"He came to me right out of high school. I could see he was going a long way. Some of the old-timers didn’t think so, but I could see great ability in Clemente. The main thing I had to do was keep his spirits up. He didn’t realize how good he was. But I could see his potential. I told him he’d be as good as Willie Mays some day – and he was. He had a few rough spots, but he never made the same mistake twice. He had baseball savvy and he listened. He listened to what he was told and he did it. Some of the old pros didn’t take too kindly to a kid breaking into the lineup, but Clemente was too good to keep out."
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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
Buster Clarkson, interviewed in 1973 by Donald Hall; as quoted in Roberto Clemente: The Great One (1998) by Bruce Markusen, p. 13
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Roberto_Clemente
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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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