Quote:
Originally Posted by hcv123
So like was suggested I considered - perhaps it was a different Clemente? But, what are the chances? Researched it and couldn't find evidence of another Clemente that played in the Puerto Rican league during those years. Maybe the date was wrong? Maybe, I just didn't know and it it remained a mystery for many years.......until.... Lelands auctioned of a very interesting piece of memorabilia - A questionnaire filled out by Clemente in 1954 - clearly indicating that he played with Santurce as early as 1951!!!! Obviously with no contract and an as yet unassigned uniform number!! Unfortunately I was outbid on the original -but snagged a good jpg to keep with the scorecard - highly likely to be the earliest known Clemente scorecard (for sure the earliest I have ever seen) !
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Hi Howard,
(apologies to all for now digging up the older thread entries, but seeing as I'm going through them on by one for my project, new things are surfacing)
So, your '52 scorecard which you acquired 'long ago' seemed earliest to you like you mentioned, which made the description from this 2009 Leland's item seem lame, since they added to the lot title "Earliest Known":
https://auction.lelands.com/bids/bidplace?itemid=48357
But then I came across this 2005 Leland's item which is a '50-51 scorecard and they report references Clemente (though the image file is too small for a proper look to me), which suggests 2 things, 1) that their lot description writers in 2009 weren't doing as much diligence as they could even researching their own records and 2) about his playing in '51, further bolsters the evidence in the questionnaire you captured:
https://auction.lelands.com/bids/bidplace?itemid=22172
(ok, it suggests a third thing too, for your scorecard, but let's not dwell on that)