I was not lucky enough to ever see Roberto play live or on TV. I've only ever watched clips and highlights of him, which I still like to watch and share every now and then to remind myself what a talent he was. However, he was one of the first ball players I ever read about as a kid on a school trip to our City library. It was a story in a magazine called " Boy's Life" which I loved reading on those school trips in the early 70's.  I remember reading about how he was building a youth sports centre in his native Puerto Rico, and that he said helping the kids was more important to him than playing baseball. I was a kid, and I thought that was pretty amazing. How kind is someone I thought, as a Major League All-Star who wants to help kids more than play ball? That day I learned what the word "humanitarian" meant. It was shortly thereafter that I heard about his tragic death when I talked to my older brother about him. He explained to me what a Hero Roberto was, not just in baseball, but in life. I had the smallest of connections to him compared to his lifelong fans, I know that. It would be a few years later in the late 70's I was at a friends house trading baseball and hockey cards, when he showed me a 1973 Roberto Clemente card. This was the first Clemente card I had ever seen, and I didn't know it was his last card at the time, but I knew I had to have it. It was from that card that I learned we shared the same last name, and maybe my connection with him was deeper than I thought.  I've called him Uncle Roberto ever since. I also have a brother named Robert, and I've called him Roberto ever since.  Since then, it seems my love and admiration for him has only continued to grow. Puerto Ricans, like many other Hispanic cultures, carry two surnames: the first inherited from the father and the second from the mother. Some say the saddest words of tongue or pen, are these four words, "What might have been."  I think there may be some truth to that, because my entire time creating this painting of this Boyhood Legend, that's all I could think about. Roberto Clemente is still a hero to millions of us to this day, more than 50 years after his death, including The Godfather of the Sports Cards hobby Dr. James Beckett, and the first and current President of the Sports Card hobby The Honourable John Mangini. It was Clemente himself that said it best, "A nation without heroes is nothing," and I know there is some truth to that too, because Uncle Roberto also taught me that.