Many of today's baseball icons owe a debt to the first Latin-American superstar: Roberto Clemente. His 18 seasons with the Pittsburgh Pirates were a kaleidoscope of batting titles and brilliant defensive plays.
On the last day of the 1972 season, Clemente collected career hit number 3,000. He died three months later, in the crash of a charter plane he had hired to take relief supplies to survivors of an earthquake in Nicaragua.
Clemente's legacy is the latest topic for Pulitzer-winning journalist David Maraniss. The author tells Don Gonyea about the biography Clemente.
Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
