Roberto Clemente 1x57

On New Year’s Eve 1972, Roberto Clemente, a baseball player for the Pittsburgh Pirates, boarded a DC-7 loaded with relief supplies for earthquake victims in Managua, Nicaragua. Shortly after takeoff the plane crashed into the Atlantic Ocean. Clemente’s body was never found. In his eighteen 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 twelve 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 only ten major league players before him. Through interviews with relatives, childhood friends, former teammates and journalists, this biography will tell the inspiring and tragic story of Roberto Clemente, focusing on him as both an athlete and a man, whose career sheds light on larger issues of immigration, civil rights and cultural change.

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