Roberto Clemente: Trending quotes (page 6)

“You know, when the season is over a lot of guys go home and eat peanuts and drink beer and they show up in spring training with a big belly. I will go home and start working on my body right away. My right shoulder is not the way it is supposed to be. I'm not going to wait until spring training and hope it is all right. I will work on it when I get home.”

Roberto Clemente

Speaking during the 1971 World Series, as quoted in The Chicago Tribune by Bob Markus, reprinted in I'll Play These: From Ecstacy to Angst, A Sports Writer’s Journey https://books.google.com/books?id=sdzKAmeIoE8C&pg=PA219 (2011), p. 219
Baseball-related, <big><big>1970s</big></big>, <big>1971</big>

Hope , Way , Guy , Home

“Sometimes I get mad at people. But only once here in Pittsburgh. That when I was hurt and everyone call me Jake. I don't like that. I want to play but my back hurt lots of times and I can't play. Then that year in St. Paul when I throw the ball in exhibition game the elbow started to puff up. That when some people write that I was in fight with Face in St. Louis. You know that not right. You can still feel bone chip in my elbow. That's why I throw the ball underhand sometimes. That way it don't hurt my arm. If I throw real hard lots of times overhand in game, the elbow hurts and swells up.
The back is okay too. Sometime it hurt me when I run. But I find out it is bad disc. If it goes out on the right side I can push it back in easy. But if it hurts on the other side, sometimes I have to work long time to get it back in place.”

Roberto Clemente

As quoted in "Roamin' Around: Look Out, Joe Brown" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=OsZaAAAAIBAJ&sjid=F2wDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6551%2C2915264 by Jack Hernon, in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Sunday, August 13, 1961), p. D3
Baseball-related, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1961</big>

People , Way , Feeling , Game

“It seems to me they like to play up my faults. If I make a bad play, it seems to get more publicity than the good things I do. They always compare me with Paul Waner and things in the past. I didn't play ball 25 years ago. I'm playing now. I think I should be judged on this basis. I get tired of hearing that Waner was a better hitter than me. A lot of old fans tell me I field better, run faster and throw harder than Waner. Nobody says anything about that.”

Roberto Clemente

As quoted in "Change of Pace" by Bill Nunn, Jr. in The New Pittsburgh Courier (August 10, 1963), p. 22
Baseball-related, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1963</big>

Thinking , Past

“You all wrong. You try to hit home run every time but you no can do. No man can do. I wish you try to hit ball like you did when you joined team last July. Then you just try to meet ball because you want to make good showing after coming from minors. You swing easy and ball goes into centerfield seats. Next day, you swing easy again and ball goes over left field wall. Now you swing too hard. Try to hit home run every swing. You wrong. You have no timing, you miss ball. Please, for me, just try to meet ball when we open season. You have so much power, you just meet ball and whoosh—it goes over fence. Stu, with my brains, if I have your power, I make $200,000 in baseball.”

Roberto Clemente

Advice given to teammate Dick Stuart on April 7, 1959, as quoted in "The Scoreboard: Meet Ball, Homers Will Come, Clemente Assures Stuart" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=IEIqAAAAIBAJ&sjid=aU4EAAAAIBAJ&pg=7149,2639076 by Les Biederman, in The Pittsburgh Press (Wednesday, April 8, 1959), p. 43
Baseball-related, <big><big>1950s</big></big>, <big>1959</big>

Home , Time , Season

“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

As quoted in “Clouter Clemente: Popular Buc; Rifle-Armed Flyhawk Aims At Second Bat Crown”
Baseball-related, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1964</big>

Health , School , Home , Winter

“I carried this rubber ball with me all the time. I squeezed it to strengthen my fingers and wrists and my friend and I would walk to and from school throwing the rubber ball back and forth. Many times at night, I laid in the bed and threw the ball against the ceiling and caught it. Baseball was my whole life. I would forget to eat because of baseball and one time my mother wanted to punish me. She started to burn my bat, but I got it out of the fire and saved it. Many times today she tells me how wrong she was and how right I was to want to play baseball. I bought my parents their home in Puerto Rico and gave them possessions they never thought they’d ever see. All from baseball.”

Roberto Clemente

As quoted in “Clouter Clemente: Popular Buc; Rifle-Armed Flyhawk Aims At Second Bat Crown”
Baseball-related, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1964</big>

Life , School , Home , Parent

“Clemente, who says Josh Gibson is the best hitter he ever saw, is anxious to see Ted Williams when the slugger comes here a week from Monday for the benefit exhibition between the Pirates and Red Sox.”

