"There were 72 tryouts in camp that day, remembers Alex Campanis. One caught his eye just one out ol 72. "How could I miss him?" says Campanis. "He was the greatest natural athlete I have ever seen as a free agent." The tryout was being conducted jointly by the Dodgers of Brooklyn and the Santurce ballclub of San Juan, in the Sixto Escobar Stadium, a structure named after 118 pounds of Puerto Rican dynamite, the bantamweight champ of the world in the mid-thirties. "The first thing we do at the tryout," recalls Campanis, "is ask the kids to throw from the outfield. This one throws a bullet from center, on the fly. I couldn't believe my eyes. 'Uno mas,' I shout and he does it again. I waved my hand, that's enough. Then we have them run 60 yards. The first time I clock him in 6.4. I couldn't believe It. That's in full uniform. 'UNO MAS'," said Campanis again, and again the kid did it in 6.4. They sent the 71 others home. "The only one I asked to hit was this boy, who told me his name was Roberto Clemente," said Campanis. "I'm saying to myself, we gotta sign this sonofagun If he can just hold the bat in his hands. He starts hitting line drives all over the place. I notice the way he's standing in the box, and I figure there's no way he can reach the outside of the plate, so I tell the pitcher to pitch him outside, and the kid swings , with both feet off the ground and hits line drives to right and sharp ground balls up the middle.""
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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
Al Campanis, as paraphrased and quoted in "Young Ideas" by Dick Young, in The Cincinnati Enquirer (Thursday, October 21, 1971), p. 69
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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