"Dave Giusti was the player rep in 1972, but Roberto Clemente was the real leader of the clubhouse. He himself was known to stand up to the owners. Dave Giusti told me a Clemente story that Iāll always treasure. Piratesā owner Dan Galbreath was in the locker room talking to the players. The club would draw better, he said, if the players signed more autographs and made more public appearances. Galbreath piled it on, claiming that the players werenāt appreciative enough of the fans. According to Giusti, the team had had enough, but nobody had the audacity to speak up. Finally, Clemente said, "Mr. Galbreath, I had a dream last night about this. I had a terrible neckache, and suddenly I had become so old and tired and injured that I could no longer play. But those wonderful fans out in right field banded together and said, āEven if the Great One canāt play, we canāt let him go. He belongs in right field.ā So the fans presented me with a rocking chair and said that I should sit comfortably between the stands and the right field foul line and relax all through my retirement." The rest of the Bucs didnāt know what to think. Was he buttering management up? Had he gone loco? But Clemente continued in his heavily accented English. "You know, Mr. Galbreath, what that dream is?" Galbreath hesitated. "No, what?" Clemente replied firmly, "It is boolsheet!" Everybody busted up. Except Galbreath."
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Baptists from the United StatesPresidential Medal of Freedom recipientsUnited States MarinesPeople from San Juan
Original Language: English
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Sources
in A Whole Different Ball Game: The Inside Story of the Baseball Revolution (1991) by Miller, p. 216
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Roberto_Clemente
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Roberto Clemente
baseball player
1934 ā 1972 Ā· United States
Roberto Enrique Clemente Walker (August 18, 1934 ā 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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