Baseball Needs To Broaden Its Recognition of Its Latin American Past

Major League Baseball recently celebrated Roberto Clemente Day, honoring the Hall of Fame Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder by displaying the number 21 at every ball park. A selection for candidates to receive the Roberto Clemente Award was also undertaken by each of the thirty teams.

The event was designed as a way to memorialize a great player who gave his life in a humanitarian attempt, as he perished in a plane crash en route to take supplies to a disaster-ravaged Puerto Rico. Clemente himself had been born in Carolina, Puerto Rico, so he wanted to make sure his donations arrived for their intended recipients.

One purpose of the occasion was alarmingly inappropriate. It was being promoted as a way to emphasize baseball’s Latin American heritage, which sounds great on the surface.

Yet Clemente can honestly represent only one part of Latin America, that of his home country of Puerto Rico. He cannot reasonably serve as an idol for the numerous other Spanish-speaking nations whose citizens have played Major League Baseball.

To pay truly meaningful and accurate homage to its Latin American heritage, baseball should recognize a former great from each of those nations rather than just one. These places are at least as different from one another as the fifty states that comprise our country, where recognizing a player from California would offer very little pride for people living in the Midwest or in New England.

A proper beginning point for such a plan would be one involving a former great, whose statistics would certainly have put him in the Hall of Fame had not injuries limited him to a fifteen year career. In fact, his numbers compare favorably with those of Clemente, who got into Cooperstown on the first ballot.

That player is Pinar Del Rio native Tony Oliva, who starred as an outfielder for the Minnesota Twins in the last half of the sixties and first half of the seventies. In addition to leading the Twins to the 1966 pennant, Oliva won three American League batting titles and made eight successive All-Star games. His .304 career batting average trailed Clemente’s .317 clip, but he averaged more home runs (21) and runs batted in (92) per season than his Puerto Rican counterpart.

Oliva would be a great representative for Cuba, home of some of the brightest young stars in the game today. Jose Abreu, Yoenis Cespides, and Aroldis Chapman are just three of the All-Stars who came to the big leagues from Cuba. In spite of all of its great players, Cuba has had just one of its natives, Tony Perez, inducted into the Hall of Fame.

This season would be ideal for baseball to honor its Cuban connection, given that President Obama has opened relations with that neighbor this year. It would also be a great way for the game to give some well-deserved recognition to one of its most underrated players of the past, who made his last plate appearance exactly forty years ago on September 30.

After his retirement, Oliva came up justifiably short on the Hall of Fame ballots. His career, spent entirely with just one team and completely free from controversy, certainly warrants a special day for him and his fellow countrymen.

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