Clemente Award means a lot to this Met
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This story was excerpted from Anthony DiComo’s Mets Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.
NEW YORK -- Since Major League Baseball renamed its top humanitarian award to honor Roberto Clemente in 1973, four Puerto Rican players have won it: Edgar Martinez in 2004, Carlos Delgado in '06, Carlos Beltrán in '13 and Yadier Molina in '18.
Francisco Lindor, who grew up learning about Clemente in school, understands what those four mean to the island. He knows what an honor it is just to be nominated for the Roberto Clemente Award, as Lindor was this week for the second consecutive year. And he knows how impactful it would be to Puerto Ricans if he managed to become the fifth player from that territory to win it.
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“Every social studies class, they were talking about Clemente,” Lindor said. “Bringing the award back to Puerto Rico, I think that’s what the school system wanted. I think that’s why they teach so much about Clemente, [so] that we become good humanitarians, that we become good people.”
Nationality aside, Lindor has done plenty to earn consideration. As far back as 2017 with Cleveland, Lindor was giving back to his grammar school in Gurabo, P.R., donating funds to reinstate the school’s sports program and refurbishing playing fields that Hurricane Maria damaged. Once those fields were completed, Lindor hosted a baseball clinic there for 250 local children.
In recent years, Lindor has shifted many of his charitable efforts to the Orlando, Fla., area, where he attended high school after moving to the United States as a 12-year-old. His major investment was a $1 million donation to his alma mater, Montverde Academy, which now features a hall named after him. Lindor spends almost every day of his offseason roaming those grounds, working out on the baseball field that his money helped build. Naturally, that gives him plenty of opportunities to interact with the school’s current attendees.
This past offseason, Lindor took time to speak to the senior class, urging them to understand the value of education.
“If they want to meet me, I’m sure they’ll meet me, because I’m always there,” Lindor said. “I love education. I love helping baseball players and helping softball girls in Puerto Rico, stuff like that. It means the world to me to be able to help. … Also to help parents have a little financial freedom when it comes to getting a scholarship so they can go and pay for their education. To me, it’s amazing.”
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Lindor has spearheaded similar charitable efforts in his adopted home of New York City, including a New Balance partnership that distributed backpacks and school supplies to students from the Tommie Agee School in East Elmhurst, Queens. He meets regularly with area students for a pregame question-and-answer session at Citi Field and has likewise brought Montverde students to the team’s Spring Training complex in Port St. Lucie, Fla.
But through it all, Puerto Rico remains high on Lindor’s list of priorities. In 2022, following Hurricane Fiona’s devastation to the island, Lindor donated $50,000 to aid Puerto Rican communities -- something well in line with Clemente’s values. A year later, he and his wife, Katia, helped spearhead an event to collect trash and plant trees on Wilderness Beach.
“I’m blessed to be in the position that I am,” Lindor said. “[Winning the award] would definitely mean a lot, because I think that would make my parents so proud and my island so proud.”