Roberto Clemente
Clemente saw the value in every single life. That’s ultimately how he lost his own.
Roberto Clemente Walker died on New Year’s Eve, 1972 when an airplane he hired to deliver humanitarian aid to earthquake victims in Nicaragua crashed after takeoff in Puerto Rico. He was 38 years old when he boarded that plane, and already a fully formed baseball and civil rights legend; already the beloved embodiment of dignity and pride and anger and grace; already the shining example of what can happen when a man who was constantly offered less by the world refused to accept it.
There have been beautiful books written about Roberto Clemente, and I don’t need to repeat the biography here. But as we wrap up this long, hard, tragic year, let’s look at why Clemente boarded that plane in San Juan in the first place. A week earlier, a 6.5 magnitude earthquake had struck Managua, devastating the city. Nicaragua was already in a bad place before the earthquake struck. The country had been mired in drought. It had been stripped of wealth and resources over the course of decades by the ruling Somoza family.
Then, immediately after the quake, another tragedy occurred. The world rushed to provide humanitarian assistance in the form of cash, food, medicine, and other supplies, but the supplies failed to reach the people who needed them. The money was not drawn from accounts. The food and medicine sat in storage. The earthquake became just another pretense for graft, self-dealing, and the consolidation of power and wealth.
Governments cannot prevent natural disasters. But when natural disasters occur, they need to at least try to help. In Managua, in 1972, there was not enough help. The systems -- or the people behind those systems -- failed.
Roberto Clemente saw this clearly. He had been in Managua the month before the tragedy, managing a Puerto Rican ballclub. In the days after the earthquake, Clemente worked frantically to conjure up supplies. He got on TV in San Juan and beseeched his countrymen to help. He opened his wallet. He sent planes full of supplies to Managua: food, clothing, even x-ray machines. Each plane landed safely. Each plane was immediately surrounded by soldiers attempting to loot the aid.
Finally, enraged, Clemente decided that he would need to go to Nicaragua himself. This was the only way to ensure that the people he wanted to help would actually get the help they needed. He knew that his name, his face, the weight of his reputation, would unlock the necessary doors.
In the final chapters of his biography of Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball’s Last Hero, David Maraniss presents the end of his life in painful, personal detail. You can see the entire panorama. The earthquake. The many failures and small catastrophes that led Clemente to board that DC-7; the underlying reality that he should not have had to board it at all.
This is where we all stand as 2020 ends. A year of systemic failure. A year of cronyism. A year in which many rich and powerful people leveraged illness and death to become more rich and more powerful. A year in which far too much was lost as elected officials did nothing. It’s a sad thing that we need people like Roberto Clemente to save us, but we absolutely do. We need them not just to do the humanitarian work where governments fail, but to remind us of what we’re capable of as a society and as individual people. Clemente saw the value in every single life. That’s ultimately how he lost his own. This year has been miserable. But it has also offered us many such reminders of the good things that can happen. Millions among us have seen the value in one another; have taken heroic risks and made horrific sacrifices to help one another. We can be grateful for that.
Whether you’ve been with us from the beginning or are a new subscriber, we just wanted to say thank you for reading Sports Stories in 2020. The process of crafting these newsletters has helped both of us get through it, and we hope that reading them has helped you get through it. We’re looking forward to continuing to plow in 2021. We hope that you stick with us, and that you have a happy and healthy new year.
-Eric & Adam