"He was very leary of the media. He was misquoted a lot of times, and they made fun of the way he spoke. They made him sound like one of those Indians in the movies. He was a proud man and this really got to him. He had fierce pride. He was proud of being a Puerto Rican. He was proud that he served in the military service here. He was proud that he was in the Marine Corps. He trained at in South Carolina. That was the toughest kind of training soldiers had to go through. I remember this one time he was late getting to the dressing room when we were playing in San Francisco. He walks to his locker, and we tell him he better hurry up and get in uniform. He said something about how fast a guy could get dressed – something he had learned in the Marine Corps. He said, ‘I’ll be undressed and dressed in three minutes.’ I bet him he couldn’t do it. And I put the clock on him. That sonofagun was in full uniform in less than three minutes. A lot of times he’d run out onto the field with his pants unbuttoned, or his glove on top of his head as he pulled at his belt. And he’d be hollering, ‘Where’s my glove? Where’s my glove?’ I’m telling you – he was a funny, funny man."
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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, as quoted in Remember Roberto, p. 94
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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