Presidential Medal Of Freedom Recipients

"The year he spoke at the baseball dinner here is something I’ll never forget. It was one of the greatest speeches I ever heard. I'll remember that night as much as anything."

"If somebody pays you a compliment in Puerto Rico, you accept it and say "thank you very much," and then you say why you are deserving of such a compliment. If someone told him "You are one of the greatest ballplayers," Roberto would smile and say, "Thank you," and then tell why he thought he was. He didn't understand that wasn't the way players in this country would handle it. In the United states, if a guy gives you a compliment, you play the humility game. "Nah, I don't deserve that kind of praise." Humble pie stuff. In Puerto Rico, you have to support what they said. He knew he was good. No one ingratiated themselves to people more than I did, so I know how to play the humble role. I had grown up in an orphanage, so I was always trying to please people and be accepted."

"Before I threw the ball I prayed a little bit to God: "Please let this pitch be in a good spot for him not to hit it too hard." I think I was lucky enough to throw the ball in a good spot. It was a ground ball out. I remember one time in Pittsburgh – I struck him out three times. I think that was the greatest day in my life."

"If Roberto Clemente could sing, he would make Harry Belafonte wish he could hit."

"My locker was next to Bobby’s for the entire six years I played with the Pirates. I watched him and listened to him on a daily basis. He had great pride in being Latin. He consistently brought this to people’s attention. Each year he played winter ball at his hometown of San Juan, not for the money but because he felt he owed it to his town folk. One winter I pitched for him when he managed the San Juan club. I met his wife and children to whom he was deeply devoted. Although a national hero in Puerto Rico and this country, he never took on the air of being a celebrity. He was always just one of the guys, yet separate. I never saw Bobby drunk, disorderly or chasing women, as I did other guys. I always believed he felt the obligation and responsibility of being a major league baseball player was to set an example for the public."

"Bobby clearly was a good person. What he did to help those people in Nicaragua was typical of Bobby. Down deep, he was a very good person. He wanted to help people. He never felt he got his just due from the news media, and he was always trying to prove himself. But he was kinda bashful, at first, and didn’t like to talk too much. Later, he’d give the news guys a rough time a lot, hollering at them as soon as they identified themselves or started to ask him questions. It took him a long time to get the language down where he felt confident to be interviewed. When Bobby wanted to be, he could be most entertaining on the bus. Every so often, he’d get all wound up and he’d be entertaining everyone on the bus. Most of the people, though, don’t know that Bobby Clemente existed."

"Hank Aaron. But there are more than Henry. Clemente, Willie Stargell, Williams, Pete Rose – they’re all tough."

"“You mean you wrote me a nasty letter objecting to a column you had never read?” “A friend call me and tell me what you write about me,” he said. “I’m angry so I sit down and write to you when I’m mad.” “Now I’m mad,” I said. “Don’t ever talk to me again or complain again until you’ve read that column.” Weeks passed. I had forgotten the incident completely when I next saw Clemente. “I call my friend and tell him he is horse_ _ _ _,” Roberto said. For the moment, I didn’t understand. Roberto recognized that. “You remember you tell me I have to read your story before I talk to you and complain?” he said. “I read the story I find out that you did not write what my friend said. So now I apologize to you for the letter and I tell my friend he is no longer my friend because he does not tell me the truth.” It was a rare moment in my years in sports; a player admitting that he may have been wrong. Clemente didn’t need me but he felt it incumbent upon himself to tell me that he had done me an injustice."

"Clemente is one of the three best hitters I’ve seen among those I’ve had a chance to watch on a regular basis. The others were Stan Musial and Hank Aaron. I never had a chance to see much of Ted Williams."

"I was crushed. You don’t want to drag your career out. You want to contribute, especially with a club like this one. It was a dumb pitch. I felt terrible. Everyone got dressed quickly – I guess they wanted to leave me with my misery. But Clemente came over and talked to me. All he did was spend 20 minutes holding my hand because he knew I was suffering. He’s a guy who’d been in baseball for so long, and he had three hits that night, and he came over to help. It’s the warmest thing anyone’s ever done for me in baseball."

"Roberto unleashed a barrage of English and Spanish – and I don’t know what all – in which he was obviously indicating his displeasure with this particular individual. Unknown to me, they had had some problems over the years. I just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. After this outburst, Roberto sort of settled down. He looked at me and said, "Would it help you if I do this interview?" I said, "Well, yes, I guess it would. This is my first day on the job. I don’t know you and I don’t know him and I’m trying to get off on the right foot." And Roberto said, "OK, for you, I will do it." And he got dressed and went out and talked to the individual for the first time, apparently, in several years. He did it as a favor to me – someone he had only met a few moments before. I just never forgot that. I don’t think you would find many athletes who would have been so solicitous and so understanding, and go out of their way as he did to accommodate me that day. We went on to become very good friends, but I never forgot that gesture on his part. It was just an indication of the type of person that he was."

