After mentioning the 2020 Roberto Clemente rookie medallion card in a previous post, today seems like a great opportunity to talk a bit about his actual rookie card; which is without doubt an iconic one.
Yet again we're talking about a card which is highly desirable and, as a result, very valuable too. It's pretty much par for the course that if a baseball card is iconic, then its tremendously sought after and therefore valuable.
Let's talk about the card itself first before moving on to get into Clemente's life and baseball career.
Although there are a bunch of other very valuable cards within this 1955 Topps set - Harmon Killebrew & Sandy Koufax's rookie cards stand out along with Duke Snider, Jackie Robinson & Willie Mays - we've decided to highlight Roberto Clemente's rookie card.
We've chosen this one because it's the most valuable from a monetary standpoint, but also because it's one of the most important cards of the last 70+ years.
In 1955, Topps had a checklist of only 206 cards. This is the second smallest set of cards that Topps have ever produced. This was also the first set ever produced to have a horizonal design on every since one of their cards. This horizontal design gave Topps the freedom to be able to have bigger photos on the front of the card than they were previously able to do.
Just like in the previous year (see iconic cards #2 - Hank Aaron 1954 Topps), their cards contained two photos; a portrait and an in action one. The big difference from 1954 though is that the in action photograph is now colourised from the black & white image used in the previous year.
The bright background colours make a return too, but Clemente escapes by being one of those who get a green background, which aesthetically fades to white as you look from left to right.
It's unquestionably a beautiful card and fetches a price worthy of that beauty. An PSA graded 1 (poor) card will set you back over £1000 and a PSA 9 (mint) sold at auction in 2016 for over £355,000.
It's also undergone the same Project 2020 treatment as the Mariano Rivera card highlighted in #6 of this series, which only reinforces just how iconic it is.
Now onto a Clemente as a baseball player. He played his whole 18 year career with Pittsburgh and although he wasn't recognised with any awards in his first 5 seasons, he got off to a solid, if unspectacular, start.
It took until 1960 for him to really start to get recognised for how good he was. Between 1960 and 1972, Clemente attended 15 All-Star games, won 12 Gold Gloves, 4 batting titles, an MVP and 2 World Series rings (including World Series MVP in 1971).
In his final season of 1972, he hit .312, was an All-Star, won a Gold Glove and came 13th in the MVP vote. Excellent accolades for anyone, let alone a 37 year old.
It makes us wonder just how long Clemente would have been able to continue playing had tragedy not struck following the end of the 1972 season.
Clemente, a Puerto Rico native, had a long history of using the off-season to be involved in charity work. When Nicaragua was rocked by a devastating earthquake in December of 1972, Clemente helped. And he helped like he always did, by getting hands on himself.
He organised for emergency aid to be flown to the struggling people of Nicaragua. But after learning that these flights had been intercepted by corrupt officials of the Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle, Clemente decided to fly out with the next aid flight in the hope that his presence would help ensure the aid reached the people who needed it.
Horribly, this flight crashed shortly after taking off from Puerto Rico due to engine failure resulting in the loss of all five aboard.
The story gets even more gut wrenching when you read this post from Beyond Baseball: The Life of Roberto Clemente.
As you would expect, every single one of Clemente's Pirate teammates attended his memorial service, except one. Manny Sanguillen, Pittsburgh's catcher and close friend of Clemente, missed the memorial service because he was diving in shark infested waters where the plane crashed in an attempt to find his friend and teammate. Just absolutely heart-breaking.
Clemente left a legacy of being one of the best baseball players of all-time. His 3,000 career hits are in the top 32 most to this day, he tied Honus Wagner for most games played as a Pirate (2,433), his #21 jersey was retired by the Pirates and the Hall of Fame waived their rule that a player must be retired for 5 years before being eligible to be voted into Cooperstown.
But more importantly in our opinion, Clemente leaves a legacy of being an outstanding human being. Despite all of the achievements described above, we'd argue that there is one of which Roberto Clemente would have been most proud.
In 1973, Major League Baseball named the Roberto Clemente Award after him. It's given to the player each year who "best exemplifies the game of baseball, sportsmanship, community involvement and the individual's contribution to his team".
A fitting tribute, indeed.
Is there an iconic card that you think should be featured here?
Let us know in the comments or on twitter.
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