Roberto Clemente
A documentary about an exceptional baseball player and committed humanitarian who challenged racial discrimination to become baseball’s first Latino superstar.
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Fred Vigeant
Join American Experience for an encore of “Roberto Clemente,” a documentary about an exceptional baseball player and committed humanitarian who challenged racial discrimination to become baseball’s first Latino superstar.
From independent filmmaker Bernardo Ruiz, the program features interviews with Pulitzer Prize-winning authors David Maraniss (Clemente) and George F. Will (Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball), Clemente’s wife, Vera, Baseball Hall of Famer Orlando Cepeda and former teammates to present an intimate and revealing portrait of a man whose passion and grace made him a legend.
Clemente’s untimely death brought an end to a spectacular career. In his 18 seasons with the Pirates, he led the team to two World Series championships, won four National League batting titles, received the Most Valuable Player award and earned 12 consecutive Gold Gloves. In his final turn at bat for the 1972 season, Clemente made his 3,000th career hit — an achievement that had been reached by 10 major league players before him and only 15 since.
Clemente was offended by the racism he encountered in the United States, an injustice he had not experienced growing up in Puerto Rico’s relaxed racial climate. Later in his career, after signing with the Pittsburgh Pirates, Clemente often felt estranged in the blue-collar steel town, where the white majority saw him as a black man and the African Americans labeled him a foreigner. The local sports press often took jabs at the rising star by quoting him in broken English.
But by 1964, Clemente led a National League all-star team that featured more Latino players than ever. His success in baseball became an important symbol for the nation’s growing Latino population as he excelled in America’s pastime while maintaining his Latino identity. Today, 70 percent of foreign-born baseball players in the United States hail from the Dominican Republic, Venezuela or Puerto Rico.
Eventually, Clemente used the podium his fame offered to talk about human rights and his dream to help underprivileged youth in Puerto Rico. During road trips with the Pirates, he routinely stopped to visit sick children in area hospitals. “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,” he told a Houston audience in 1971, just one year before his death.
Roberto Clemente on American Experience originally premiered in 2008. Catch this replay Tuesday, January 25 at 9pm on WITF. The program may be streamed through the PBS Video app.
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