Roberto Clemente

As paraphrased in "The Scoreboard: Thursday" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=b0EqAAAAIBAJ&sjid=000EAAAAIBAJ&pg=4340%2C3027303&dq=best by Les Biederman, in The Pittsburgh Press (Saturday, June 11, 1955), p. 6
Comment: Unfortunately Clemente did not have that opportunity as Williams suffered a minor injury and did not make the trip to Pittsburgh.
Baseball-related, <big><big>1950s</big></big>, <big>1955</big>

“We are on the field doing what we love to do. They have to work in the mill or other places eight hours a day, and work much harder than us and they pay their way in.”

Roberto Clemente

Explaining to reporters why it's the players who should pay the fans, and not vice versa; at post-game press conference on Roberto Clemente Day, as quoted in "Roberto Clemente's a Man of 2 Lives ... and 2 Loves" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=zbYcAAAAIBAJ&sjid=NWYEAAAAIBAJ&pg=2327%2C2876682 by the Associated Press, in The Sarasota Herald-Tribune (July 26, 1970)
Other, <big><big>1970s</big></big>, <big>1970</big>

Love , Way

“No, I don't think I can hit.370 for the season. At my age you come to the point when you are tired in the warmer weather. But if I were younger, and I knew what I know now about hitting, I could do it easily. When you are 28, you feel good all the time. At my age, sometimes you feel groggy. People say, "Why do they have to rest Willie Mays once in a while. They think it is not that hard to play the outfield. But it is not playing the outfield that is so tiring. It is the base-running. People don't realize how much more you are on base and how much running you have to do when you get 200 hits a year. You have to concentrate every minute on the bases to avoid the pickoffs, to fake a steal, to know whether to take the extra base. It begins to wear you down in late summer.”

Roberto Clemente

As quoted in "You Can't Overlook Roberto Clemente" by Al Grady, in The Iowa City Press-Citizen (Wednesday, June 28, 1967), p. 13
Baseball-related, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1967</big>

People , Age , Feeling , Thinking

“I won't play ball in the winter. I gonna rest. If the pain is still there, I won't come back to spring training. I don't want to play the way I play now. I can't do nothing. That's like I steal money from the club.”

Roberto Clemente

Speaking with George Kiseda of The Pittsburgh Sun Telegraph in late July or early August 1957, reproduced in "Frustration in the Fifties" https://books.google.com/books?id=03XsO25A3I8C&pg=PA63&lpg=PA63&dq=%22I+won't+come+back+to+spring+training%22&source=bl&ots=xfn30GlAmb&sig=9pGIiE3gGIwAp6QroqRbNPygCjM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjo37rStb7NAhWGdT4KHSxjDCcQ6AEIFDAA#v=onepage&q&f=false, from Roberto Clemente: The Great One (1997) by Bruce Markusen, p. 63
Baseball-related, <big><big>1950s</big></big>, <big>1957</big>

Money , Pain , Way , Spring

“When I was a little kid, I wanted to be a baseball player. This is something I think about. The more I think about it, I'm convinced that God wanted me to play baseball.”

Roberto Clemente

From A Conversation with Clemente, hosted by Sam Nover (aired October 8, 1972 on WIIC-TV in Pittsburgh); reproduced in Roberto Clemente: A Video Tribute https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnyDAZl7lpk&list=PLPPJ9g3R1ziv1H23L0rQAu_-9c7cL2qzZ#t=56 (1973)
Baseball-related, <big><big>1970s</big></big>, <big>1972</big>

God , Thinking

“Good public relations. When I was a rookie in 1955, I was lonesome and had no place to go. So I didn’t mind staying to sign autographs. I have found people treat you like you treat them.”

Roberto Clemente

As quoted in “Clouter Clemente: Popular Buc; Rifle-Armed Flyhawk Aims At Second Bat Crown”
Baseball-related, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1964</big>

People

“No one knows what eet is. They can't find anything. I run, I throw, I move eet hurts. Eet goes away and come back. Someday eet hurt... someday no. If eet doesn't cure, I quit baseball … No fool around.”

