Roberto Clemente Quotes (1934-1972)

“I am having a plaque put on the front of my house. It will say, "To God, Mother, Father and Baseball."”

“Everything is so new in Puerto Rico. I wanted to build something the way Puerto Rico started, something from the old land.”

“In a way, I was born twice. I was born in 1934 and again in 1955 when I came to Pittsburgh. I am thankful to say that I lived two lives.”

“Accomplishment is something you cannot buy. If you have a chance and don’t make the most of it, you are wasting your time on this earth. It is not what you do in baseball or sports, but how hard you try. Win or lose, I try my best.”

“I learned the right way to live from my parents. I never heard any hate in my house. I never heard my father say a mean word to my mother, or my mother to my father, either. During the war, when food was hard to get, my parents fed their children first and they ate what was left. They always thought of us.”

“I watched on TV when America sent men to the moon, and there were a lot of people whose names weren't given who helped make it possible. You don't have the names of those who run the computers and other things. But they worked together and this is what you have to have ... Chinese, American, Jewish, black and white, people working side by side. [...] We must all live together and work together no matter what race or nationality. If you have an opportunity to accomplish something that will make things better for someone coming behind you, and you don't do that, you are wasting your time on this earth.”

“Roberto Clemente wasn't much of a fisherman. When he was a kid, he was working when he wasn't playing baseball, and when he wasn't doing either, he was sleeping, with time out somewhere along the line for eating. After he became a star, he continued to be too busy to do much fishing even though the waters around his native Puerto Rico are teeming with game fish. Winter ball, his business on the Island, and other and varied activities gave him little time for leisure. Among the latter were his interest in kids, particularly underprivileged kids. And he knew that kids like to go fishing. Last summer Roberto beamed, his dark eyes sparkling, when he discussed with this writer a project underway at his home in Puerto Rico. "We are building a pond and we will stock it with fish so that the kids can come there to fish and have fun. It goes down to a big rock and then makes a sharp turn. It is 330 feet down to the rock and almost that much after the turn." The pond, he said, would be stocked with several species of fresh-water fish indigenous to Puerto Rico, "and trout, too," he added. He didn't say how the kids would get out into the country to the pond to fish. He didn't say where they would get the fishing tackle and bait if they didn't have any of their own. He didn't have to. Knowing Roberto Clemente we knew that he'd get them there, furnish the bait and tackle, and probably throw in a picnic, too. He'll be missed by a lot more people than baseball fans.”

“Willie Mays is the greatest ball player I've ever seen. I never saw Joe DiMaggio play, but if Joe DiMaggio was better than Willie Mays, he belongs in Heaven.”

“I would have to say myself, but it would not look good for me to say it. I just have confidence I am the best because I believe in myself. If I had to pick another player, it would be Hank Aaron. He does everything so well.”

“You all wrong. You try to hit home run every time but you no can do. No man can do. I wish you try to hit ball like you did when you joined team last July. Then you just try to meet ball because you want to make good showing after coming from minors. You swing easy and ball goes into centerfield seats. Next day, you swing easy again and ball goes over left field wall. Now you swing too hard. Try to hit home run every swing. You wrong. You have no timing, you miss ball. Please, for me, just try to meet ball when we open season. You have so much power, you just meet ball and whoosh—it goes over fence. Stu, with my brains, if I have your power, I make $200,000 in baseball.”

“Most Latin players don’t look for the walk. They go up to the plate aggressively. It’s a basic thing. You try to throw the ball past me; I try to hit the ball. Clemente did – how do you say? – what comes natural. He developed his talents. Almost everybody in our country is like that but Roberto, with the way he hit, made the American scouts leave us alone and let us play the game our way.”

“He played with injuries other guys wouldn’t have come to the ballpark with because he knew his presence made a difference. I’ve seen him play with Achilles tendons stretched tighter than a drum. One year he had a bad knee, all swollen and stiff. I told him not to play, that he could be out for weeks if he did, or jeopardize his whole career. ‘No, we need a few wins,’ he said. And that kind of thing was not unusual. He got hurt by the drive he put into a game. He didn’t know how to pace himself. He played every game the same: hard. A lot of guys played winter ball too, but for them it was a vacation – good money, their wives came down, a chance to sit in the sun. They don’t give a damn – win, lose, or draw. He played a whole season down there every year, and for him there wasn't any difference between the winter league and the big league. Hell, he played twice as many games as Aaron or Mays. Aaron's one of the greatest, but I’ve seen him hit a thousand ground balls and then trot down the line. You ever seen Clemente do that – even once?”

“That's right. We didn’t want the Giants to have Clemente and a fellow like Willie Mays in the same outfield. It was a cheap deal for us. The Giants wanted him badly but didn’t want to make him a bonus boy and have him sit on the bench. But we didn’t care as long as we nailed him. We put him on the Montreal roster, exposing him to the unrestricted draft, figuring we could get back our original investment. We have a letter from the commissioner’s office to the effect that we could get back our investment if he were drafted, but we then we later learned that all we could collect was $4,000. So, all right. It cost us $6,000, actually; but the Giants didn’t get him, which was the important thing.”

“The thing that amazed me is that sometimes one of his legs would be up in the air and he’d be hitting, and it’d still go out of the ballpark. He was just strong.”

“Sometime this year, somebody is going to go from first to third against us on a single to right. And I’m going to be shocked. It’s never happened before, in all the time I’ve been in the big leagues, because Clemente has always been there. I’ll find myself backing up first base on the play, because Clemente knew the lead runner wasn’t going to try anything against him, so he’d try to pick off the hitter taking too big a turn.”

“Bragan smiled about it yesterday afternoon. He was asked if Clemente had been thrown out at the plate and had the Pirates lost in extra innings, would he have fined Clemente? "How could you fine a player for driving in three runs we needed to tie?" That seemed like a rather good explanation.”

“Clemente’s death made a tremendous difference, because he carried a big load by producing consistently. Everything other guys used to do was gravy. They were the icing on the cake. Their runs didn’t count in a situation; they just put the game out of reach. This year, those guys could not be the icing. They mean the game. The pressure is on them to produce in key situations time after time after time. That is a far greater mental discipline than having to produce when it doesn’t count.”

“The one player who impressed me the most was Roberto Clemente, both as a man and as an athlete. He was one of the nicest individuals and just tremendous as a ball player. I never saw a better player, although I always regarded Ted Williams as the best hitter. I called him the pure hitter.”

“I like this kid about as much as any young prospect I've seen in years. He can do everything for you. And he wants to learn. I'm just praying no one will notice him at Montreal. He got a small bonus, but it's enough to make him unrestricted in the draft.”