"He played with injuries other guys wouldn’t have come to the ballpark with because he knew his presence made a difference. I’ve seen him play with Achilles tendons stretched tighter than a drum. One year he had a bad knee, all swollen and stiff. I told him not to play, that he could be out for weeks if he did, or jeopardize his whole career. ‘No, we need a few wins,’ he said. And that kind of thing was not unusual. He got hurt by the drive he put into a game. He didn’t know how to pace himself. He played every game the same: hard. A lot of guys played winter ball too, but for them it was a vacation – good money, their wives came down, a chance to sit in the sun. They don’t give a damn – win, lose, or draw. He played a whole season down there every year, and for him there wasn't any difference between the winter league and the big league. Hell, he played twice as many games as Aaron or Mays. Aaron's one of the greatest, but I’ve seen him hit a thousand ground balls and then trot down the line. You ever seen Clemente do that – even once?"
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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
Tony Bartirome in "Dr. Clemente" from Who Was Roberto? A Biography of Roberto Clemente (1974) by Phil Musick, p. 189
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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