21 Things About Roberto Clemente

The 20,000 fans in attendance at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh 57 years ago today likely didn't know how much baseball history they would be witness to.

During the first game of a double-header against the Brooklyn Dodgers, right fielder Roberto Clemente took the field for the first time, kicking off a storied career that he spent entirely in a Pirates uniform.

That career was tragically cut short, however, when Clemente was killed on New Year's Eve 1972 during a flight to deliver aid packages from his native Puerto Rico to earthquake-ravaged Nicaragua.

In honor of Clemente's professional debut, here are 21 facts about his life and baseball legacy that you might not have known:

1. Roberto Clemente Walker was the youngest of seven children born to Don Melchor Clemente and Luisa Walker. He was born on Aug. 18, 1934, in Carolina, Puerto Rico—the same town boxers Esteban De Jesus and Alfredo Escalera called home.

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