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Roberto revered: Latino 'opened doors'</font size>
<font size="4">Baseball will honor Clemente, the heart and soul of the Pirates,
tonight, but those hoping to have his number retired must push on</font size></center>
Atlanta Journal Constitution
By THOMAS STINSON
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 07/11/06
Pittsburgh — They had originally issued him No. 13, a chilling coincidence that Roberto Clemente, then a 20-year-old rookie, exchanged after he figured the sinister number might be costing him hits.
An equipment man tossed him No. 21.
Fifty-one years later, 34 years after Clemente's death, that random No. 21 endures.
the National League's tail still between its legs, the American League unbeaten for the last nine years. But baseball cannot come here without reconsidering its first true Latin American star, the notion that came to the AL's manager, the Venezuelan Ozzie Guillen, before he had time to change clothes Monday.
"He opened a lot of doors for us," Guillen replied when asked what it was like to be the first Latin American to manage an All-Star team in Clemente's old city. "He was fun to watch but it was more fun to see his real life. I didn't know him personally but I read a lot about him. He's one of the people we have to admire most in the Latin American community."
A movement, spearheaded by the Latino advocacy group Hispanics Across America, is underway to have No. 21 retired from Major League Baseball, much as Jackie Robinson's No. 42 was set aside in 1997. Commissioner Bud Selig has taken the matter "under advisement."
But with the game gathered in the city where Honus Wagner and Willie Stargell and Josh Gibson played, Clemente still comes first for many. Of the 813 players on major league rosters Opening Day, 190 of them (23.4 percent) were Latin American. That none of them were old enough to ever see Clemente play mattered not.
"I'm sure for Latin America, he was the one player for all the guys to look up to," Atlanta center fielder Andruw Jones said. "The Dominicans, the Puerto Ricans and even the Americans. I've seen all the things he did off the field. I kind of idolize him too."
Far from the first Hispanic to make the majors, Clemente wasn't even the first Puerto Rican, following behind pitcher Hiram Bithorn (1942-43, 46-47) and outfielder Luis Olmo (1943-51). But after a modest start — and a wasted 1953 season when Brooklyn tried with no success to hide him in the minors — Clemente became the embodiment of Latin America and its growing passion for baseball.
He became the first Hispanic to reach 3,000 hits, the first Hispanic to serve on the MLB Players Association Board, the first Hispanic admitted to the Hall of Fame. And that's only for starters.
"What he did for all the Latin-American players equals what Jackie Robinson did for the blacks," said Jaime Jarrin, the Dodgers' Hall-of-Fame broadcaster. "I can remember when I started in 1958, I could count the number of Latin players on one hand."
"It wasn't just what he did for Puerto Ricans but for Latin-Americans," said Detroit All-Star Pudge Rodriguez, a native Puerto Rican. "He opened the door to a lot of players. Maybe without him, we wouldn't be here."
There is not a Puerto Rican prospect who has not played at some time at Roberto Clemente Sports City, the 304-acre complex built in his hometown of Carolina. A multi-sport academy that Clemente envisioned long before his death, Sports City hosts baseball clinics and competition nearly year-round. New York Mets center fielder Carlos Beltran recalls well his development years there as a 14- and 15-year-old.
But for as much as Clemente's name is revered at home, even Beltran is uncertain over the efforts to retire Clemente's number.
"I don't know if it will happen," Beltran said. "I know his family is very much for it. I'm supportive."
Hispanics Across America delivered a petition with 30,000 names supporting the move to MLB's New York's headquarters last month and has hopes of marshaling 100,000 before it is through. The group champions Clemente, the humanitarian, foremost.
His death in 1972, suffered in a plane crash while attempting to deliver rescue supplies to earthquake-ravaged Managua, Nicaragua, helped to earn Clemente the Congressional Gold Medal as well as the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
But while such honors for a baseball player are rare, chances for the retirement of No. 21 do not appear promising. MLB already offered the Clemente Award, named in his honor in 1973 and given to the player who best exemplifies the game through "sportsmanship, community involvement and positive contributions to his team."
The Clemente Award has three times been won by Atlanta Braves: Phil Niekro (1980), Dale Murphy (1988) and John Smoltz (2005).
When the idea for honoring No. 21 was first presented, the idea was not exactly embraced by the Robinson family. Sharon Robinson, Jackie Robinson's daughter and a friend of the Clemente family, viewed the retiring of No. 42 as a salute for what her father did for all minorities, not just African-Americans.
"When you start retiring numbers across the board, for all different groups, you're kind of diluting the original purpose," Robinson said last winter.
That was a hard sell here Monday. Cookie Rojas, a Cuban-born infielder with over 50 years in the game as player, manager and coach, looked around a room filled with All-Stars and wondered.
"I don't think they really know what kind of a man [Clemente] was, not just how great a baseball player he was but what he meant to the Latin American players," Rojas said. "I hope they do a little research about what he did for his fellow Latin-Americans. He was the voice that we never had."
And what of the future of No. 21?
"When all the people look at up No. 42, they say, 'I want to be like that.' So what about the Latino who looks up at No. 21 and could say, 'I'd like to be like that?' So let me ask you. Why not?"
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