Oris Roberto Clemante Edition Celebrates True Sporting Hero

If you’re a baseball fan then the latest Oris automatic is a collectors item. Buying one also makes a real difference as some of the profits will go to the Clemente Foundation.  The watch is a stainless steel, 40mm wide model, with an Oris 754 Calibre inside. It retails for 1850CHF, or about £1570 sterling. Limited to 3000 pieces, it also has a date hand indicator, rather than a date window.

Here’s some background on Roberto Clemente;

From humble beginnings, Roberto’s life changed quickly. At 17, he began his career in the Puerto Rican Professional Baseball League and a year later moved to the U.S. to join the Brooklyn Dodgers organisation. In the years that followed, he would overcome discrimination because of the colour of his skin, and become a baseball legend. In 1955, he made his Major League debut with the Pittsburgh Pirates, where he would stay for 18 seasons. He was an exceptional athlete, with a mighty throwing arm.

He won two World Series with the Pirates and became a 12-time winner of the Rawlings Gold Glove Award, before reaching 3,000 hits with the last hit of his career in September 1972, making him the first Latin American player to reach the mark.

During the following winter, Nicaragua was hit by a 6.3 magnitude earthquake, leaving as many as 11,000 people dead and 300,000 without a home. Roberto, who had been involved in community work throughout his career, sent aid, but discovered his shipments had gone missing in the chaos, almostcertainly diverted by corrupt local officials.

He insisted on accompanying the next shipment to make sure it reached the people who needed it most, and on December 31, he boarded a plane. It would never reach its destination. Roberto Clemente died, serving others, aged just 38. The plane crashed into the sea and his body was never found. But his name lived on. In 1973, Roberto was posthumously inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. The same year, the Commissioner’s Award, awarded annually to a Major League player for their work in the community, was renamed the Roberto Clemente Award. And Roberto’s number 21 was retired by the Pirates. In 1993, the Roberto Clemente Foundation was established with a mission to ‘Build Nations of Good’. Headed by his widow Vera and now his son Luis Clemente, it continues his proud legacy of bringing real change.

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