Royals catcher Salvador Perez earns Roberto Clemente Award from MLB

NEW YORK – Salvador Perez finally returned to the playoffs this year after a nearly decadelong absence. Yet his impact in Venezuela and Kansas City never really left.

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

Perez, 34, has been previously nominated for baseball’s most notable honor for off-field community endeavors. He has provided food and medicine each winter for families in his Venezuelan hometown of Valencia, and also has paid for thousands of surgeries for children to repair cleft lips. Perhaps most notably, he aided in relief efforts in neighboring Colombia during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, entering hte country on foot when car travel was forbidden.

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

Earlier this year, a video on social media showing Perez playing whiffle ball with children in a Kansas City neighborhood picked up steam, a tribute to Perez's everyman ethos and, in a sense, his approach to giving of his time and resources.

"If you pick just one day a month - two or three hours - to go have fun," says Perez Monday night before Game 3, "go make some kid happy, they're never, ever going to forget that."

The former Commissioner's Award was renamed after Clemente after the Pittsburgh Pirates legend and eventual Hall of Famer died in a December 1972 plane crash on his way to deliver supplies to victims of an earthquake in Nicaragua.

"You are an incredible example of what baseball is all about, and in the same fashion that Dad did things," Clemente's son, Luis, told Perez on Monday. "I know people that he'd stop after games and he would play catch with just a random boy that he saw outside his front door, his patio. When I saw you do that playing wiffle ball, it really said it all to me.

"Every Venezuelan, every Latino player should be extremely proud of you becoming this year's recipient."

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Royals star Salvador Perez earns Roberto Clemente Award from MLB