“Call Me Roberto! Roberto Clemente Goes to Bat for Latinos” begins in the quiet sugar town of Carolina, Puerto Rico. Here, a young Roberto Clemente can be found, always playing baseball.
“Roberto lives to swing and slide. To catch. To throw. To run.”
The nonfiction picture book was written by Nathalie Alonso, a journalist who has been part of the Spanish editorial team at MLB.com (the official website of Major League Baseball) since 2006, and illustrated by award-winning visual artist Rudy Gutierrez.
For years, Alonso knew only what she described as the bullet points of Clemente’s life: He was a great baseball player who died tragically while on his way to help others. But, as the journalist dove into more research about Clemente, she learned about the athlete’s struggle to get the media to respect him. “Call Me Roberto” tells the story of Clemente’s career and his fight against racism and discrimination.
Alonso recently spoke with Poynter about her book, the treatment Clemente received from the press, and much more.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Congratulations on the publication of your book, “Call Me Roberto! Roberto Clemente Goes to Bat for Latinos.” I read that, as a young girl, you spent time watching baseball with your Cuban grandmother. Growing up, what did you know about Roberto Clemente and his legacy?
Obviously coming from a Cuban family, Cubans love baseball — as do most people from the Caribbean. I was also a very curious kid, and I loved learning. So when I became interested in baseball, I wanted to learn as much about the sport as possible. I would seek out information online, or whatever books I could get.
I had a very superficial understanding of Roberto Clemente’s life. I knew he was a great player. I knew he was a Hall of Famer. And I knew that he had died at age 38 in a plane accident while attempting to deliver supplies to earthquake victims in Nicaragua. So I knew just the main bullet points of his life, if that makes sense, but nothing in depth.
“CALL ME ROBERTO! Roberto Clemente Goes to Bat for Latinos,” written by Nathalie Alonso and illustrated by Rudy Gutierrez (Courtesy of Astra Books for Young Readers)
Many know Clemente as the Puerto Rican professional baseball player who played for the Pittsburgh Pirates, and who died tragically — as you mentioned — in a plane crash while on a humanitarian aid mission. But your book delves more into his life, from his upbringing in Carolina, Puerto Rico, to his rise and struggles in the baseball world. What inspired you to dig more into his life and write this book?
There’s a few layers to that. I started working at MLB.com. I’m on the Spanish editorial team; we run LasMayores.com, which is the Spanish sister site of MLB.com. I started working there as an intern; I was still in college. This was 2006, just to give you a sense of how long I’ve been there — 18 years at this point.
As I got older and more exposed to more baseball people, I learned about this other side of Clemente’s life. The social justice aspect of it; his struggle to get the media to respect him. This was all kind of going on in my head. At the same time, I was exploring writing for children. I was awarded the Highlights Foundation Diversity Fellowship in 2019, and so those things came together because now I had support, a mentor and resources.
And it was like, “OK. What do I want to write?” And because this was going on in my professional side, learning more about Clemente, it seemed like, “Well, this is the book I want to write, because I think this book is missing.”
You are a Latina journalist in a world that’s dominated by white men, as far as covering baseball is concerned. What are some of the challenges you have faced as Latina journalist covering baseball?
I write in Spanish and I cover in Spanish. A lot of the media ecosystem is geared toward English-language reporters, so I feel you have to work a little bit harder to get what you need just because you’re working in a different language than the majority of the journalists around you. I learned to be proactive, and also say just like, “Hey, I’m writing in a different language. But guess what? My audience is just as important as any other audience.” And so making sure that there’s time for what I need, and asking for that when I need that: “Hey, I need access to so-and-so in Spanish.” When I was younger, that was really hard to do, but that’s something that I learned over time.
I think this goes for any woman of color in most industries. I don’t think it’s specific to journalism, but I do feel you have to work a little bit harder for people to respect you and realize that you know just as much about baseball, about what you’re doing, than anyone around you.
In the book you also bring up the time Clemente addressed his parents in Spanish in a televised interview. What did that moment mean for you?
That moment is when Roberto Clemente is interviewed on national television right after the 1971 World Series. He was the MVP of the World Series, and he says, “Before I say anything in English, I want to say something for my mom and dad in Spanish.” So he takes the microphone and he addresses his parents in Spanish on television. It was just him being unapologetic about who he was. He said, “En el día más grande de mi vida.” This is like the pinnacle of his career, and he’s choosing to remind the world that, “Hey, I’m still Puerto Rican.” It was just so powerful for me.
Artwork from CALL ME ROBERTO! Roberto Clemente Goes to Bat for Latinos, © Rudy Gutierrez
As I mentioned earlier, because everything is in English around me and geared towards English-language media primarily, I would be at these press conferences and I would have to raise my hand and ask a question in Spanish. Early in my career, that was hard. It felt awkward. I felt out of place.
And when I discovered that moment in Clemente’s life, it was like, I have nothing to apologize for. I take up the space that I need to take up, to do my job. Most people weren’t going to come to me and give me that access. I had to ask for it and push for it, and make space for myself.
In your book, you bring up newspaper reporters who called Clemente a show-off because of his energy during games. And you point out how they also called him Bob, which he resented. He insisted that people call him by his name, Roberto. As a journalist, why was it important for you to include these details on the page?
There’s so many different ways to tell a story. You know that yourself. And so I felt like my book was obviously going to have some focus on media, just because of who I am. That’s what I spend a lot of my time thinking about.