"In most cases I wouldn’t have felt compelled to provide a reason for knocking a batter down, but somehow Clemente brought out my soft side. It was virtually impossible to ignore him because he was always talking. Usually, it was to complain about how much his back or his shoulder or some other damn thing was hurting him. "Oh, my back," he would say, "ees keeling me." He would go on and on until you had no choice but to say, "Clemente, shut the fuck up!" Then he would step in the batter’s box and swing so hard that the flagsticks on top of the stadium would bend. He was so full of shit that you had to laugh, and you couldn’t help liking the guy."

"He came over to me and talked to me for about ten or fifteen minutes. He talked about life in general, about family, and he tried to bring out the belief that baseball wasn’t the end all in our lives – that we had to make sure we kept things in balance. He wanted to make sure you kept them in the right order; like family and your wife. He wanted us to remember that these were the most important things. He didn't have to come over and talk to me, but he did."

"He called me ‘Hully’ – that’s my nickname. Sometimes he’d call me John, and I’d say, "Well now, don’t get too personal there, Herschel." For some reason Roberto kidded me about being a Russian Jew, even though I’m not, and then he’d claim he was Jewish too! So then I’d call him Herschel, and he loved it. I always told him that someday I wanted to buy a home, and he’d say, "Stick with me, Hully, and I’ll put money in your pocket." Then he’d kid around and say, "We’re gonna put some ham in that refrigerator, no more plain baloney." Sure enough, when we won the 1971 World Series, I got a full share of the winnings and right away I put $10,000 down on a house. He was so tickled about me getting the house. I remember, during that Series, when he was at bat, I’d yell, "C’mon, you sonofabitch! C’mon Herschel, hit one for me!""

"Clemente was to right field what Ozzie Smith is to shortstop."

"I don’t know what they mean about not hitting home runs. In the All-Star game two summers ago at Tiger Stadium, Clemente swung at my outside pitch and put it up in the center field bleachers."

"He always complained about pains in his stomach. He’d come to the plate and I could see he was in pain and I’d say, "Robby, what’s wrong?" And he’d say, "Tom, I don’t feel too good." But he didn’t like to go to the doctor – he didn’t believe in doctors."

"Roberto’s body didn't appear because God wanted us to remember him as he was: that handsome negro, so strong, so beautiful within and without."

"I also threw the slider a couple of times. I threw the slider to Hank Aaron and Roberto Clemente, because I figured if it worked on those two great hitters, then I had something there. So I threw it to Aaron and almost hit him in the face. He reached out to get it, and it came right at him. And I threw it to Clemente. You may remember that in Forbes Field in Pittsburgh, there was a light tower by where they used to park the batting cage. Halfway up. there was a bunch of transformers. Well, Clemente hit it off a transformer. I said, "Well, maybe I don't have a slider," and I gave it up.So, I never came up with a third pitch."

"Everybody looked rumpled next to Roberto Clemente."

"Mays is the best player I've seen and Aaron is the best hitter... which raises the question of where you put Clemente; he's right there."

"There wasn’t too much contact with Clemente off the field; just at the ballpark. He was pretty much by himself, a loner. We were never close… He didn’t hang around with us much. He was always with , or or . He had other friends. There were always people from Puerto Rico or other Latin countries wherever we traveled. He was just more of a loner."

"He was my middle man if I needed help, if there was a problem between management and one of the players. A lot of people thought he was moody and temperamental, but he wasn’t. He was like a kid in many ways. He had that mischievous look. I always felt he wanted to be a practical joker but that he felt he had to be restrained, the proper leader. He was a god to the Latin-American players. They’d congregate around him in the dining room. If he laughed, they laughed. If he frowned, they frowned. And he was always making appearances you wouldn’t find out about until several days later. He’d go to a hospital or an orphanage and no one would know it. I’m not sure he confided in anyone except his wife."

"We were playing Pittsburgh, and our first baseman, Earl Torgeson, hit a deep drive to right. I don’t know how far, but it went a long, long way. Clemente quickly retrieved the ball in the corner. Torgeson was on his way to third, and he was a pretty good runner, when Clemente threw the ball to third all the way from the right field corner on a fly and Torgeson was out by 15 feet. Torgeson felt a breeze go by his ear and knew he didn’t have a chance. Clemente had the most powerful arm I have ever seen."

"I don't believe if Clemente were still alive that there'd be a statue. It's the way he died. I think, in my mind, Stargell did as much for the people of Pittsburgh, for the team, for the organization. He deserves a statue as much as Clemente does for the contributions he made here. That's my feeling. Stargell mingled more with the public, and he mingled more with his teammates, and he was more of a positive influence all around."

