In the end, it was not the stirring Caribbean series that Clemente would remember from that winter, but another series of events that occurred earlier, on the last two days of 1954. On the weekend after Christmas, Santurce was playing three games down in Ponce, over the mountains on the southern coast. When the road trip was over, because of a family emergency, Roberto did not take the team bus home but instead drove back with his brothers, Andres and Matino. Their oldest sibling, Luis Oquendo, Luisa’s firstborn, a school teacher then thirty-eight, for months had been suffering from terrible headaches, occasional seizures, and sudden loss of sight. After several examinations, doctors diagnosed a brain tumor, uncertain whether it was malignant. On December 30, a Sunday, they operated on his brain. His brothers were still in Ponce. With Momen at the wheel, driving the 1954 blue Pontiac he had bought with his bonus money, they sped north to see Luis as soon as the game was over. At eleven at night, as they were driving through the dark mountain streets of Caguas just past the Gautier Benitez School, another car barreled through the intersection from the side, running a red light, and smashed into them. Andres and Matino were unhurt. Roberto wrenched his neck and spine, but insisted that he did not need treatment. The car was dented in the front but still drivable, and soon they were back on the road.
When they reached Doctor’s Hospital in Santurce, the news was bleak. Luis’s tumor was malignant and advanced. He was conscious but groggy when his brothers entered the room. Momen flicked on the lights, but Luis said he wanted it dark. He died the next day, at noon. The date was December 31.
4
The Residue of Design
RIDICULING THE PITTSBURGH PIRATES WAS ONE OF THE simple pleasures of the national pastime in the first half of the 1950s. The Boy Buffoons of Baseball, Life magazine called them. “The atrocities they committed under the guise of major league baseball were monstrous,” wrote Marshall Smith. “Pirate pitchers threw the ball in the general direction of home plate and ducked. Pirate batters missed signs as blithely as they missed baseballs. Pirate fielding was so graceful that the team gave the opposition four or five outs per inning. Sportswriters accused Pirates of running the bases with their heads tucked under their arms.” When the club’s top minor league manager wanted to scare one of his underachieving players, he threatened to send him up to Pittsburgh. The Pirates were bound for the cellar every year; the only tension came with guessing how many games back they might finish. In 1952 when they were accused of fielding a team of midgets, infielders so short that balls bounded over them for doubles, they ended up fifty-four and a half games behind the Brooklyn Dodgers. All of this was overseen by Pittsburgh’s esteemed general manager, Branch Rickey.
In Pittsburgh, some skeptics said, Wesley Branch Rickey finally met his match—or worse, let the game pass him by. For more than four decades, since he had graduated from Michigan Law and got into baseball management, Rickey, an erudite Presbyterian from Lucasville, Ohio, had been regarded as the one true genius of the sport. Red Smith, the New York sportswriter, called him “a giant among pygmies.” Before coming over to run the hapless Pirates in 1950, at the seasoned age of sixty-nine, he had built two of the century’s dominant National League clubs, first the Gas House Gang in St. Louis, and next what would become the Boys of Summer in Brooklyn. His place in history was assured by a single bold act, breaking the color line with the signing of Jackie Robinson, but there was far more to him than that. It was as a measure of respect that he became known as the Mahatma. He was cool and manipulative in his transactions, meticulous with his records, formal and pompous in his speech, stingy with his money, always curious and innovative, brutally sharp in his assessments, and interested equally in a player’s psychological disposition and his ability to learn an elusive hook slide.
All events in Mr. Rickey’s world could be studied, categorized, and explained. Good things did not fall upon people, or baseball clubs, by accident. He was a man of sayings, and his most famous phrase came at the end of this thought: “Things worthwhile generally don’t just happen. Luck is a fact, but should not be a factor. Good luck is what is left over after intelligence and effort have combined at their best. Negligence or indifference or inattention are usually reviewed from an unlucky seat. The law of cause and effect and causality both work the same with inexorable exactitudes. Luck is the residue of design.”
And what was his design for the Pirates? “The Pittsburgh club was in last place on merit and not by mishap or circumstance,” Rickey said when he took over, and when they got better it would not be through luck. He doubled the number of minor league affiliates and started stocking them with young players, underscoring his belief that, in baseball, the surest way to get quality was through quantity. He spent what to him seemed like a huge sum ($900,000) on prospects, most of whom flopped. He worked to rid the team of popular players who in his opinion could never take the Pirates to a championship, Ralph Kiner prime among them. Kiner, the slow-footed slugger who won four straight home-run titles (and eventually seven), was not only beloved in Pittsburgh but was also a duck-hunting companion of the owner, John Galbreath. But Rickey was so determined to trade him that he wrote Galbreath an eight-page, single-spaced letter on March 25, 1952, enunciating “twenty-four reasons why Ralph Kiner was useless to the Pittsburgh Pirates.” Within a year, Kiner was a Cub. And with his sharp-eyed talent men, scout Haak and coach Sukeforth, Rickey plucked young players from other clubs, none more important, in the long run, than the twenty-year-old outfielder, Roberto Clemente.
In the mythology that later enveloped the Clemente story, there is a commonly recounted scene of Rickey blessing him at the dawn of his career. It supposedly took place in the winter league in Puerto Rico in 1953. According to the story, first told by San Juan sportswriters and repeated through the years, Rickey caught sight of Clemente at a Santurce game, was stunned by his skills, called him over to talk, asked him a few questions, and ended the conversation by telling the young man to find a girl and settle down to the business of baseball because he was destined to be a superstar. But Rickey was an inveterate memo-keeper; his dictated observations and handwritten notes were typed out by his personal secretary, Ken Blackburn, after virtually every game that he attended. And the documents point to another less-glowing account.
