How a Congressman Wants to Honor Roberto Clemente

Good morning. It’s Thursday. Today we’ll find out why a Bronx congressman is pushing for a coin commemorating a Pittsburgh Pirates baseball player. We’ll also see what to expect as Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial enters its final stages.

Why is a congressman from the Bronx cheering on a star from a team that defeated the Yankees in the World Series?

“I saw him play,” Espaillat said, before talking about how deep the Pirates stadium was when Clemente played there: 130 meters to the midfield wall.

“When you throw someone out with a fly from that far in the back of the ballpark,” Espaillat said, “it’s a great throw.”

A moment or two later, Espaillat told me that if he had not gone into politics, “I would be a sports journalist.” You didn’t have to be a sports journalist to rhapsodize about Clemente, but no less an eminence than Roger Angell: “He played a brand of baseball that none of us had ever seen before,” Angell wrote. “As if it is a form of punishment for everyone else on the field.”

Espaillat spoke about “the Latinization of baseball, from Puerto Rico to Cuba, from the Dominican Republic to Venezuela and now even Mexico.”

“The pioneer of all this,” he said, “was Roberto Clemente.” And as a pioneer, he faced discrimination for much of his career.

He died in December 1972 aboard a plane carrying relief supplies to Nicaragua after an earthquake. The plane crashed not long after taking off from San Juan, PR

The Ministry of Finance will design a Clemente coin if Espaillat’s bill is passed. Two of Clemente’s sons – Roberto Jr. and Luis, co-founders and co-chairs of the Roberto Clemente Foundation – issued statements supporting the push for a currency, with Luis Clemente calling it “a source of enormous pride for our family.” ”

But, Espaillat said, the bill would need the support of two-thirds of the House of Representatives, 290 votes. He said Jenniffer González-Colón, Puerto Rico’s sole representative in Congress and a Republican, had signed up, but she does not have a vote.

“I hope I get the entire Pennsylvania delegation,” Espaillat said, “because of Pittsburgh.”

I asked Espaillat, who was born the year before Clemente joined the Pirates and was 18 when he died, if he had ever met him. “Come on, man,” he said, “what kid got to meet him at that age?”

But he knew what he would have asked Clemente if he had had the chance: “How can you hit that ball that’s so far from the plate?”

“I mean, you see him so far away from the plate, it was unbelievable that he could ever hit the ball — unlike Frank Robinson, who went over the plate with his elbow,” Espaillat said. Robinson was a star with the Baltimore Orioles when they faced the Pirates in 1971 in what Times sportswriter Murray Chass said, “It was the Roberto Clemente World Series, after all.”

Espaillat said he heard about Clemente from Juan Marichal, the Dominican pitcher who played for the San Francisco Giants in the 1960s and early 1970s, and later for the Boston Red Sox and Los Angeles Dodgers.

“He was talking about segregation at the time they came up,” Espaillat said. “Roberto Clemente’s name came up and he said, ‘Roberto Clemente took care of all of us. He would tell you that when you travel south, this is how you should behave.” He talked about Clemente’s connection to Martin Luther King and how Clemente died. He died trying to help people.”

Weather

It’s a sunny day, mid forties. At night it is mainly clear, with temperatures around thirty degrees.

ALTERNATE PARKING

In effect until Monday (Martin Luther King’s birthday).

Trump will not give closing arguments during his fraud trial

Today – just a few days before the race for the White House officially begins with the Iowa caucuses – Donald Trump is expected to appear in court in Manhattan. Apparently he has decided to let his lawyers do the talking.

Trump, who considers himself his own best spokesman, planned to address the court as the final phase of his civil fraud trial got underway. But Arthur Engoron, the judge overseeing the case, imposed several conditions that Trump’s team found unacceptable.

Judge Engoron, among other things, banned Trump from making “a campaign speech” and said the former president could only discuss the facts of the case and the relevant law. The judge also said that attacks on him, court staff or New York’s attorney general – who brought the case against Trump – would be prohibited.

My colleagues Jonah E. Bromwich and Ben Protess write that these circumstances may have undermined Trump’s purpose for his speech. He has repeatedly tried to turn his legal obligations into political assets, accusing his legal opponents of a coordinated witch hunt.

Judge Engoron wrote in an email last week that he “would not hesitate to shut him down mid-sentence and admonish him” if Trump overstepped the mark. “If he continues to break the rules, I will terminate his closing argument and prevent him from making further statements in court,” he said. The judge also threatened to fine Trump at least $50,000.

A lawyer for Trump, Christopher Kise, refused to agree to the terms the judge outlined, saying they were “full of ambiguities.” Kise also said that preventing Trump from attacking New York Attorney General Letitia James was “simply untenable.”

After several more conversations, Judge Engoron wrote in an email Wednesday that he assumed Trump would not agree to the limits “and therefore he will not speak in court.”

Kise had previously asked that closing arguments be postponed until January 29, if not later, after informing the court of the death of Trump’s mother-in-law. Judge Engoron, while expressing his condolences, denied the request for a postponement.

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METROPOLITAN diary

Same block

Dear Diary:

In the early 1980s I left New York to study in Ohio. My roommate was from Chappaqua, NY

As Thanksgiving approached, we discovered that we would both be in town for the holiday. Her father had moved there after her parents’ divorce.

When I asked her where he lived, she said 72nd Street between First and Second Avenues. We laughed because my parents lived on that block.

The day after Thanksgiving, my boyfriend called and we joked that maybe we could see each other from the window.

I put the phone down. When I looked out the window, up and down, I didn’t see her.

I picked up the phone again.