Museum Commemorates Baseball Great Roberto Clemente

Exhibit pays homage to Hall of Famer's legendary career and humanitarian efforts

by Elizabeth Llorente, AARP, August 20, 2021

A closeup portrait of baseball player Roberto Clemente

Neil Leifer/Sports Illustrated via Getty Images

En español | They called Roberto Clemente “The Great One,” a champion on the baseball field who used his star power to aid the sick and poor before losing his life in a tragic plane crash at the age of 38. Now his fellow boricuas (or Puerto Ricans) will get to immerse themselves in the history of both the star athlete and the humanitarian when a museum exhibit on Clemente reopens on Oct. 1.

The exhibit (which debuted last year but then shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic) at El Museo del Deporte de Puerto Rico in the city of Guaynabo includes scores of items on loan from the Clemente Museum in Pittsburgh, where the baseball icon played with the Pirates for 18 seasons. Included are memorabilia, photographs, and documents that span the Hall of Famer's legendary career and equally legendary humanitarian efforts. The exhibit is scheduled to run until 2023.

"There have been so many different events, exhibits, celebrations honoring Dad around the world,” says his son Luis Clemente, 55, from his home in San Juan. “But having this in Puerto Rico is a lot more significant. Dad was always so proud of being Puerto Rican."

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An all-star right fielder

Roberto Clemente is arguably Puerto Rico's greatest sports figure ever. The right fielder for the Pittsburgh Pirates was one of baseball's all-time best players, accruing 3,000 career hits, leading the National League in batting four times, winning 12 consecutive Gold Gloves and one Most Valuable Player award, making the All-Star team in 12 of his 18 seasons, and helping the Pirates defeat the Baltimore Orioles in the 1971 World Series. He was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States, in 2003, when President George W. Bush gave it to the baseball star's widow, Vera Clemente.

"The exhibit shows the sequence, year by year, of his career — what he did, what he accomplished, how he developed until he became a star,” says his older brother, Justino Clemente, 93, who lives in Carolina, Puerto Rico, and attended the grand opening last year.

The exhibit, which features a timeline of Roberto Clemente's life, occupies about 10,000 square feet — the two-story museum's entire first floor. Visitors first view a short introductory film in the museum's theater before continuing on to the displays.

Memorabilia includes Clemente's Gold Glove from 1966, a number of his jerseys, one of the bats he used the night he got his 3,000th hit, a montage of more than 100 photos of Clemente, his baseball cards from 1955 to 1973, and life-size photographs of the baseball great. The exhibit also includes items specific to Puerto Rico, including those loaned by collectors and three paintings of Clemente by Puerto Rican artists, says Edwin Hernández, director of the Museo del Deporte.

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PHOTO BY: Félix Santos

The exhibit at El Museo del Deporte includes many items from the Clemente Museum in Pittsburgh. Founder Duane Rieder traces the Pittsburgh museum's genesis to the early 1990s, when he was putting together a calendar in conjunction with the Clemente family and contacted Vera Clemente. He learned that many of her photos of her husband had been damaged in hurricanes. He helped restore some and find the negatives for others. After the images were displayed in Pittsburgh for a Clemente family party in 2006, an impressed Vera said: “It's like a museum in here!” That inspired Rieder to create the museum.
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PHOTO BY: Félix Santos

The Topps Company's Clemente card collection, including his 1955 rookie card, which uses his proper name, Roberto Clemente. Topps would call him “Bob” in subsequent cards — following the practice of the time of anglicizing players’ names — until it resumed using Roberto near the end of his career. The estimated value of the collection, which is housed in Pittsburgh and includes cards from Clemente's 18 seasons with the Pirates, is $1 million.
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PHOTO BY: Félix Santos

A replica of the Puerto Rico national baseball team uniform Clemente wore during the Caribbean Series. Clemente played baseball in Puerto Rico as a teenager and continued to do so during the Major League Baseball off-season. He later managed a team, helping them get all the way to the playoffs. After a stellar season with the Pirates in September 1972, when he reached his 3,000th hit, he traveled to Nicaragua with the Puerto Rico National Team to coach them in an amateur baseball world series.
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PHOTO BY: Félix Santos

One of three bats Clemente used in the game when he had his 3,000th career hit at Three Rivers Stadium against the New York Mets in 1972. Clemente became only the 11th player ever to reach the milestone. He actually felt he had gotten the 3,000th hit the night before, but an official scorer ruled that what Clemente thought was an infield hit was an error. The scorer's call disappointed Clemente, reportedly making it difficult for the star player, who already battled insomnia, to get much sleep that night. Despite arriving at the stadium tired the next day, he reached the magic number.
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PHOTO BY: Félix Santos

The main hall chronicles both Clemente's athletic feats and his humanitarian efforts through photographs, memorabilia and documents. The exhibit's arrival in Puerto Rico fits perfectly with the spirit of Clemente's near-lifelong determination to share his love and knowledge of baseball with his fellow boricuas. He often returned home to coach young ballplayers and dreamed of a place where Puerto Ricans could go to learn the game and develop their skills. This inspired the Ciudad Deportiva Roberto Clemente complex, which includes a baseball stadium, practice facilities and even a soccer field.
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PHOTO BY: Félix Santos

The exhibit features prints and original paintings of Clemente created both during his lifetime and after his death. In the image to the far right, behind Clemente, are the linked maps of Pittsburgh and Puerto Rico — two places that were central to the ballplayer's life and will be inextricably linked for posterity, says his son Luis Clemente. The inscription at the bottom is one of Clemente's most memorable quotes: “Anytime you have an opportunity to make a difference in this world and you don't, then you are wasting your time on Earth."
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PHOTO BY: Félix Santos

