"Roberto’s carefree outlook on life began to change when the press started to misunderstand him when he talked about his injuries. When he was hurt he had trouble explaining himself because of the language problem and everyone thought he was jakin’. I don’t think he’s ever jaked. He just could do things when he was hurt as well as the rest of us could when we were healthy, and people would see this and decide he was dogging it. They thought he used the basket catch because Mays did and everything he did in the outfield was exciting, so right away to some writers he was a hot dog who jaked. Stories were written to that effect and he went through some years when he didn’t trust writers, and I don’t blame him. Some of them put words in your mouth and that’s what they did to him when he was younger. They tried to make him look like an ass by getting him to say controversial things and then they wrote how the Puerto Rican hot dog was popping off again. He was just learning to handle the language and he couldn’t express what he felt or thought and it frustrated him. Writers who couldn’t speak three words of Spanish tried to make him look silly, but he was an intelligent man who knows people and knows the game."
January 1, 1970