Rookie Quotes - page 2
I didn't have much trouble with Roberto. I threw him a few fastballs inside to keep him from leaning in. One of those fastballs broke his wrist in my rookie season. I saw him that night at a banquet in our hotel, the Pittsburgh Hilton, and tried to apologize, but he waved my words away. "Don't worry about it," he said. "It's part of the game." It was also a part of the game that I continued to throw fastballs inside the inside corner to him as a reminder and got him out mostly with outside sliders.
Roberto Clemente
He reacted more to rookies than to guys who had been around for awhile, maybe because he would've liked someone to have helped him when he was a rookie. Clemente had known the same problems – the new language, getting acclimated to the big league atmosphere, how to deal with the media, where to eat on the road, how to dress. Sangy got picked off twice in one game. Robby came into the clubhouse, got a big piece of cardboard and put two sticks through it. He told Sangy to pretend it was a machine that he would use to take control of Sangy when he got on base. We laughed for 20 minutes, but it made Sangy realize he didn't have to stick his head in his locker if he made a costly mistake in a game, that we were all in this thing together. That's a valuable lesson and it could've saved Sangy a couple of years anxiety because he learned right away that no teammate holds a player completely responsible for losing a game.
Roberto Clemente
