July 26, 2006

The late Roberto Clemente's number should be retired from baseball.

During the All-Star Game in Pittsburgh, a campaign got under way to retire his number 21 in honor of his great athletic career and his groundbreaking humanitarian work.

As a fellow Puerto Rican and a passionate baseball fan, I am proud to be part of this effort.

Clemente went from being a young ballplayer to an international humanitarian and a Latino leader, and his legacy as an athlete and public figure deserves this honor.

Many Americans remember that he died in a tragic plane crash in 1972 on his way to deliver relief supplies to Nicaraguans after a particularly devastating earthquake. For those of us who were Latino and loved baseball, the news hit us especially hard. Our first hero of the game was gone.

Clemente's accomplishments on the field were myriad. He batted over .300 in 13 seasons with the Pittsburgh Pirates, winning four batting titles, and earned a gold glove for fielding every year from 1961 until 1972. The strength of his throwing arm was the stuff of legend and is remembered to this day.

His leadership and athletic prowess helped his teams win two pennants and two World Series. He won a long overdue National League MVP award in 1966 and was the World Series MVP in 1971.

Many extraordinary athletes have played baseball, who, like Clemente, now have a place in the Hall of Fame. But there is much more to Clemente's story than just hitting and fielding.

His career was transformative for baseball and for Latinos. It mirrored the tremendous stride forward taken in 1947 when Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier.

Clemente arrived from Puerto Rico to a league that had Latino players but still did not accept them as equal to whites. Some teams still had quotas for players of color on the field. Players were harassed, refused service and threatened with violence. Often sportswriters quoted him phonetically, making fun of his accent.

He summed it up by saying: "To the people here, we are outsiders. Foreigners."

By the end of his career, he took the field with a squad made up entirely of African-Americans and Hispanics, and that team won the 1971 World Series. This was the moment when on-field diversity became truly a fact of life.

Clemente's greatness and his willingness to speak out against discrimination helped America realize it could cheer for blacks and Latinos in the same way it could cheer on white players. White America came to understand that the game was richer for accepting diversity rather than shutting it out.

Clemente was the first Latino megastar, and he has now become the standard against which all Latino stars are measured. He was the player who made baseball say, "Wow, Latinos can really play!"

He also inspired Latin American players to shoot for the big leagues and feel that it could be a reality.

Major League Baseball -- whose opening-day rosters this year were more than 25 percent Latino -- would not be what it is today if Clemente had not played.

He added to his appeal with his off-field activities. He spent time doing charity work in Latin America and conducting baseball clinics in Pittsburgh. He once said, "Any time you have an opportunity to make a difference in this world and you don't, then you are wasting your time on Earth." He lived his life by this maxim.

So far Major League Baseball has retired only one number -- Jackie Robinson's 42. Some fear that retiring Clemente's number will dilute the tremendous respect that Robinson is due.

However, Clemente's accomplishments off the field and the example he set for millions of Latinos deserve an equal honor. They are an important part of the narrative of diversity that Jackie Robinson started.

Clemente left us with memories of an exemplary life and a clearer view of the need to make our society more fair and more colorblind.

Baseball is desperately in need of role models in today's scandal-ridden times. This Latino legend was -- and perhaps is -- the best example of a role model the game has ever had.

José E. Serrano has represented the Bronx in Congress since 1990. He is the longest-serving member of Congress of Puerto Rican descent. He can be reached at pmproj [at] progressive [dot] org.