Clemente: The True Legacy of an Undying Hero

by The Clemente Family

Overview

Baseball great, family man, humanitarian—the life and enduring legacy of Roberto Clemente, as told by his family.

With a swift bat and fierce athleticism, Roberto Clemente intimidated major league pitchers for eighteen seasons, compiling three thousand hits. His legs were among the quickest of his era. His throwing arm was one of the strongest, gunning down base runners from right field with incredible frequency. He would spend a career fighting for respect and finally achieve it after a historic World Series performance and a second half of a career that would have him mentioned with greats like Jackie Robinson, Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, and Mickey Mantle.

But what Roberto Clemente did off the field made him an equally great humanitarian. One of the first athletes who understood how the power of sports could be used to transform not just a handful of lives but many thousands of them, he would die following his heart and conscience by helping others. Clemente was on an aircraft loaded with supplies for an earthquake-stricken Nicaragua when the plane crashed in the Atlantic Ocean.

Forty years after that tragic day, the widow and sons of this regal athlete and consummate humanitarian open up for the first time about the husband and father they lost. Featuring an extensive array of rare and never-before-seen photos of Clemente on the field and off, this powerful memoir tells his inspiring story from the voices of those who knew him best.

INCLUDES PHOTOS

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101616840
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/24/2013
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	391,973
File size:	96 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Vera, Roberto Jr., Luis, and Ricky Clemente live in Texas and Puerto Rico and continue to preserve the memory of the loving husband and inspiring father they knew best and the selfless person and epic baseball player the world will never forget. Together as a family, they founded the Roberto Clemente Foundation to help disadvantaged youths. Vera is currently the Goodwill Ambassador for Major League Baseball.

Mike Freeman is a writer for CBSSports.com. This is his seventh book. He lives in New Jersey.

Editorial Reviews

On September 30th, 1971, in his last at-bat of the regular season, Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder Robert Clemente joined major league baseball's magic circle with his 3000th hit. Just three months later, he was dead, killed in an earthquake relief plane crash. As this moving book by his family shows, this Puerto Rican-born star was a Latin trailblazer in many ways: the first Latin player elected to the Hall of Fame; the first to win a World Series title as a starter; the first World Series MVP and an MVP Award. A fitting tribute to one of the most exciting players of our lifetime. Editor's recommendation.

A family's recollection of a baseball, and humanitarian, legend. When Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) died in a plane crash on New Year's Eve in 1972, he was delivering emergency supplies to Nicaragua, which had just suffered catastrophic earthquakes. Clemente was a Hall of Fame outfielder for the Pittsburgh Pirates and represented to Latin baseball players what Jackie Robinson did to African-American players. But he was also deeply committed to humanitarian causes, to which he planned to devote his post-playing life. Effectively an oral history and scrapbook, the book is unabashedly hagiographic. CBSSports.com writer Mike Freeman compiles the memories of the Clemente family, including Roberto's sons, wife and brothers, as well as other oral testimonies and journalistic accounts of Clemente's life and career. The book traces Clemente's life from his roots in Puerto Rico, a territory to which he remained devoted, through his career with the Pirates, for which he earned the National League MVP in 1966. He was also a 15-time All-Star and won 12 Gold Glove awards and four batting titles. The dozens of pictures and the family reminiscences capture Clemente the player and the man. One can only wonder what Clemente could have accomplished on the field, but especially off of it, had he only survived to continue the work to which he had increasingly come to devote his life. As he remarked in 1971 after receiving the Tris Speaker Award, "If you have a chance to accomplish something that will make things better for people coming behind you, and you don't do that, you are wasting your time on this Earth." This loving family biography of a husband, father, baseball player, pioneer and crusader for justice serves as a fitting tribute to a truly great man. For a fuller portrait, pair with David Maraniss' Clemente (2006).

Kirkus Reviews