Roberto Clemente Quotes

84 Sourced Quotes

I want everybody in the world to know that this is the way I play all the time. All season, every season. I gave everything I had to this game.

Roberto Clemente
The first hero that I have … I would say was Monte Irvin, when I was a kid. And I used to watch Monte Irvin play when I was a kid – I idolized him. I used to wait in front of the ballpark just for him to pass by so I could see him.

Roberto Clemente
Accomplishment is something you can't buy. If you have a chance and don't make the most of it, you are wasting your time on this earth.

Roberto Clemente
One day I could play and three days later I couldn't move. Our relationship was shaky because if one day you can play and the next day you can't, a person has to wonder if there's not something wrong in your head. But we straightened it out.

Roberto Clemente
I was mad last year. I played as well as anyone else on our team and I didn't receive one vote for MVP. Don't get me wrong; I didn't say I was the best last year or that I should have won the MVP award. But nobody seemed to care about me. But you win the batting title yourself. They can't take that away from you.

Roberto Clemente
When I put on my uniform, I feel I am the proudest man on earth. The players should pay the people to come and see us play.

Roberto Clemente
In 1956 I was doing good until I hurt my back. Since then I step to the side with my left foot faster so I don't have to twist my body so much.

Roberto Clemente
The 100 grand right fielder revealed that Danny Murtaugh once fined him $650 when he did not run after hitting a ball to the shortstop. He never explained how Murtaugh reached the $650 figure. "I hit the ball and I slip at home plate and they fine me $650. First time up I hit a homer one-handed. I just limped around the bases."

Roberto Clemente
You know, Nellie, when I was young I would run on fly balls hit to the outfield. I'd go around second base and I suddenly realize the ball is going to be caught. Sometimes I would run across the infield and never re-touch second base. Sometimes the umpires wouldn't notice if the players wouldn't. I didn't know how to run the bases well the first couple of years.

Roberto Clemente
Som' co-lored people I understand saying "Clemente, he do not like co-lored people. This is not the truth at all. Look at me. Look at my skin. I am not of the white people. I hav' color the skin. That is the first theeing I straighten out. I like all the people, both co-lored and white; and since I am co-lored myself, I would be seely hate myself. Thees' people tell me I don't like colored people. Well, I use this time to tell deeferent. I like myself, so I also like the people who are like me.

Roberto Clemente
If we have respect for our fathers and we have respect for our children, we will have a better life. 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.

This is what you have to do to make this a better life. When you can give opportunity to everybody, we won't have to wait to die to get to heaven. We are going to have heaven on earth.

Roberto Clemente
Yes, there is some truth to the accusation that I resented being bypassed for Groat in 1960. He had a good season but the records will show I contributed a lot more to winning the pennant. I think, too, that a lot of the writers were moved by their racial feelings. An MVP endorsement looks good in the record of a potential manager, and it'll be a long time before we have a colored manager; longer still before there will be a colored Puerto Rican manager. Anyway, it wasn't my 'imagination' hurting me when I complained, it really was my neck. [...] And the doctor says the wrenching of my neck was caused by some unconscious adjustment I had been trying to make because of my back.

Roberto Clemente
I threw the javelin in high school, but that's only part of the reason for my good arm. I got my good arm from my mother. Today she's 73, yet she can throw a ball from second base to home plate with something on it. Last year, when they opened the amateur winter league in Puerto Rico, she threw out the first ball from a box seat to home plate. She had something on it, too. She's in good health.

Roberto Clemente
The Latin American player doesn't get the recognition he deserves. Neither does the Negro player, unless he does something spectacular, like Willie Mays. We have self-satisfaction, yes. But after the season is over, nobody cares about us. Zoilo Versalles was the Most Valuable Player in the American League, but how many times has he been asked to make appearances at dinners or meetings during the winter? Juan Marichal is one of the greatest pitchers in the game, but does he get invited to banquets? … I am an American citizen … but some people act like they think I live in the jungle someplace. This is a matter of sports, of a man's ability and his accomplishments. What matters what language he speaks best?

Roberto Clemente
If you think you've seen the best of Roberto Clemente so far in a Pirate uniform, wait until the weather is more to his liking—very hot.. "I no play so gut yet," the Puerto Rican star tried to explain yesterday. "Me like hot weather, veree hot. I no run fast cold weather. No get warm in cold. No get warm, no play gut. You see." Clemente likes Forbes Field and Connie Mack Stadium the best of all the parks he's played in but has a strong dislike for Ebbets Field and the Polo Grounds because of the crazy bounces the balls take as they ricochet off the walls.