"I'm not Roberto Clemente, I'm your Democratic presidential candidate!"

"I asked Face if he remembered where he was when he learned that Clemente had died in an airplane crash on New Year's Eve of 1972. Again, somewhat strangely, a smile. "I was sleeping," he said. He was living in Penn Hills at the time with his first wife, Jeanne Kuran, who was from Pittsburgh and to whom he was married for 25 years, and their daughter Michelle, then 17, who woke him up to tell him the bad news about Clemente. Face remembered his reaction to Michelle's wake-up call. "I said, ‘Better him than me,’ and rolled over and went back to sleep." It sounded harsh. Face chortled at his own story."

"Those extra base hits [by Clemente, Manny Mota and José Pagán ]… you couldn’t take a gun and hit the holes better. Anyone who says Clemente isn’t a tough hitter is full of baloney. He’s tough because he’s a free swinger, can hit the outside pitch, inside pitch, high pitch, low pitch, fastball, curveball… So what else is left to throw him?"

"You know, I’ve never met Mrs. Clemente, but I thought of her often ... very often."

"Clemente was an emotional man, and that was his beauty. It drove him not only to physical anguish, but also to nearly incredible performances on the field as well as to the good work he was engaged in at his death. Often, although not so much in his maturing years, he seemed almost paranoid in his complaints against this or that, but when he said he loved mankind you had to believe him, because even the heat of his most bitter outburst almost always blew over, and where he had been loud, he would suddenly become reasonable and even eloquent. A man to confuse you? Yes, absolutely, but only because man’s full range of passions ran strong in him. Cunning he was not. Honest he was. And the proof is that he was no honorary chairman of that relief committee for Nicaragua -- he was no figurehead chairman in name only; he was not merely a celebrity lending his prestige but not his heart or his labor to a cause. Honorary chairmen do not disappear into the Atlantic in the performance of duty."

"Clemente, Mays, Aaron. Koufax didn't worry too much. Perhaps he didn't have too much to worry about, but free from worry, he was able to concentrate more. "The good hitters are going to hit you," he explained. "You can't get 'em out all the time. And they're not the guys you have to get out to win. Maybe there are two good ones on each team and they're going to get two hits each. That's only four hits, so you must keep the others under wraps. They're the one who beat you." Koufax placed Roberto Clemente, Willie Mays and Hank Aaron in one category as hitters. "Mays always told me how hard it was to get a hit off me and every time I looked up, he was on second base. Yet, even with Mays, I had an idea what to do. When I pitched to Clemente and Aaron, I had no idea. They seemed to hit everything.""

"Both Walkers owe a debt of gratitude to the most revered player in Pirates history. Tom Walker played winter ball in Puerto Rico in 1972 and helped Roberto Clemente load a plane carrying relief supplies to earthquake survivors in Nicaragua after Christmas. He offered to accompany Clemente on the trip, but the plane was full and Clemente told him to stay behind and enjoy New Year's Eve. A few hours later, Tom Walker returned to his condo and saw the news reports that Clemente's plane had crashed off the coast of Isla Verde, Puerto Rico. Four decades later he's still awed by the notion that he would have perished without Clemente's selfless gesture, and his four children never would have been born."

"In addition to his great arm, Roberto Clemente could possibly be a great master if he put his mind to it. I've never seen him play a wall off the wall and be in bad position. Now, he catches balls off irregular walls, he's always in the right place, and he has made some of the longest singles look pretty futile when base-runners try to go for two."

"As we were talking, I was moving my neck around so he asked me what was the matter. I told him that my neck hurt because of an old baseball injury. In a 1958 spring training intrasquad game, I had cracked the third cervical vertebra in my neck when I had a collision with another player trying to catch a popup. Bobby told me to go take a shower with the water as hot as I could stand it. I did that and when I came out of the shower beet red all over, he had me lie on the trainer’s table for a massage. With his very strong hands, he kneaded the muscles in my neck and back and it felt wonderful. Afterwards, he told me to stand up with my back to him. He took two towels, wrapped them together into a cylindrical shape, placed them along my spine, and grabbed me in a bear hug. Then – in something similar to the Heimlich maneuver – he bent backward, pulled me toward him, lifted me off the ground, and sort of bounced me up and down for a moment. As he did, I heard a sound like a xylophone and felt my spine go into perfect alignment. He put me down and said, ‘You’ll feel better tomorrow.’ Heck, I felt better already. But the thing that really impressed me was that the next night I got a call from the visitors’ clubhouse in St. Louis. It was Bobby, and he wanted to know if my back was better. That was the act of a compassionate man, and I didn’t need the crash that ended his life to know that about Bobby."

