Roberto Clemente Quotes

I am a very proud person. Baseball has helped send my brothers and nephews to school. But more than that, baseball has become my whole life. Accomplishment is something you cannot buy. If you have a chance and don’t make the most of it, you are wasting your time on this earth. It is not what you do in baseball or sports, but how hard you try. Win or lose, I try my best.

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.

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.

I have had two lives: when I was born in Puerto Rico in 1935 [sic] and when I came to play baseball in Pittsburgh in 1955. I have two loves: my family – my mother, my father and my wife and three sons – and my fans.

A lot of my countrymen are here tonight, and I don't really know whether I love you more or them more, but I do know this: you people in Pittsburgh are the greatest fans in the world!

I've had two lives: the first one when I was born in Puerto Rico in 1935 [sic] and the second when I came to Pittsburgh to play baseball in 1955. I have been very lucky and I feel gifted to be able to play well.

There was no use for me to say yes because I am not a politician. Say, for example, I was elected and a situation came up where I was told I had to compromise. I could never do that; I can't compromise.

Everything is so new in Puerto Rico. I wanted to build something the way Puerto Rico started, something from the old land.

I'm no fighter. Besides, Willie is too big. And he is a real nice man. All those big fellows—Ted Kluszewski, Gil Hodges, Frank Howard—they're nice fellows. I saw Howard get mad only once. He picked up an umpire by his ears and held him like a puppy!

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.

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.

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?

I like to work with kids. I'd like to work with kids all the time, if I live long enough.

The more sleep and rest you get, the prettier you become. Like me.

The first thing the average white Latin American player does when he comes to the States is associate with other whites. He doesn't want to be seen with Latin Negroes, even from his own country, because he's afraid people might think he's colored.