Good morning. It's Thursday. Today we'll find out why a congressman from the Bronx is pressing for a coin to commemorate a baseball player from the Pittsburgh Pirates. We'll also see what to expect as Donald Trump's civil fraud trial moves into its final phase.
Representative Adriano Espaillat has introduced 49 bills in this session of Congress. One would direct colleges to send information about hate crimes to the federal Department of Education. Another would simplify the requirements for federal assistance after disasters like Hurricane Maria, which devastated Puerto Rico in 2017. Yet another bill would authorize a coin commemorating Roberto Clemente, the superlative right fielder who played for only one team in 18 years in the major leagues, the Pittsburgh Pirates. Why is a congressman from the Bronx cheering on a star of a team that beat the Yankees in the World Series? "I watched him play," Espaillat said, before talking about how deep the Pirates' stadium was when Clemente played there — 457 feet to the center-field wall. "When you get a guy throwing somebody out from that far back in the ballpark on a fly," Espaillat said, "that's a tremendous throw." A moment or two later, Espaillat told me that if he had not gone into politics, "I would be a sportswriter." You did not have to be a sportswriter to rhapsodize about Clemente, but no less an eminence than Roger Angell did: "He played a kind of baseball that none of us had ever seen before," Angell wrote. "As if it were a form of punishment for everyone else on the field." Espaillat talked about "the Latinization of baseball, from Puerto Rico to Cuba to the Dominican Republic to Venezuela and now even Mexico." "The pioneer for all that," he said, "was Roberto Clemente." And as a pioneer, he faced discrimination for much of his career. He died in December 1972 aboard an airplane carrying relief supplies to Nicaragua after an earthquake. The plane went down not long after it took off from San Juan, P.R. The Treasury Department will design a Clemente coin if Espaillat's bill passes. Two of Clemente's sons — Roberto Jr. and Luis, who are co-founders and co-chairmen of the Roberto Clemente Foundation — issued statements supporting the push for a coin, with Luis Clemente calling it "a source of immense pride for our family." But, Espaillat said, the bill would need support from two-thirds of the House, 290 votes. He said that Jenniffer González-Colón, Puerto Rico's one representative in Congress and a Republican, had signed on, but she has no vote. "I hope to get the entire Pennsylvania delegation," Espaillat said, "because of Pittsburgh." I asked Espaillat, who was born the year before Clemente joined the Pirates and was 18 when he died, if he ever met him. "Come on, man," he said, "which kid at that age got to meet him?"
But he knew what he would have asked Clemente if he had been given the chance: "How could you hit that ball standing so far from the plate?" "I mean, you see him so far away from the plate, it was incredible that he was ever able to hit the ball — as opposed to Frank Robinson, elbow right over the plate," Espaillat said. Robinson was a star with the Baltimore Orioles when they faced the Pirates in 1971 in what the Times sportswriter Murray Chass said "was, after all, the Roberto Clemente World Series." Espaillat said he had heard about Clemente from Juan Marichal, the Dominican pitcher who played for the San Francisco Giants in the 1960s and early 1970s, and later the Boston Red Sox and the Los Angeles Dodgers. "He was talking about segregation in the days when they came up," Espaillat said. "Roberto Clemente's name came up and he said, 'Roberto Clemente took care of all of us. He would tell you if you travel down South, this is how you have to behave.' He talked about Clemente's connection with Martin Luther King and how Clemente died. He died trying to help people."
WEATHER It's a sunny day in the mid 40s. At night it's mostly clear, with temperatures in the mid-30s. ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING In effect until Monday (Martin Luther King's Birthday). Trump won't give a closing argument at his fraud trial
Today — only a few days before the race for the White House officially begins with the Iowa caucuses — Donald Trump is expected to be in court in Manhattan. He has apparently decided to let his lawyers do the talking.
Trump, who considers himself his own best spokesman, had planned to address the court when the final phase of his civil fraud trial got underway. But Arthur Engoron, the judge overseeing the case, imposed several conditions that Trump's team found unacceptable. Among other things, Justice Engoron forbade Trump from giving "a campaign speech" and said the former president could discuss only the facts of the case and the relevant law. The judge also said that attacks on him, the court staff or the New York attorney general — who brought the case against Trump — would be out of bounds. My colleagues Jonah E. Bromwich and Ben Protess write that those conditions may have undercut Trump's purpose in speaking. He has repeatedly sought to turn his legal liabilities into political assets, accusing his legal opponents of a coordinated witch hunt. Justice Engoron wrote in an email last week that he "would not hesitate to cut him off in midsentence and admonish him" if Trump overstepped the limits. "If he continues to violate the rules, I will end his closing argument and prevent him from making any further statements in the courtroom," he said. The judge also threatened to fine Trump at least $50,000. A lawyer for Trump, Christopher Kise, declined to go along with the conditions the judge had outlined, saying they were "fraught with ambiguities." Kise also said that preventing Trump from attacking the New York attorney general, Letitia James, was "simply untenable." After several more exchanges, Justice Engoron wrote in an email on Wednesday that he assumed that Trump would not agree to the limits "and that, therefore, he will not be speaking in court." Kise had previously asked that the closing arguments be postponed until Jan. 29, if not later, after notifying the court of the death of Trump's mother-in-law. Justice Engoron, while expressing condolences, denied the request for a delay. The latest Metro news
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N.Y. Today: A plan to honor Roberto Clemente
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