The vast exhibit includes several timelines, with descriptions in Spanish and English. This timeline covers some of the professional and personal milestones in Clemente's life, such as his first World Series, in 1960, and the day — Nov. 14, 1964 — he married Vera Zabala in their birthplace, the city of Carolina, Puerto Rico. The timeline in this photo also includes Clemente's U.S. Marines recruitment paperwork. He enlisted in 1958 and was a reservist infantryman until 1964. Clemente was inducted into the Marine Corps Sports Hall of Fame in 2003.
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PHOTO BY: Félix Santos

Clemente, an outstanding outfielder, won 12 consecutive Gold Gloves. Major League Baseball began giving out these awards in 1957 to recognize the best fielder at each position in the American and National leagues. His widow tearfully accepted her husband’s final Gold Glove Award in April 1973 at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh, with the three Clemente children and the baseball icon’s mother in attendance.
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PHOTO BY: Roberto Clemente, Jr.

Vera Clemente stands beside the bronze statue of her husband located outside Pittsburgh's PNC Park, the Pirates’ current stadium. The 12-foot-tall statue, originally situated at Three Rivers Stadium, was dedicated in July 1994. Features include glass blocks representing first, second and third base; underneath the glass is dirt from three of the fields where Clemente played: Santurce Field in Puerto Rico, Pittsburgh's Forbes Field and Three Rivers Stadium. Also featured is a timeline of Clemente's life in the form of a baseball diamond. The statue was created by renowned sculptor Susan Wagner, a Pittsburgh native who specializes in figurative sculptures.
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PHOTO BY: Félix Santos

“Angel Wings.” Now one of the most famous photos of Roberto Clemente, this image — which has taken on mythical proportions — was almost lost forever. Taken around 1960 during spring training, the photo shows Clemente jumping to make a catch as the clouds behind him form what look like angel wings. Duane Rieder, curator and founder of the Clemente Museum in Pittsburgh, says the negatives of the image were found in a dumpster in the early 1990s. The photo reportedly was shot by Pittsburgh photographer Ed Salamony at Terry Park in Fort Myers, Florida.

A humanitarian hero

Hernández says the exhibit, which drew about 300 people on the first two nights of the grand opening last year, will give visitors a deeper sense of Clemente's influence around the globe. Hernández recalled a visit he made to Nicaragua in 2001 and his surprise at discovering that nation's fondness and respect for Clemente.

Clemente and the Central American nation are inextricably linked. Clemente was leading a humanitarian mission on Dec. 31, 1972, bringing relief supplies to earthquake survivors in Nicaragua, when his plane crashed off the coast of Puerto Rico shortly after takeoff. Everyone on board was killed.

Clemente had insisted on delivering the aid himself after he grew concerned that profiteers in Nicaragua were siphoning off relief supplies.

"His name is on numerous places in Nicaragua,” says Hernández. “That's where I truly got the sense of the magnitude of his significance. He put Puerto Rico on the world map."

Luis Clemente — who was only 6 when his father died — remembers his dad as a big-hearted activist and humanitarian who struggled with insomnia and visited the sick in hospitals at night to avoid the attention of the press. He recalls a father who played the harmonica, was an avid potter, and always had a bat next to his favorite seat in the living room (so he could work on strengthening his wrists).

"The exhibit is well put together — people are going to learn about Dad's life, probably things that aren't featured in books,” he says. “They'll see him as a family man, as a player, and the humanitarian that he was. Dad was very humble, but he would be proud to see everything he was able to accomplish in one place. He lived so fast. Mom always said he would tell her that he knew he was going to die young."

A lasting legacy

One part of the exhibit that was not included in the original opening highlights the humanitarian and charitable initiatives of the Roberto Clemente Foundation, founded in 1993 by Roberto Clemente Jr., and captures the story of Vera Clemente, a leader and humanitarian in her own right. Vera Clemente, who died in 2019, served as the foundation chairwoman and also diligently supported the Pirates and Major League Baseball in her role as a goodwill ambassador.

"It was time to honor both of their legacies,” says son Luis Clemente, who is president of the Roberto Clemente legacy program. “We haven't dropped the ball; we continue to work on his legacy and all that he stood for."

The family hopes visitors come away with an awareness that transcends baseball and Clemente's athletic achievements, a goal that baseball Hall of Famer Orlando Cepeda, 83, a fellow Puerto Rican and longtime friend of Clemente's, supports. “Roberto was an incredible ballplayer, but as a man, as a human being, he was huge,” Cepeda says. “He died helping other people, and that is a sign of greatness.”

The family wants Puerto Ricans to feel even more pride in their island, and to take Clemente's accomplishments, many of them achieved against formidable odds, as a testament to what they are capable of as well.

The family also hopes visitors, both children and adults, are moved by the importance of helping others and inspired in their own lives. Whether it was holding free youth baseball clinics, digging into his own pocket to help the needy, or taking a stand against the racism he encountered on the U.S. mainland, Clemente worked tirelessly to help the less fortunate and the oppressed.

"For the first time, people will be able to see the whole spectrum of Roberto Clemente's legacy,” says Luis Clemente. “I'd like them to leave the museum saying, ‘Wow, I can do so much good in life and impact so many others by my actions.’ We need to turn on that humanitarian button; we're all born with it."

Elizabeth Llorente is a contributing writer who covers ethnicity, health, arts, international issues and human-interest stories. She has been a staff reporter and editor at several regional and national news organizations, and her work has appeared in The New York Times, Forbes magazine and Emmy magazine.

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