Calling him Bob is one thing, right? It’s erasure of his Puerto Rican, Latino roots. And also, again, calling him a show-off. All those things are kind of blatantly racist and stereotypes about people from Latin America. But the other thing that was really shocking to me is that, when they quoted him (he spoke English with an accent), they would quote him phonetically. So “heet — H-E-E-T’ instead of “hit.” It’s completely unethical, looking in hindsight now, as journalists. I can’t think of anyone I know in journalism who would do that in 2024 — hopefully.
These are all just the different ways that he was disrespected. When you think about children who might be in a classroom, maybe there’s someone who mispronounces their name. It doesn’t make you feel good, right? I think it’s very relatable.
I think being a journalist myself, there was going to be some kind of reckoning with the media coverage of Clemente, because that’s something I just think a lot about when we cover current players.
Let’s talk about language. As I read your book, I was struck by the climate Clemente played in. For you, what role does language play in covering Latino baseball players — specifically players who are dominant in the Spanish language?
Just to be clear, some players like talking to the media. Some don’t. And that is not aligned along language lines, if that makes sense, so individual personalities always are a factor.
A lot of players do speak fluent English. I do think that, for those who are maybe still learning English or just prefer speaking in Spanish, there’s something about your first language where I feel like you express yourself a little bit better, because you’re more comfortable. I sometimes find that — and again, it’s not a hard and fast rule — but I do find that when you can speak to a player in his native language, you’re going to get a more nuanced and thoughtful answer. That’s really for the players who are Spanish-dominant. A lot of them are fluent in English.
I also feel like if you’re talking to someone in the language they feel most comfortable in, they can spend less time worrying about their word choices or how they’re saying something, and really just express themselves. It takes so much courage to do what these guys do; to get up in front of the media and speak and give interviews in their second language. I’m always very impressed by that, because I don’t think people realize that that’s a hard thing to do.
I see what you’re saying, and I also think things can get lost in translation as well. When I think about Caribbean players — specifically Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans — they have different slang and different ways of describing something that happened out on the field. And it helps to have a journalist be able to understand what they mean by that.
Yeah, and you can capture the essence of someone’s background. There are phrases that are popular in the Dominican Republic that I wouldn’t necessarily say, right? But when I quote that person, it feels authentic to the Dominican reader who is reading that and hearing this player use the language that’s associated with their culture. So I do think, when there’s a chance to use Spanish-language quotes, I would always rather use those because of the authenticity.
MLB.com journalist Nathalie Alonso at work at Citi Field in Flushing, New York. (Courtesy: Nathalie Alonso)
In the time that you’ve been covering baseball, have you observed any changes in the press and how they cover Latino baseball players who are more dominant in Spanish?
There was a shift. It wasn’t really coming from the media, and I don’t know the exact year that this started, but there are interpreters now in clubhouses — which is an important change. Before, players would have to find someone like a teammate to serve that role, or a coach. But now teams have a designated interpreter whose job is exactly that: to facilitate interviews with English-language media for players who are Spanish-dominant. That’s been an important and positive change because there’s so much fear of being misquoted in the press, especially if you’re speaking in a language that you’re still learning. I think it takes a lot of pressure off the players.
You are a journalist, so obviously you’re well-versed in interviewing sources and in conducting research. From the book, I can tell you did a lot of research. Can you talk about your approach to this project and whether you approached it through a journalistic lens?
I think that’s impossible for me not to do. Actually, that was kind of a big learning curve for me because my early drafts sounded too journalistic. That’s feedback I would get a lot. I had to learn to convey information without relying so much on numbers and dates. It’s just a different type of storytelling for children. But yeah, in terms of the quotes that I used, I was aware that there weren’t a lot of Spanish-speaking reporters who were interviewing him. So whenever I would come across a quote or something like that, I was very picky about what I used because I wanted to make sure that whatever I included was Clemente’s voice.
There’s some quotes that are floating around the book that are not part of the main text, but they’re there. Like the opening spread has, “I was born to be a baseball player.” And then there’s another one that’s, “If I’m good enough to play here, I have to be good enough to be treated like the rest of the players” — something along those lines. Those are all from his last television interview. I heard those quotes straight out of his mouth, and so I chose to use those because I heard him say them.
We’ve had conversations here about Spanish-language media. There are Spanish-language weeklies across the country that have been shut down by their parent companies. As someone who works prominently in Spanish, in what ways do you think Spanish-language media can receive greater support in the US?
Speaking generally, I do think there’s so many people who may speak English and read English, but they might be Spanish-dominant. Or they might just prefer to get their news in that way. And these are big audiences. So I think having local media that can speak to these communities in their language, I don’t think that can be overstated.
If you look at the state of journalism, it’s shrinking everywhere, pretty much. When publications or the number of jobs available for Spanish-speaking journalists shrink, that hurts the entire journalism ecosystem.
What do you hope readers take away from your book?
I think just being comfortable being yourself, wherever you are. Not suppressing who you are, or feeling like you have to be something else. I think that’s probably the biggest lesson, because it can be scary to feel out of place. I’ve been there a lot. It takes courage to just be yourself and express your identity. Some people are going to be fine with it. Some people are not. And that’s not really the reader’s concern. So I would say that that’s probably the biggest takeaway: There is power in being you.
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