SAD: Ex- Miami marlins legend have passed away at the age of…
The Roberto Clemente exhibit, a tribute to the baseball star, stops in Miami…
Miami At the Miami Marlins’ loanDepot Park, a selection of Roberto Clemente’s most significant events from both his career and life are on exhibit.
A traveling exhibit called 3,000 made reference to the September 30, 1972, day when the late Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder became the first MLB player of Latin American descent to notch 3,000 hits. The exhibit made a stop at the Marlins’ home ballpark during the Caribbean Series.
Curated by Dennis Rivera-Pichardo, director of photography for El Nuevo Día, a Puerto Rican newspaper, the collection comprises of ten vivid yellow modules that feature images from Clemente’s life.
Several of those pictures are of the moments before and after Clemente recorded his 3,000th career hit in a game against the New York Mets at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh. There’s one of him reading fan mail in the Pirates clubhouse before the game, and others of him embracing his wife, Vera, and his children afterward.
Less than 15 miles from Clemente’s Carolina birthplace, the museum opened its doors in September 2022 in San Juan, the capital of Puerto Rico, including a large number of previously released pictures. The exhibit visited Pittsburgh’s PNC Park, home of Clemente’s Major League career for all eighteen years, for its first U.S. tour in September. More than 150,000 individuals, according to Rivera-Pichardo, visited Puerto Rico to examine the collection, while another 200,000 came from Pittsburgh.
“Clemente is the greatest baseball player in Puerto Rican history,” remarked Rivera-Pichardo. “However, he can bring it to his baseball hometown of Pittsburgh, where the people adore him just as much as they do in Puerto Rico and Nicaragua.”
Because of his skill and grace on the field—and most importantly, his humanitarian efforts—Clemente is still regarded as one of the most respected individuals in Puerto Rico and Latin America more than 50 years after his passing.
Throughout a career that coincided with the civil rights era, he was outspoken about the injustice he encountered as a Black Latino and deeply committed to his Puerto Rican heritage.
