Roberto Clemente AKA Momen

I'm having so much fun blogging on the Stanley Kubrick Napoleon project that I decided to start blogging on another movie La Boca has been developing: a biography of Roberto Clemente, the Puerto Rican player inducted into the baseball hall of fame faster than anyone else other than Lou Gehrig. He died December 31, 1972 and in a special election was voted into the hall in January of 1973. He is the patron saint of Latino major leaguers and there is a movement swirling to retire his number across every team in the major league like they did with Jackie Robinson.

He had a side to him that most fans of the Pittsburgh Pirates were unfamiliar with and that is the side of his personality that the movie will focus on. He died delivering relief supplies to earthquake victims but Clemente, better know as Momen to his family, had a history of helping out the underprivileged and promoting social causes dating back to his youth. He was an outspoken star back in the day, during the civil rights and protest movements of the 50s, 60s and 70s when politics were particularly volatile. Momen benefited by following in the wake of Muhammad Ali in using his status to promote fairness and equality, but because of his accented English his message was rarely reported in the mainstream press. In fact, the mainstream press all but ignore Momen during his first twelve years as a major leaguer, and if they did cover him they often ridiculed him by quoting him phonetically in their stories. Part of this is because Momen played for the small market city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania but prejudice and stereotypes held by white writers covering the sport played a part as well. But in 1966 he reached the peak of his powers and was voted league MVP.

He was on fire when most other players his age were losing their edge and had his best years at the end of his career, culminating by leading his underdog team past the Baltimore Orioles and winning the World Series in 1971. He topped that the next year by making his 3000th hit in his final regular season game in October of 1972. He was one game away from returning to the World Series but the Pirates lost to the Reds, who went on to lose to the Oakland A's. He returned that winter to Puerto Rico to manage a team at a baseball tourney in Nicaragua that winter. He was back in Puerto Rico when the earthquake hit and immediately started a campaign to assist the survivors. But when reports got back to Moment that the supplies were being hijacked by soldiers in Nicaragua he got on a plane to make sure the supplies reached their intended destination. The plane was overloaded and not flight worthy; it aborted its initial takeoff and on the second try it took flight but crashed soon afterward into the sea, never to be recovered.

Lots of material here; hopefully we can do proper justice to his story.