14 thoughts on “Roberto Clemente is one of the best baseball players who has ever lived. Why has he been denied his proper recognition in the team of the century and what should we do about it?”

  1. Roberto Clemente
    Nuestro pueblo debe de alzar su voz y dejar saber nuestro idiganacion al no incluir a Roberto como uno de los mejores jugadores del siglo.

  2. What can be done?
    I’m wondering if there’s any way of communicating to Mastercard by getting the credit card company where it hurts–the pocket. Does anyone have any sense of how to go about this?

    Anyway, is this possibly a civil rights issue or an issue of discrimination? Objectively speaking, he had the votes and his record stands by itself.

  3. Roberto Clemente
    I think the problem falls under the category of what I would call “reflexive historical effect.” In other words, the impact Latinos are having on the sport is so stupendous that it alters the assessment of Latinos who have played the sport, and excelled, before in a negative way. The threat of today’s Latino players is so great that the accomplishments of earlier sports legends is denied.

    Recognition of Roberto in proportion to his greatness when he was alive would only spur higher performance by Latinos playing the sport today; and that is a severe problem for White America. As it is, they do not know what to do about the current state of things. Baseball is the last American sport — hockey will never work because it is fundamentally a northern cold weather sport (much of the USA is warm to tropical for a good part of the year); soccer belongs to Europe, S Africa, S America and others. Basketball is Black. Football is stil struggling to maintain an apartheid structure, with White quaterbacks and Black support teams.

    The dye in American sports mythology was setting very nicely between African American and White legends when, suddenly, this horde of Latinos invaded with clear intentions of taking over and rewriting American sports mythology. (Not to mention the confusion created by Latino jocks who are Black and White themselves.)

    What to do? Once again, organizational pressure: all types of Latino, especially Puerto Rican and Dominican organizations; political pressure in the way of legislators’ statements; Economic Boycott is aways clave, but I think it would be quixotic to expect Latinos to stop paying attention to baseball. Make Roberto Clemente a political, cultural and economic issue.

    Incidentally, isn’t baseball Aztec, Toltec or something.

    How is it that a great pitcher like Valenzuella lasted about six minutes?

  4. R Clemente…PS
    Before the opening game of theWorld’s Series, San Diego’s Tony Gwynn was given the Roberto Clemente Award.

  5. RE: R Clemente…PS
    There’s controversy surrounding this as well. Traditionally, Roberto Clemente’s widow Vera gave the award. If she were not available, then one of his sons would. For the first time, no Clemente family-member gave out the award. The baseball commissioner did. What’s the point of stating that Gwynn won?

  6. Re: Clemente; Gloria, the point is…
    The point is that it was a meager reference to Clemente’s accomplishment;

    time, it appears to me, to assuage the blow of not being named to the ACT. If you consider the fact that an Award would be underscored by membership on the ACT. The Cy Young Award is coveted by all young players:

    Cy Young made the team. You would expect that being included in the ACT would add punch to the Roberto Award. This outrageous exclusion devalues the award named for him.

    Incidentally, have a look at the line up: not one Latino of any generation, in either the starting or backup squads.

    The ACT is an undesguised racial assault on Roberto Clemente and other Latino ballplayers. One would expected that an effort would have been made to name even one Latino player –Roberto clemente.

    Tony Gwynn was mentioned because he was the recipient of the Award.

  7. teams picked
    Brussels
    11/03/99

    Can someone please E-mail me the list of players chosen. So I can voice my opinion . As I am residing in Europe Baseball info is limited.

    Thanks

  8. Denial
    I managed to find the list of players selected. I can only say that anyone who knows baseball Hispanic,Black,or White knows deep down inside Roberto should have been included. I guess white america is at odds with the fact that hispanics are pretty much dominating America’s national sport. I wonder what excuse they will have at next centurys choice of players when at least 75% will be hispanic. Knowing them they will probably not even have a vote in order to escape reality!

  10. RE: RE: Denial
    Outfielders:
    Ty Cobb
    Ken Griffey Jr.
    Joe Dimaggio
    Mickey Mantle
    Willy Mays
    Stan Musial
    Pete Rose
    Babe Ruth
    Ted Williams
    Hank Aaron
    I guess the next thing to do is to bring out the statistics of these outfielders and compare them to Clemente’s stats.Maybe that will help prove our point.If the vote was to choose the best 3 outfielders of the century maybe our argument would not be so strong.I said Maybe! But as you can see by the list this was not the case so Clemente should have been included.

    Thanks
    Frankie

  11. RE: RE: Denial
    I just finished checking out the baseball almanac website. Not to my surprise Clemente is ranked #20 on the all time greatest players list.Pete Rose and Ken Griffey Jr.#48 and #53 respectively on that same list.Not to take anything away from these great players. I also checked out different top 100 players stats. and guess what? Clemente is practically on every list.More times than not he is in the top 50. I guess it’s up to hispanics to become more informed regarding our achievements and even if sometimes these achievements are forgotten by mainstream America it’s up to us to share aquired info with eachother and more importantly with our children.This type of non recognition has been going on forever not only in sports.I don’t need to write different examples I’m sure everyone knows what I’m getting at.

    Thanks

    P.S.

    I’m really proud of the amount of Puerto Rican activity on the Web.Sometimes I felt we were to dormant as a people regarding our struggle to be accepted in America’s mainstream but I guess I was wrong thanks to the Internet.This doesn’t mean that there is not more room for change!

  12. Thanks for the info
    I really value what you’ve been posting and would like to know more about Clemente’s stats and the other areas in which we have been shortchanged. Please. I really appreciate it.

  13. RE: Thanks for the info
    Kiwi,
    If you go to http://www.ayc-baseball.com you will be able to find the info. regarding Clemente’s stats.Since the subject happens to be baseball lets not forget how Sammy Sosa’s race for the single season homerun title was downplayed compared to Mark Macguire’s feats. Finally the MLB named Sosa the leagues MVP in order to silent our protest. Not to say that Sosa didn’t deserve to be named MVP but it seemed as if they said lets give this guy something in order to keep us quiet.
    Thanks
    Frankie

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