"After Roberto passed, I was looking at some documents about Roberto, and I saw him registered as Roberto Enrique Clemente Walker. He never used the name Enrique. I didn't know that was his name. My baby has the same name – Roberto Enrique – as his dad."

"Roberto was a very mature boy, even when he was ten or so. Basically, he was a good kid. He did two things, played ball and stayed home. He never got into trouble. We called him "Momen" from the time he was little. When he had grown up and become a star, no one could remember what the name meant. He was always quiet, never got whipped. We used to kid him about that."

"If anybody needed help with advice or money, he would give it. Once, when he was about 11, there was an automobile accident. The car caught fire, and he crossed the highway and took the driver out so he wouldn’t burn. In school he was a leader. When they needed to build a fence to protect the school, he organized a group of boys and, through various activities, they raised money to help build the fence."

"I try to keep the ball away from Clemente, but I got this one right down the middle and he hit it pretty good."

"Roberto rarely took time for himself. His time was for others, his family, strangers. Only time he did something for himself was after the season. He'd go to a farm he owned near the rain forest. He'd just relax. If the Pirates weren't in the World Series, he'd relax on that farm and watch the World Series on television. He once spent the day with Martin Luther King in his other farm in Martín González in Carolina. They talked about everything. Roberto admired how he gave poor people a voice."

"The best way to pitch him is to roll the ball."

"Well, somebody asked me if it was true that I scuffled with Roberto Clemente and he pulled a knife and cut me on the hand. Then they said and came in to break it up and Stuart threw Clemente against the wall and that's how he hurt his arm. I never had an argument with anyone, Clemente doesn't own a knife, and I doubt if Stuart, strong as he is, could pick up Clemente—an ex-Marine—and throw him against a wall."

"Roberto Clemente, a Puerto Rican, drafted from the Brooklyn chain, is only 20, but he can run, throw and smack for distance."

"He was very leary of the media. He was misquoted a lot of times, and they made fun of the way he spoke. They made him sound like one of those Indians in the movies. He was a proud man and this really got to him. He had fierce pride. He was proud of being a Puerto Rican. He was proud that he served in the military service here. He was proud that he was in the Marine Corps. He trained at in South Carolina. That was the toughest kind of training soldiers had to go through. I remember this one time he was late getting to the dressing room when we were playing in San Francisco. He walks to his locker, and we tell him he better hurry up and get in uniform. He said something about how fast a guy could get dressed – something he had learned in the Marine Corps. He said, ‘I’ll be undressed and dressed in three minutes.’ I bet him he couldn’t do it. And I put the clock on him. That sonofagun was in full uniform in less than three minutes. A lot of times he’d run out onto the field with his pants unbuttoned, or his glove on top of his head as he pulled at his belt. And he’d be hollering, ‘Where’s my glove? Where’s my glove?’ I’m telling you – he was a funny, funny man."

"and all those different guys – they’re partying types. And if they're the partying type, would you expect a man who was a sedentary individual to get involved? No. These individuals were drinking, they were out having parties – they have fun. Clemente was not that type of individual. Clemente said, "If I’m here to do a job, the job must take precedence. Now after the season is over, I can have all the parties I want. But if I’m here to do a job, I’ve signed a contract to do a job." But the American mentality is not that way."

"They said don’t pitch him inside. I didn’t pitch him inside for three or four years. When I did pitch him inside, he hit a home run, the wind blowing 30 miles per hour against him. He hit it 25 rows deep."

"Mays was the best player I ever saw. Aaron was the best hitter. But that raises the question of where you put Clemente – with Willie, with Henry? He’s right there."

"I used to hear how great Clemente was. This year he has showed me. The man plays as hard as any man I've ever seen."

"The biggest misunderstanding with Clemente was not that he was black, but that he was a Latin. We didn't understand Latins. Latins are a very proud people. Pride is what killed Clemente. He had such pride in everything he did. And he wanted everything h was associated with to be done right. He flew in that plane to Nicaragua because he had heard that the food and supplies were not going to the people who needed it the most. He wanted to make sure the relief effort for the earthquake victims was carried out properly. If Clemente was in charge of the relief effort, he would lead the effort. He was never an honorary chairman of anything."

"If I went along with all the praise he gets, I’d be a hypocrite. Because it’s not my true feelings. I didn’t look up to him as a person. He was a great ballplayer, when he wanted to play, but as a person – from my point of view – he wasn’t my kind of guy. I’ll probably get shot for that, but that’s the way I feel."

"The man was a man in every true sense. He was proud, dedicated. He wouldn't want anyone to give him anything. Yet he never had a national commercial, was on only one talk show, , and he never made any appearances in the Pittsburgh area. Blacks get the trophies . . . whites get the money."