I think a lot about how Clemente had the most Puerto Rican death a ballplayer can have: so busy trying to do something no one else was doing that he didn’t stop to think that he was getting on a colossal death trap—because he cared more about Nicaraguan victims of an earthquake than his own life.
Alt text for the rest of that second page, from David Maraniss’ Clemente bio, which I finished yesterday after months of being unwilling to get to the sad part.
Clemente gave everything he had to baseball, but unlike so many of his successors, he also gave everything to others. Including himself.
