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Royals star Salvador Perez receives MLB's Roberto Clemente Award

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NEW YORK (AP) — Salvador Perez finally returned to the playoffs this year after a nearly decade-long absence. But his influence in Venezuela and Kansas City never really waned.

Perez, a nine-time All-Star catcher for the Royals and likely future Hall of Famer, received the Roberto Clemente Award Monday night in a ceremony at Yankee Stadium before Game 3 of the World Series.

The 34-year-old Perez has already been nominated for baseball's top award for charitable activities off the field. He has provided food and medicine each winter to families in his Venezuelan hometown of Valencia, and has also funded thousands of surgeries for children to repair cleft lips. Perhaps most notably, he supported relief efforts in neighboring Colombia during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, entering the country on foot when traveling by car was banned.

He also donated $1 million to the Royals' youth academy in Kansas City.

Earlier this year, a video showing Perez playing whiffleball with children in a Kansas City neighborhood gained momentum on social media, a tribute to Perez's everyman ethos and, in some ways, his approach, time and resources sacrifice.

“If you pick just one day a month — two or three hours — to have fun,” Perez said Monday night before Game 3, “you make a kid happy, they'll never, ever forget it.”

The former Commissioner's Award was renamed after Clemente after the Pittsburgh Pirates legend and future Hall of Famer died in a plane crash in December 1972 while en route to providing care to victims of an earthquake in Nicaragua.

“You are an incredible example of what baseball is all about in the same way Dad did,” Clemente’s son Luis told Perez on Monday. “I know people who would stop after games and play catch with any boy he saw on his doorstep or patio. When I saw you do that at Wiffleball, that really said it all for me.”

“Every Venezuelan, every Latino player should be extremely proud that you are this year’s honoree.”

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