"I know that Clemente had a reputation for being a hypochondriac, but I didn’t see it. Bobby did have a lot of injuries, but he usually played with them. I remember one time walked by while Clemente was on the trainer’s table getting rubbed down and said, "Robbie, you sit this one out." And Clemente said, “No, Skip, I play.” Bobby wasn’t a hot dog either. He played the game hard. He ran hard, he slid hard, he threw hard—all the time, even in practice. Bill Virdon said, "He practices the same way he plays." He had that great arm, but I really don’t understand how it held up, because when we took infield, he’d throw like his life depended on it. He had a lot of mannerisms too, and people particularly remember the way he’d rotate his neck before he got into the batter’s box, but he was just trying to get loosened up, he wasn’t showboating."
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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
Bob 'Doc' Enoch (Bullpen catcher with Pittsburgh, 1958-60), as quoted in Tales From the Ballpark: More of the Greatest True Baseball Stories Ever Told (1999) by Mike Shannon, pp. 37-8
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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