"As a college student, I went to an Astros game in 1970. The Pirates had clinched the division, so it was a meaningless game. I’m sitting down the right field line, and an Astro hits a line drive that’s slicing away from the Pirates right fielder, the great Roberto Clemente. The ball is slicing, slicing, slicing, and suddenly out of nowhere, like a missile tracking on radar, there’s Clemente, jumping and crashing against the fence to make the catch. It’s one of those moments like when a basketball gets wedged between the rim and the backboard: for an instant, time stands still. It’s like, “What did I just see?” I never thought about that moment again until years later. I was stuck in an airport, reading an article by a former Pirates beat writer about Clemente: his leadership, his great World Series, how he always delivered in big games. Then the writer starts describing the greatest catch he had ever seen Clemente make, and I realized he was talking about that game, that catch. Suddenly I was sharing a moment – almost a secret with someone I’d never met, someone I may have nothing in common with. I take that back: We’re both baseball fans."
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Baptists from the United StatesPresidential Medal of Freedom recipientsUnited States MarinesPeople from San Juan
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Roberto Clemente
baseball player
1934 – 1972 · United States
Roberto Enrique Clemente Walker (August 18, 1934 – December 31, 1972) was a Puerto Rican Major League baseball player from 1955 through 1972, exclusively with the Pittsburgh Pirates. A posthumous inductee to the National Baseball Hall of Fame (following his fatal plane crash on December 31, 1972, en route to deliver aid to earthquake victims in Nicaragua), Clemente became both the first Latin American and the first C
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