"I used to kick myself whenever a guy got a single that fell just in front of me and Willie would say, “That’s all right, you held the guy to a single.” It stared making a lot of sense. It took a while to learn but I’ve finally got it. Take a team like Pittsburgh. Willie Stargell is the guy who hits all the homers, but I’ll play Roberto Clemente deeper than I’ll play Stargell. If Stargell hits it out, it doesn’t matter where you play. All you can do is lean on the fence and watch it go out. But Clemente hits a lot of line drives, so I play back and hope to keep him to a single, not a double or triple."
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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
Bobby Bonds, as quoted in “Bobby Bonds Has Replaced Mays as Giants’ Leader” by Gordon Verrell, in The Long Beach Independent Press-Telegram (Sunday, July 1, 1972), p. S4
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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