Roberto Clemente Research Paper

[Insert Title Here; Something Cool about Roberto Clemente] [Introduction starts here, but I haven’t quite figured one out yet, so I’ll start with the body for now.] Roberto Walker Clemente was born on August 13, 1934, in Barrio San Anton in Carolina, Puerto Rico to Melchor and Luisa Clemente. Roberto Clemente was the youngest of seven children in the family. He had four brothers: Osvaldo, Justino, Andres, and half-brother Luis Oquendo. He also had two sisters: Anairis Clemente and half-sister Rosa Oquendo. Everybody in the Clemente family lived under one roof and, somehow, all got along with each other. The largest influence on Roberto Clemente was his older brother Osvaldo. Osvaldo brought baseball into the Clemente family, but it was not him who thrived in the sport (Powell).
Clemente would sit for hours in his room alone, throwing a rubber ball against his wall to strengthen his arm.
He would spend time outside of his room gathering materials to make newly-formed spherical objects to throw against one specific spot along his wall. He would eventually get so good at it that one part of his bedroom wall would have a dent in it that could never be removed unless the whole wall was re-plastered. Even in the middle of the night, Clemente would wake up his older siblings when he was trying to strengthen his arm by throwing that one rubber ball against his wall. Eventually, Clemente’s mother, Luisa, had enough of his disturbances and asked Clemente to join a sandlot squad in town. Clemente eventually caved and joined other children in his neighborhood and played in the local sandlot. Osvaldo, again, was to credit for the finding of the sandlot. The children played together anytime they could. Roberto Clemente was designated as a shortstop and a pitcher. As younger kids, the “best positions” were shortstop and pitcher. For some reason, this was the preference of Clemente, as he wanted to showcase his skills to the other children of his neighborhood (Hano
22). Clemente used a heavy bat as a child. He did this so that he could try to build up some muscle. Clemente was relatively scrawny in build and was taller than most of the kids he was friends with. Body image was not a pressing issue for him, though. Clemente was proud of his heritage and was proud of what he looked like. The only way that anyone would bring him down was “to either kill him or drag his parents from his house and take them away from him” (Hano 38). A love for family was of the utmost importance to the entire Clemente family, especially Melchor and Luisa. Together, the Clementes were unstoppable. The extended family cliché of Latin American families was not prevalent with the Clementes, but that did not mean that they were completely separated from their more distant relatives. The cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, nieces and nephews all lived in close proximity to the Clementes. This gave Roberto Clemente the ability to play pick-up games of baseball rather easily (Hano 40). Clemente was at his best when it came to squaring off against family, only on the diamond, of course. His distant family members would try and be on the same team as Clemente, but the neighborhood boys always wanted to be on the side of greatness, so they always teamed up with Clemente. This gave Clemente’s family that much more of a competitive feel to the game. The entire extended family cheered the perusal of baseball because they witnessed the untapped potential in a sandlot in the middle of San Juan. Hit after hit, catch after catch, throw after throw, the children of San Juan and the family of Roberto Clemente were witnessing the birth of a baseball legend. But they didn’t even know it yet (Regalado 677). While Clemente was trying to improve on the field, his parents were trying to maintain a life that would support Clemente’s passion of baseball. Clemente recalls, “my father always worked. We lived in a big wooden house with a large front porch. Five bedrooms, living room, dining room, kitchen. Indoor bathroom” (qtd. in Hano 16). Having the ability to have a house and living space like this while still being classified as lower-middle class was a feat in its own right. For instance, indoor bathrooms and plumbing was a luxury that most Puerto Ricans simply could not afford. However, Melchor and Luisa Clemente somehow made it work with the small, but steady income that they maintained. This didn’t let Clemente off the hook, though. He still had to work odd jobs like delivering newspapers, bagging and restocking groceries at his mother’s work, and fixing cars at a local chop shop (Hano 16). Throughout his high school years, Clemente tried to diversify himself and take on other sports. He was a track star where “he threw javelin, he high-jumped, he performed in what was then called the hop, skip, and jump, and which today is the triple jump” (Hano 18). Clemente set Puerto Rican records and was considered by the public a sure member of the 1956 Puerto Rico Olympics squad, but Clemente decided to stick with baseball as a profession.