"I do remember my first impressions. It was the same impression I always had of Clemente. He was a very commanding man – commanding in manner of style and appearance. Even in the way he moved, he was commanding. And I was struck immediately with the fact that he had none of the sort of reticence that ballplayers are apt to have when talking to the commissioner – not at all. He spoke to the commissioner and everybody else as equals – that’s the way he was. And I don’t say that in any sense critically. It was refreshing and it was all done with excellent style. It was his commanding character that I will always remember about him as vividly today, all these years after his death, as at the beginning – commanding of everybody, particularly the ballplayers around him. He was the leader and nobody dared to be performing at less than his best as long as Clemente was looking."
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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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, recalling their first encounter, circa spring 1969; as quoted in "Bowie, Boos and Bandits" from Roberto Clemente: The Great One (1998) by Bruce Markusen, p. 179-180
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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