Roberto Clemente

As quoted in "Clemente's Back May End Career" https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/4648107/ by UPI, in The Gallup Independent (Friday, July 26, 1957), p. 5
Baseball-related, <big><big>1950s</big></big>

Fools , Hurt

“In Canada they no have much segregation. But one day I am signing autographs and talking to white man and his wife outside park, and this other man say, "You not supposed to talk to white woman." I say, "No, I talk to the one I want. I talk to my friends. You believe in that stuff if you want. I don't do it."”

Roberto Clemente

As quoted in "The Man in the Pirate Uniform: Clemente is Spectacular" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=zcxRAAAAIBAJ&sjid=NGwDAAAAIBAJ&pg=7274%2C5131234 by Myron Cope, in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Tuesday, August 23, 1960), p. 29
Other, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1960</big>

“I dedicate this hit to the fans in Pittsburgh. They have been wonderful. And to the people back in Puerto Rico, but especially to the fellow who pushed me to play baseball, Roberto Marin. He made me play. He carried me around looking for the man to sign me. […] I dedicate that hit to the person I owe most to in professional baseball, Roberto Marin.”

Roberto Clemente

Speaking with reporters, and later on the radio, about his 3,000th hit; as quoted, respectively, in "Roberto Gets 3,000th, Will Rest Till Playoffs" http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=rXcqAAAAIBAJ&sjid=TVMEAAAAIBAJ&pg=4436,402538 by Bob Smizik, in The Pittsburgh Press (Sunday, October 1, 1972), p. D-1; and in Clemente! https://books.google.com/books?id=n-4qAwAAQBAJ&pg=PT14 (1973) by Kal Wagenheim, p. 23
Baseball-related, <big><big>1970s</big></big>, <big>1972</big>

People , Personality

“What I did was mild compared to what Durocher did to Conlan. I don't see how what I did can be called more serious than the Durocher incident. I had good reason to lose my head. That was the second time they call me out on a play I thought I had beat. That's enough to make anybody mad.”

Roberto Clemente

As quoted in "Fined, Suspended: Clemente Hit Hard By Giles" by Bill Nunn, Jr. in The New Pittsburgh Courier (June 8, 1963), p. 23
Baseball-related, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1963</big>

Time , Madness

“I see a lot of guys who look stylish at the plate, but they don't hit the ball very often.”

Roberto Clemente

Following up on manager Harry Walker's statement,"as long as he keeps hitting like he has, I'm not changing his style"; as quoted in "SPORTS BEAT: Bucco Ship Needs Clemente's Big Bat"
Baseball-related, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1965</big>

Guy

“Blass, if you pitch me inside, I will hit forty-three home runs a year, thirty-seven of them off you!”

Roberto Clemente

Circa 1970, '71 or '72, responding to the novel approach facetiously suggested by teammate Steve Blass, were he ever to be traded from the Pirates; as quoted in "A Teammate Remembers Roberto Clemente” by Steve Blass, as told to Phil Musick, in Sport (April 1973); reproduced in Clemente! https://books.google.com/books?id=n-4qAwAAQBAJ&pg=PT60 (1973) by Kal Wagenheim, p. 158
Baseball-related, <big><big>1970s</big></big>

Home

“I do not care about home runs. The pitch is always away from me and it is foolish to try to pull this pitch for a home run. The pitcher does not wish it so, and I don't try. I am not foolish. Only in Philadelphia I think maybe I will try for the home run, but I do not think so even in L. A. I make the hits which the pitcher cannot stop, and that is better than striking out and will drive out the pitcher, too.”

Roberto Clemente

As quoted by Les Biederman—who, not coincidentally, notes both Clemente's successful suppression of "the home run urge" and his ability to "hit for distance with the best" (the former earning the "unqualified praise of George Sisler")—in The Sporting News (June 1, 1960), p. 7
Baseball-related, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1960</big>

Home , Thinking

“If a Latin player is sick, they said it is all in their head. I'm sick of these people who make these statements. They call me 'Jake.' It is Roberto… Roberto Walker Clemente.”

Roberto Clemente

As quoted in "Sidelights on Sports: I Remember Roberto" by Al Abrams, in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Tuesday, January 2, 1973), pp. 14 https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=6tgNAAAAIBAJ&sjid=zGwDAAAAIBAJ&pg=2562%2C472702 and 17 https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=6tgNAAAAIBAJ&sjid=zGwDAAAAIBAJ&pg=4826%2C491051
Baseball-related, <big><big>1960s</big></big>

People