him the credentials for baseball greatness: a keen batting eye, sprinter’s speed, defensive quickness, and a powerful throwing arm. Moreover, his athletic skills were augmented by his tremendous self-confidence. Through the course of his career, his achievements on the field led to well-earned notoriety as being one of the most talented players both of his generation and within the history of the game itself. “There isn’t anything he can’t do,” crowed the Sporting News in a  article about Clemente. “He can hit, hit with power at times, run, throw and there just isn’t a better fielder.” But Clemente proved to have other credentials, too: a generous heart, compassion, and outrage at injustice. As evidenced in a  interview, Clemente, by then, assumed a self-proclaimed duty beyond the field of play. “Lots of kids will try to imitate me, and maybe I will have the chance to do some good for people,” he told the New York Times. Combined with his talents as a player, Clemente understood the difference between mere athletic skills and his role as a leader. His apprenticeship to greatness , however, came in an age when other Latinos and blacks in baseball experienced the difficult world of racial discrimination and prejudice. Moreover, he discovered, images of Latinos were, too often, uncompli- Roberto Clemente: Images, Identity, and Legacy  mentary. Yet Clemente’s emergence into stardom also illuminated the internal conflict Puerto Ricans, in their transition from island to mainland , encountered regarding race and identity. On three fronts, as a player, a symbol, and a legend, Roberto Clemente’s presence challenged the perceptions that mainstream Americans held of Latinos. However, for Puerto Ricans, his role and heroic legacy also brought into focus the delicate balance between race and status. Contrary to the notion that all Latino players emerged from impoverished backgrounds, Clemente, born in  near San Juan, Puerto Rico, came from a middle-class family. His father, Melchor, was a foreman at a local sugar mill. Like other youths in his upbringing, baseball stole Clemente’s heart and he played in the San Juan sandlots armed with a bat “fashioned from the branch of a guava tree, a glove [that] was improvised from a coffee bean sack, and [a] ball [that] was a tight knot of rags.” The young Puerto Rican also experienced his first lessons in race relations. Since the early years of the twentieth century, San Juan, like other Caribbean cities, was a major hub for barnstorming teams and players from the United States looking to make extra money during the winter months. From that bunch, Clemente most admired Monte Irvin, an outfielder for the New York Giants who was among the first blacks in the major leagues and went on to the Hall of Fame. Clemente, himself a black man, considered race irrelevant in determining the quality of an individual. “I don’t believe in color, I believe in people,” he later stated as a big leaguer. Even in Puerto Rico, Clemente’s idealism proved to be an anomaly. His brethren, indeed, did believe in color as a factor in status. On the surface, of course, race was seemingly not a problem in Puerto Rico. Since its days as a colonial entity under Spain, blacks in Puerto Rico, by virtue of slave protection laws, the practice of compadrazgo (god parenting), and varied socioeconomic opportunities based on merit, had some degree of latitude and acceptance not found in the North American continent. Thus, in Puerto Rico, that local or regional laws barred no blacks from public accommodations was not uncommon, nor was there any history of lynch mobs in the commonwealth or continual violence against blacks there. Clemente’s vision of Puerto Rico, thus, was not entirely unwarranted and, in fact, advanced in the world he knew best—baseball. Puerto Rican players of color frequented many sports and competed with whites. Notable black ballplayers from the states, when on tour in Puerto Rico, stayed at the lavish LaFrance Hotel in San Juan, and some, like Negro Samuel O. Regalado  Leaguer Dick Seay, even settled on the island. Black stars...