On December 31, 1972, I was working as a telephone operator in San Juan (this is one of the things I did to pay for college), when I got the emergency radio call from the Coast Guard notifying emergency services that the plane carrying Puerto Rican baseball great Roberto Clemente on a humanitarian mission to Nicaragua had crashed just after takeoff. Mixed with the grief and consternation in the room was anger at what people thought was a lack of appreciation for the achievements of Caribbean players like Clemente by the major leagues. In 1973, no player from the Caribbean had ever been elected to the Hall of Fame.
Clemente was inducted into the Hall of Fame posthumously in 1973 and yesterday he became one of the players celebrated in the Hall’s new permanent exhibit entitled ¡Viva Baseball!“, which celebrates the contributions of Caribbean Basin countries and players to the US “national” pastime. Clemente has since been joined in the Hall of Fame by Martin Dihigo, José Méndez, Tony Pérez and Cristóbal Torriente (Cuba); Juan Marichal (Dominican Republic); Rod Carew (Panama); Orlando Cepeda (Puerto Rico); and Luis Aparicio (Venezuela). “¡Viva Baseball! is very relevant, given that 25 percent of players on Opening Day rosters this year hail from Latin American countries,” Hall of Fame President Jeff Idelson said. “Many of those players have the skills, the drive and the character to someday join the nine players already enshrined in Cooperstown.”
The exhibit features nearly 150 artifacts and a state-of-the-art multimedia presentation narrated by 1998 Ford C. Frick Award-winner Jaime Jarrin. Some of the historic artifacts included are a ball from the first organized pro season in the United States that was used in an 1871 game that featured Cuban Esteban Bellán, the first Latin American big leaguer; a jersey from Puerto Rico’s Clemente; a glove and cap from the Dominican Republic’s Marichal; a jersey worn by Hector Espino, the “Mexican Babe Ruth;” and jerseys and equipment from current Latin American superstars Albert Pujols, David Ortiz and Johan Santana.
The museum tells its story in a groundbreaking way, using videotaped interviews with Latino members of the Hall of Fame as well as current All-Stars, who tell their stories in their native language with subtitles in English. “It’s not only the sights and the feel and the flavor, but it’s the sounds as well,” Idelson said of the overall exhibit. That is especially true in one four-minute multimedia presentation narrated in both languages by Hall of Fame Dodgers broadcaster Jaime Jarrin that takes viewers into the grandstands at a game in Venezuela.
The exhibition “ doesn’t ignore some of the darker chapters in the Latin American baseball story, such as charges of exploitation, the banning of dark-skinned Cubans and Puerto Ricans in the days before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, problems of racism and acculturation and current controversies involving drugs, signing bonuses and fraudulent birth certificates.”
“We don’t spend a lot of time on it, but we recognize that all is not sweetness and light,” John Odell, the main curator of the exhibit, said. “There are abuses that take place. If we didn’t bring those issues up and say we recognize — and everybody recognizes — that these are issues, it would undermine our ability to say ‘but there are good things that are taking place.’ “
For more on the exhibit go to http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-latino-baseball23-2009may23,0,6642226.story
