"This boy may not possess the color of Jackie Robinson or Willie Mays, but he has enough natural ability to be spoken of along with any of those fellows. I suppose I have a peculiar attachment to Robert [sic]. That's because we got him for a "steal," you might say. I was with the Dodgers when we acquired Clemente after scouting him in Puerto Rico. So I was thoroughly acquainted with the boy when the major league draft came up in the winter of 1954, after I had come to Pittsburgh from Brooklyn. The Dodgers were apparently bent on "hiding" Robert when they transferred him to the Pacific Coast League.ā But since I knew what he could do, and that he was somewhere in their farm system, I withheld the Pirates' draft selection until I found the boy. We got him for the relatively small draft priceāperhaps the biggest steal in baseball."
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Baptists from the United StatesPresidential Medal of Freedom recipientsUnited States MarinesPeople from San Juan
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Roberto Clemente
baseball player
1934 ā 1972 Ā· United States
Roberto Enrique Clemente Walker (August 18, 1934 ā 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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