"It’s sad, but there’s a myth in baseball that certain classes of players are more susceptible to fits of ‘dogging’ than others. This dread ballplayers’ palsy is widely believed to affect blacks more than whites, and Latins more than either. I have never seen anything to substantiate it, but the superstition is present in almost every locker room. For instance, Roberto Clemente did have a very capricious set of vertebral discs. He could play them for you like castanets – and would, on demand. But the grand old game was skeptical. “How can you bat .351 with a bad back?” the dugouts scoff. The point is Hemingway had to write best sellers standing up because of a bad back. John Kennedy had to run the country wearing a corset. But no one believed you could bat .351 with a bad back. Actually, Clemente himself fell into the trap one night when, speaking of Sandy Koufax’s reported sore arm, he asked a reporter irritably, “How can you strike out 15 batters a night with a sore arm?” Said the reporter gently, “Roberto, how can you bat .351 with a sore back?” Roberto got the point."
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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
Jim Murray: “It Was All in His Head,” The Los Angeles Times (Friday, August 8,1980), p. D1
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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