Roberto Clemente
Mocked for his accent and his colour, he got 3,000 hits and died flying aid to earthquake victims
Roberto Clemente was born in Carolina, Puerto Rico, the youngest of seven children of a foreman in the sugar-cane fields. He played baseball with a bat made from a guava branch and balls made from rags, and was signed by the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1954, when a Black Puerto Rican in the American major leagues was a rarity twice over.
He arrived speaking little English and was treated as a curiosity. Sportswriters quoted his broken English phonetically to make him look foolish, and he was described as a hypochondriac when he complained of the injuries that dogged his career, including back damage from a car crash. He resented it deeply and said so, which did not make the coverage kinder. On the field he was extraordinary: a right fielder with an arm nobody ran on, four batting titles, twelve Gold Gloves, and the league's most valuable player in 1966. He led the Pirates to World Series wins in 1960 and 1971.
In his final game of the 1972 season he reached exactly 3,000 hits. That December an earthquake destroyed much of Managua, Nicaragua. Hearing that supplies were being stolen by the Somoza regime, he decided to fly with the next shipment himself. The overloaded plane crashed into the sea shortly after take-off on New Year's Eve. His body was never found.
He was elected to the Hall of Fame within months, the usual waiting period waived.