December 25, 2002
TIME NOT WASTED:
Remembering Roberto Clemente, one of baseball's greats (HAL BOCK, December 24, 2002, Canadian Press)Clemente put it this way: "Anytime you have an opportunity to make things better and you don't, then you are wasting your time on this Earth." [...]Thirty years ago Tuesday, as many of his friends and teammates were celebrating New Year's Eve, Clemente was at the airport in San Juan, Puerto Rico, loading rescue supplies on a prop-driven DC-7 bound for earthquake victims in Nicaragua.
Three thousand people were dead. Thousands more were injured. Clemente already had flown there once to help the survivors. Now, disturbed by reports that the black market had dipped into rescue supplies, he was returning.
The flight had been delayed 16 hours. Clemente was impatient, eager to get on with the trip because he knew how desperately the people needed help. Waiting for a replacement plane would have been wasting time.
So they took off, five men in a plane with a history of problems, overloaded with 16,000 pounds of supplies.
Bound for eternity.
For those of you too young to have seen him play, the current player he most resembled is probably Vladimir Guerrero. Posted by Orrin Judd at December 25, 2002 11:57 AM
MY mother still swears he is the greatest player she has ever seen- that he could hit any ball anywhere- and he did it at Forbes Field.
Posted by: John G. Cole at December 25, 2002 1:51 PMMy Dad's two favorite players were Roberto Clemente and Pete Rose. One of those players was a jerk and is still alive and one of those players was a great man and died.
That is baseball.
Sweet -- like Clemente himself.
Posted by: William P. Sulik at December 26, 2002 12:51 PM