Roberto Clemente, Oswaldo Pirela, and Very Impressive Tomatoes

Image courtesy of Nathan Ray Seebeck-Imagn Images

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On Tuesday, Major League Baseball will celebrate Roberto Clemente Day, an annual tradition honoring one of the greatest players and humanitarians in the history of the sport. Tuesday also marks the beginning of Hispanic Heritage Month, which runs from September 15 through October 15 each year. It's not as loudly touted as Black History Month or Pride, and it seems awkward, the way it straddles two months, but this is the time of year when our country celebrates and lends extra visibility to people who have come here from Hispanic countries—especially Latin America. It's a reminder of how important are the contributions of people from those places to our society, and of the richness of the history and culture they bring here.

Each year, sometime during this month, I find myself reflecting on a moment from the pilot of The West Wing, which I think is worth sharing on this occasion. One of the braided storylines that form the narrative thread of that first episode of the show is what to do with a flotilla of Cuban refugees who have made it to Miami. This was a pre-9/11 America, but immigration was already a hot-button issue, and the question of refugees seeking asylum especially so. (Two months after the episode aired, Elián González and his mother arrived on just this kind of boat from Cuba, setting off a real-life saga that spanned months of high-profile coverage.) The question of what to do about (or with) the would-be immigrants lingered throughout the episode, but it wasn't the primary story. It would be resolved by the following monologue, from President Josiah Bartlet, played by Martin Sheen.

Quote

"There was this time that Annie came to me with this press clipping. Seems these theologians down in South America were all excited because this little girl from Chile had sliced open a tomato, and the inside flesh of the tomato had actually formed a perfect rosary. The theologians commented that they thought this was a very impressive girl. Annie commented that she thought it was a very impressive tomato. I don't know what made me think of that.

Naval Intelligence reports that approximately 1,200 Cubans left Havana this morning. Approximately 700 turned back due to severe weather. Some 350 are missing and presumed dead. One hundred and thirty-seven have been taken into custody in Miami and are seeking asylum. With the clothes on their back, they came through a storm. And the ones that didn't die want a better life, and they want it here. Talk about impressive."

That sequence lasts barely a minute, but it strips away the flesh and drills to the bone of America. It's not perfect. It begins with an unlikely anecdote. "Annie" is Bartlet's 12-year-old granddaughter, who seems to be endlessly manipulable for series writer Aaron Sorkin. She's a preteen who happens to read the international section of the newspaper, I guess. It's also a speech given by a white man (although, famously, one whose parents were both European immigrants, and who changed his very Hispanic birth name to become more hireable in the theater) to an entirely white cast of advisers.

Nonetheless, the beauty with which that articulates what makes America great always sets a lump in my throat. To whatever extent this nation deserves its self-image as a bastion of freedom, justice and progress, that identity doesn't live in the Constitution, or in any officer of the government. It doesn't come from within, because when it began, there was no single entity from which that kind of greatness could emanate. Whatever specialness America can claim has accrued, one person at a time, as people have dared to seek a better life and brought their dazzling combination of perseverance and love to this place to build it. We were not created; we've evolved. Every person who overcomes everything in front of them to come here and add their hopes and dreams to what's already here is a hero. They are co-founders of an America that is never done being established; they own it as much as any of us do.

Clemente, of course, was not technically a foreign immigrant. He was born in Puerto Rico, when it already belonged to the United States. However, for much of his career, he felt like an outsider. As the first dark-skinned Latin American star in MLB, he faced discrimination based on his skin color, his ethnicity and his primary language. He stormed through all of that to become as scintillating a player as the game has ever produced, playing with tenacity and passion as well as extraordinary talent. Throughout a career that eventually brought him widespread acceptance and love from fans and communities, he used every bit of influence and privilege he accumulated to help those less fortunate. He is one of the greatest Americans who ever lived, as illustrated by the circumstances of his death: rushing so earnestly and urgently to deliver aid to earthquake victims in a country far from his birthplace, but very much part of what he saw as his community.

On Clemente Day, I'm thinking a great deal about Oswaldo Pirela. The Padres' catching coordinator, who was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) last month, came to the United States from Venezuela over a decade ago, seeking asylum himself. His case is still pending, which exposed him to arrest by ICE. When that story made headlines, and when Pirela's sister's most emphatic statement to a reporter was that Pirela "loves this country," I felt that same lump in my throat that I get from Sheen's soliloquy.

It's astounding that so many people who have come here through so much adversity, and who have so often been treated so unwelcomingly here, still feel that passion. The same optimism—the same breathtaking, audacious hope—that pushed them out of circumstances where they worried for their family's lives or livelihoods and brought them here has kept their hope alive, even when the place they viewed as a destination has turned out to be a work in progress.

Pirela still faces removal from the country. His story is not over, but the ending doesn't look all that likely to be a happy one. Then again, hopefully, it won't be an ending. Roberto Clemente Day and Hispanic Heritage Month are, right now, a call to action for baseball fans of conscience. If Clemente's community stretched from the easternmost Caribbean to Nicaragua, surely ours—in a world drawn so much closer together, anyway, by communication technology and by international endeavors like baseball—extends to Arizona, where Pirela and his family live, and to Venezuela.

Sports should be bridges between people. They should unite and engender friendship between them. They should also widen our circles of empathy. Clemente knew this, and lived it. He let his circles of concern spread as far as he could reach. He lost his life in the effort to bring help where it was needed, despite the difficulty of it and the relatively remote connection between himself and that place. If the league is celebrating his legacy today, it must do so not only by issuing some custom jerseys and holding brief pregame ceremonies, but by committing itself to greater advocacy for all of its employees, and all of the communities that continue to support it. For our part, we should remember that the most remarkable human virtue is courage—the bravery to believe in something that repeatedly disappoints you, and the willingness to sacrifice where others' needs outnumber your own. Only when we draw on that bravery are we properly honoring Clemente—and when we do so, not coincidentally, we also observe Hispanic Heritage Month quite well.