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Front Page » Communities » Miami Marlins step up at ‘disgusting’ Roberto Clemente Park

Miami Marlins step up at ‘disgusting’ Roberto Clemente Park

Written by on January 11, 2022
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Miami Marlins step up at ‘disgusting’ Roberto Clemente Park

Covid has slowed a long-sought process to turn Roberto Clemente Park at 101 NW 34th St. into a playable baseball field within Little Puerto Rico, says the executive director of the nearby Wynwood Business Improvement District, who has made improving the park his personal crusade.

The Miami Marlins have finally taken on the project, said Manny Gonzalez, who said he has been working for four years to get the park renovated. A meeting with the Marlins scheduled for last week to discuss a timetable for the upgrade was canceled as the virus spread rapidly.

The park is named for the first Latin American player to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, in 1973. Roberto Clemente began playing in 1952 in the Puerto Rican Professional Baseball League. With the Pittsburgh Pirates he became the 11th player in history at the time with 3,000 hits. He died at age 38 in 1972 in an plane crash on an earthquake relief mission to Nicaragua.

“The park is disgusting,” Mr. Gonzalez told the Wynwood Business Improvement District board last month. “But it is dedicated to a hero.”

The field is unplayable, he said. There are rocks and no drainage. “There aren’t lights, so at night people are out there smoking and we’ve seen bags of drugs.” Mr. Gonzalez said he hopes restoration will keep children in the neighborhood away from rough areas and busy in sports.

“So many people say ‘my coach changed my life.’ I was raised through the park system and I owe everything to the parks,” he said.

The park is in “Little Puerto Rico,” he said. “When you cross Northwest 29th [Street], you hit residential Wynwood and ‘Little Puerto Rico’ because there’s a massive generational influence.”

To upgrade the park, “four years ago I started with the Puerto Rican Chamber of Commerce,” Mr. Gonzalez said.

He also wrote to the Major League Baseball. “I told them that we have a park named after someone that they have a holiday dedicated to. They sent me to the Marlins.” The Miami Marlins, he said, were offended that he turned to MLB before they did. “The Marlins knew about the park’s state for eight years. Then I called the Roberto Clemente Foundation in Pittsburgh.”

“I got a call back from the Puerto Rican Chamber last month that the Marlins had agreed to adopt the park,” he said. The Marlins are allocated two parks per year that they are allowed to fix, according to Mr. Gonzalez. The Marlins are in charge of all repairs, the contractor, and the equipment such as gloves and bats.

Youth baseball improvement in Miami-Dade County was a part of the county’s negotiations with the Marlins’ former owners to build the baseball stadium that the team now occupies. The contract for the stadium called for the team to encourage Major League Baseball to build a youth baseball academy with multiple baseball fields and facilities in the county to train mostly minority youth in baseball.

At the time, it would have been the second such academy nationally, although Major League Baseball has since added others.

The league has told Miami Today repeatedly over the years that it was trying to find a site for such an academy in the county – the first site, in Hialeah, fell through – and that it has more than $3 million set aside for construction alone. It was to be on a far larger scale than Roberto Clemente Park.

“If this park were somewhere like Coral Gables or Kendall, it would be the center of the city and have a bronze statue of Clemente,” Mr. Gonzalez said.

“I had to step up to the plate because it would’ve been another 10 years if I didn’t.”

One Response to Miami Marlins step up at ‘disgusting’ Roberto Clemente Park

  1. Raul Izquierdo

    January 12, 2022 at 9:33 am

    I play in that park for the clemente pirates and I would be grateful for u guys to actually renovate the park

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