Sharon Robinson says that her father's number should remain the only one retired across the major leagues . http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2304057
I respect Clemente, but Robinson has my respect on a whole different level. Only Robinson should have a MLB retired number.
Being a born Pirates fan and a Clemente fan(although I never got to see him play), I do not think it should be retired the way Robinson's was.
Why does Sharon Robinson and her family have to be so selfish? There are other players who contributed to baseball also. Not just Jackie.
I don't even know why they did that with Robinson in the first place. No, no player should get their number retired through the entire league.
I wouldn't call her selfish, but she comes off as a b!tch for making her opinion public. Most people agree with her - Jackie broke the color barrier. Clemente didn't.
Pretty much my thoughts. I understand why they retired his number across the major leagues, and I respect what Jackie Robinson did, but I don't think they should do that for anybody.
i agree. jackie's story is unique. if you're going to do that for ANYONE you do it for Jackie. he broke through and opened the door for anyone who wasn't white to play MLB. that includes clemente. none of the above diminishes in any way my thoughts on clemente. he was unreal...and a great, great man.
I say a strong no because Robinson opened the majors to all non white players. He was the one that took the initial hatred head on. By the time Clemente came around, the color barrier was already broken.
While I agree on not retiring Clemente's number for all of baseball, there are some things that have not been mentioned in this thread. Not only was Clemente's skin black, he didn't speak english. Can you imagine what that must have been like? Clemente opened the doors for all the Latin players that are now in the Major Leagues. These Latin players DID NOT relate to Jackie Robinson. Clemente gave them hope of one day playing baseball in America.
true, however, to my knowledge latin players were allowed to play before clemente. therefore clemente was not truly "groundbreaking" in the sense that robinson was. the only other way i could see a number being retired would be if a woman were to break into the majors (legitimately speaking). that's groundbreaking. and no, the first midget (eddie gaedel?) should not have his number retired. that's a legitimate farce.
There were 3 maybe 4 latin players before Clemente (Monte Irvin-Giants was one). He was not the first. But, he was the first Latin superstar in Major League Baseball. Every interview you see of today's latin players, they all mention Clemente as their hero.
Maybe they shouldn't quote both Sharon ROBINSON and Frank ROBINSON in the same article. That could get very confusing...
Honestly, I thought it was a mistake to retire Robinson's #. No disrespect - but I just don't like the idea of retiring a # league wide, regardless of what happened. It would be a worse idea to retire Clemente's. While we're at it, why don't we also retire the first Asian player's #? And after that, we'll work on finding other #'s to retire.