Roberto Clemente
The Pirate rightfielder seems a bit miffed because the new owners of the Santurce team in the Puerto Rican league upped and sold him [to San Juan] when they bought the team this season. "I didn't like the trade," Clemente explained. "Santurce is close to my home town and I like the fans there. They good to me and cheer me all the time. I may not go back. I may work in Pittsburgh."

Roberto Clemente
Many people tell me I wanna play like Weelie. I no play like Mays. From little boy up, I always play like thees. I always wanna run fast, to throw long and heet far.

Roberto Clemente
Bragan and Walker talked to me the most. The fellow who helped me most of all was Buck Clarkson. I think he lives in Donora. He managed me in the Puerto Rican League when I was a boy. He used to see me throw a ball from the outfield 400 feet on the line, most of the time wild. And I hit good. Buck Clarkson used to tell me I am as good as anybody in big leagues. That helped me a lot.

Roberto Clemente
When I came here, you seldom saw a black player get together with a white player and go someplace together after a ball game. Now it is more common. Yes, there has been improvement but some things still remain the way they were. I cannot, for example, go up to a white player and say to him, "Are you for real?" or "Are you concerned with me at all?" But now, once in a while, they will come to you and ask you about it. They don't turn their backs on you like they used to.

Roberto Clemente
I owe a lot to the opportunities I have had. I think we have a great country, and the day that all people of all races have equal opportunity to be useful to their community, we're going to have a better country.

Roberto Clemente
I really don't know if I cried. If I did, it was tears not of pain, but of the sentiments my people are made of.

Roberto Clemente
I hit many what you call the "bad bol" pitches, and get good wood. The bol' travel like bullet. That remind me, I hit 565 foote hum-rum in Chicaga last year; the bol' disappear from centerfield, and Raj Hornsby tell me it longest drive he ever saw hit out of Wrigley Field. The bol' feel good on the bat but I feel bad at heart, when no writer with our team play up the big drive. I feel effort not appreciated.

Roberto Clemente
Yes, my biggest game, but not my best game. My best game is when I drive in the winning run.

Roberto Clemente
I can't think of average. I have to go for the long ball. We have only Stargell to hit homers. You need more than one man. We have the best leadoff man in baseball in Matty Alou. He will get on base. We have to get the long hits.

Roberto Clemente
"If I don't have trouble with my stomach I think I can be up among the leading hitters in the league again this year. When I am bothered with my stomach," Clemente said, "it leaves me weak. Then instead of just swinging to meet the ball I begin over-swinging and it messes me up." Clemente's trouble has been described as a nervous stomach. "Funny thing," he said, "I am bothered more when I go home than when I'm in the States. I'm seriously thinking about spending the next winter in Pittsburgh."

Roberto Clemente
I tell you, I'd be lucky to hit.280 in New York. There are too many people in New York, and if you don't want to be a bad guy, you must go to all the dinners and meetings. How could I concentrate on baseball? I have so many good friends in New York that it is hard to turn them down. But it is that way every place on the road. I tell the hotel that I will not be disturb,[sic] but people find me anyway.

Roberto Clemente
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.

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

Roberto Clemente
You see a skeleton in a lab, and they need wires to hold the spine in place. Well, in your body the wires are muscles. When there is a loosening on one side, your pelvis tilts. A spasm occurs when this tilt results in one side of the body supporting more weight than the other. Look at a telephone pole. If the supporting wire on one side is slack and loose, then the wire on the other side becomes tense and tight. In the case of the body, this is the muscle. And it will give you pain. If a man weighs 180 pounds and one side of him supports 90 and the other side 90, he is able to function. If one side supports 110 and the other supports only 70, a problem arises. For one thing, your leg on one side is shorter than the leg on the other.

Roberto Clemente
Everybody started cheering but I didn't know why. I didn't know what was going on until I looked at the scoreboard and saw the message. When I singled in the first inning, the second base umpire told me, "If you get another hit it looks like I'll have to give you the ball." I wondered what he was talking about. I have so much bad press in Pittsburgh. Whatever I have done, I have done myself, and with the help of the fans. When somebody like Richie Hebner hits a home run, the press gives him a big build-up. All they say about me is that I am hard-headed and don't get along with anybody.

Roberto Clemente