The rookie alderman from the 15th Ward in Fair Haven, Joey Rodriguez, went to bat at Monday night’s BOA meeting on behalf of Roberto Clemente, the great baseball player, who is a role model for many local Latinos.
A resolution he and other alders submitted was passed unanimously calling for Major League Baseball to retire Roberto Clemente’s number 21. “He’s a role model,” said Rodriguez, “not only for kids in New Haven but throughout the state.”
Clemente, a Hall of Famer for the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 1960s and 1970s, was also a humanitarian who died in a plane crash while delivering relief supplies to survivors of a severe earthquake in Managua, Nicaragua, in 1972.
A film celebrating his baseball talent and humanitarian heart was screened last summer at the Roberto Clemente Leadership Academy in the Hill, in connection with the Progresso Latino Fund. The only number retired in Major League Baseball has been that of Jackie Robinson. The film’s producers said that Clemente was to the Hispanic community what Robinson is to African-Americans.
Alderman Rodriguez said he is also working with the principal of the Roberto Clemente School to create a portfolio of students’ letters to support the campaign to retired #21.