"We were teammates at Montreal in 1954 and I was trying to work my way back to the majors. Clemente was an 18-year-old kid [sic] from Puerto Rico who could do everything. The Dodgers gave him a $10,000 bonus in 1953 and tried to hide him at Montreal. Clyde Sukeforth came up to see us in several games, scouting for the Pirates, and I had been told Sukey was looking at me since the Pirates would have first pick in the winter draft. But Clemente took his eye and when Sukey began asking me questions about Clemente, I knew then he had changed his mind and was going to select Clemente instead. There wasn't anything Clemente couldn't do and the Dodgers issued orders not to play him too much so the scouts might feel he wasn't ready. They even used him at third base occasionally to throw off the scouts but anybody who ever saw a ball game could tell this kid had a future."
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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
Joe Black (Montreal Royals teammate, 1954) in "The Scoreboard: Saga of Clemente Steal" by Lester J. Biederman, in The Pittsburgh Press (Friday, June 28, 1963), p. 23
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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