Last Monday, September 15, as every year, Major Leagues They celebrated the Day of Roberto Clementedate that marks the beginning of the Month of the Hispanic inheritanceto recognize the contribution of Latin players to the best baseball in the world.
And as every year too, the celebration revived the debate on whether the MLB must withdraw from all teams the number 21 used by the famous Puerto Ric
racial in 1947.
Clemente was a great baseball player and an extraordinary human being, whom death surprised him only 38 years in a plane crash on December 31, 1972, when he had help to the victims of the earthquake that occurred eight days before in
Managua and left between ten thousand and 20 thousand dead in the Nicaraguan capital.
As a player, at the time of his tragic death, he already had plenty
after his retirement to appear on the ballots towards immortality.
A few months later, in a special vote carried out in 1973, the Puerto Rican star was elevated to the temple of the immortals and his name was forever associated with the best causes in favor of the most needy.
In addition to dedicating a day in his honor, the Major Leagues instituted an award with his name, which is given every year to the player who gets most involved in contributions to the community.
However, the major leagues should not even assess the possibility of removing their number 21 of all equipment.
The Puerto Rican was not a pioneer, or precursor, as was Jackie Robinson, protagonist of the most transcendental event in the history of the elders.
It was not the first Hispanic in MLB, an honor that corresponds to Havana Esteban Bellán (1871).
Nor was the first Puerto Rican (Hiram Bithorn, 1942), nor the first black Latin (Cuban Orestes Miñoso, 1949).
Beyond the integrity and character with which Robinson faced the rampant racism of the time, his arrival at the big leagues with the Brooklyn Dodgers made baseball completely and forever completely.
No fact in the more than 150 years of the big leagues is compared to that, because it marked, for good, a before and after.
If we started withdrawing from all the teams the numbers of figures that marked the story, we would not have when to finish.
Are we going to withdraw the 3 of Babe Ruth, the supreme incarnation of baseball and changed the standards of the game?
Or the 21 he used with the cardinals of St. Louis Curt Flood, the man who in the 60s challenged the establishment and opened the way to what is now known as free agency?
At this step, someone will not take long to appear to propose to withdraw on the 17th of the Japanese unicorn Shohei Ohtani, a player as exceptional that as he comes out in each century.
It already has its day and a very prestigious award with its name, while being universally recognized as a paradigm inside and outside the terrain.
Without the intention of an apex to Clemente’s greatness, if he had not died in such tragic circumstances, today he was anyway in Cooperstown, thanks to his three thousand hits and 12 gold gloves, but his presence in the Hall of Fame would celebrate
such as that of his compatriots Orlando Cepeda, Roberto Alomar, Iván Rodríguez and Edgar Martínez. And that is not a small thing.
