Roberto Clemente Day

I have read, that among American athletes, only Muhammad Ali has more public dedications than Roberto Clemente. Clemente was the first great Puerto Rican baseball player in the Major Leagues. Clemente played for Pittsburgh Pirates from 1955 to 1972, wore #21, had exactly 3,000 hits. Clemente never retired. 

Clemente's stature is heightened by his humanitarian work. He died providing charity. Managua Nicaragua was struck with a 6.3 magnitude quake, two days before Christmas. Thousands died, hundreds of thousands were homeless. Somoza the president (and dictator) was hugely corrupt, and it was reported that he intervened to steal aid. Clemente had sent three plane loads of material, he accompanied the fourth to see what would happen with the aid. It was a bad chartered plane, and overloaded. It left Puerto Rico on 31 December 1972, and immediately fell into the sea. Five people died, only the pilot's body was recovered.

Roberto Clemente Day was first celebrated in baseball in 2002. This year the date was fixed to be 15 September, previously it was on a floating September date. Baseball began to give an award to the player who has done community work; in 1973 the award was named after Roberto Clemente.

Cleveland has many small neighbourhood parks known only to those living nearby. One of those parks is Roberto Clemente Park. Karma is in the picture.

Bricks form home plate, and the #21 is painted upon it, and there is a dedication stone. Immediately to the right of that stone, there are non-matching replacement bricks. Maintenance is a problem throughout the city. If you want to see something whole and neat, come the day after dedication.

The stone reads, the field was dedicated in 1995.

Angelica Pozo. Our Neighborhood Celebrates/Nuestro Barrio Celebra. 2021.

Portion of the tile mural, which had a ribbon cutting on the 3rd of September.

This tile shows the parish journey of a Puerto Rican family (and the community) in Cleveland. First, on the east side at Our Lady of Fatima 1952, then a move to the west side to St. Stephen 1970, a converted church named San Juan Batista 1975, a new parish church of  La Familia Sagrada 1997. San Miguel Arcangel 1749, a parish in Puerto Rico is listed also.

 A view from the park shows how close downtown is.