Remembering Roberto Clemente

If you've been following ETSC long enough, you know that we are fans of baseball's history and the iconic figures that wrote it. We were thrilled when Topps reached an agreement with Roberto Clemente's estate. The deal allows the card manufacturer to include his images, relics and cut signatures in their new releases. We stumbled upon a Smithsonian article and video through the Blowout Cards Forum and thought it was something worth sharing with our readers.

Here's an excerpt from the article written by David Maraniss, who also wrote the New York Times Bestseller simply titled Clemente, and the accompanying video.

Clemente represents more than baseball. That explains why his helmet is at the museum, where it will appear among more than 100 objects—along with the Ruby Slippers from The Wizard of Oz, the original Kermit the Frog and a 150-pound piece of Plymouth Rock—in the exhibition “American Stories,” which opens April 5. Clemente became a patron saint in the Spanish-speaking baseball-playing world, as well as in his adopted hometown of Pittsburgh, a black Latino embraced by the nation’s quintessential white working-class town. His devoted following extends around the world; 40 schools and more than 200 parks are named in his honor, from Puerto Rico to Africa to Germany.