With aide-de-camp Blackburn at his side, Rickey flew south in January 1955 for a scouting swing through Cuba and Puerto Rico (which in Blackburn’s transcriptions was often spelled the way Rickey said it, Puerto Rica). In Cuba, on January 18 and 19, Rickey watched two games between Havana and Cienfuegos. His notes show that he was impressed with young players in the St. Louis Cardinals chain, especially Don Blasingame (“ . . . a pest at the plate. He should become a good base on balls man, and his power is ample. He is no puny in any respect.”) and Ken Boyer. (“I saw the best ballplayer on first impression that I have seen in many a day. Boyer by name . . . Never loafs. Has big hands and knows what to do with them . . . He is a line drive hitter deluxe. The newspapermen down here are raving about the outfielder Bill Virdon, saying, in effect, unanimously, that Virdon is the greatest player ever to be in Cuba etc. etc. I will take Boyer.”) With those three players coming up, Rickey concluded, all the Cardinals needed was a top-flight pitcher to contend against the Dodgers, Giants, and Braves.
The next week he was in San Juan, taking in a game at Sixto Escobar between Santurce and Ponce. He kept his own scorecard and dictated his game notes to Blackburn, though he complained that he was “disturbed by dignitaries so much during the game” that his notes were not as sharp as normal. “The Ponce team is managed by Joe Schultz Jr. and Santurce by Herman Franks—both really two kids who came up with me,” Rickey began his Memorandum of Game. Schultz and Franks were both old catchers who had played for the Cardinals. “I have had interviews with both boys, and Schultz is to have breakfast with me in the morning.”
Then, one by one, Rickey analyzed all the players he had seen on both teams. His comments on the Cangrejeros were often blistering.
Luis Olmo, he observed, “pinch hit for Lopez and looked lazy, overweight, indifferent, helpless.” (It is well to remember that Rickey and Olmo had a falling out back in the mid-forties, when Olmo, insulted by Rickey’s salary offer after his best season with the Dodgers, bolted to an upstart Mexican League.) Willie Mays did not play that day, resting for the winter league playoffs, which were to begin in a few days. Rickey’s most in-depth assessment was done on the young man who moved over from left to center, Roberto Clemente. He must have begged dignitaries away whenever Clemente was in action.
Two months earlier, the Pirates had made Clemente the first overall selection in the Rule 5 draft. He was Pittsburgh property, and bound by rule to stay with the big club in 1955. From the content of Rickey’s notes, it appears that this was the first time he had seen Clemente play. The language does not correspond to the legend of Rickey observing Clemente in 1953 and telling him that he was destined for superstardom. He saw a few things he loved in the young player, but more flaws. The memo began:
I would guess him to be at least 6’ tall, weight about 175 pounds, right hand hitter, very young. I have been told very often about his running speed. I was sorely disappointed with it. His running form is bad, definitely bad, and based upon what I saw tonight, he had only a bit above average major league running speed. He has a beautiful throwing arm. He throws the ball down and it really goes places. However, he runs with the ball every time he makes a throw and that’s bad.
Rickey had his own scouting vocabulary. One of his favorite baseball words was adventure. In this regard, by his standards, Clemente was no Willie Mays.
He has no adventure whatever on the bases, takes a comparatively small lead, and doesn’t have in mind, apparently, getting a break. I can imagine that he has never stolen a base in his life with his skill or cleverness. I can guess that if it was done, it was because he was pushed off.
Later, Rickey thought he saw that same timidity in the field:
The most disappointing feature about Clemente is his lack of adventure—of chance taking. He had at least two chances tonight to make a good play. He simply waited for the bounce. I hope he looks better to me tomorrow night when Santurce plays San Juan—the final game of the regular season and the city championship of San Juan is at stake. Perhaps this boy will put out in that game.
When Clemente was hitting, Rickey found more to like. With the cool detachment of a cattle appraiser, he reported:
His form at the plate is perfect. The bat is out and back and in good position to give him power. There is not the slightest hitch or movement in his hands or arms and the big end of the bat is completely quiet when the ball leaves the pitcher’s hand. His sweep is level—very level. His stride is short and his stance is good to start with and he finishes good with his body. I know of no reason why he should not become a very fine hitter. I would not class him, however, as even a prospective home run hitter.
From his observations in San Juan, Rickey reached a disappointing conclusion. He believed that the bonus baby he had swiped from the Dodgers was not ready for the big time:
I do not believe he can possibly do a major league club any good in 1955. It is just too bad that he could not have had his first year in Class B or C league and then this year he might have profited greatly with a second year as a regular say in Class A. In 1956 he can be sent out on option by Pittsburgh only by first securing waivers, and waivers likely cannot be secured. So, we are stuck with him—stuck indeed, until such time as he can really help a major league club.
There are several things to keep in mind when reading that critical assessment of Clemente made a few months before the first game of his major league career. First, though Rickey was astute, he made mistakes. Three years before he compiled his report on Clemente, he had observed a Pirate minor league pitcher named Ron Necciai and declared: “There have only been two young pitchers I was certain were destined for greatness, simply because they had the meanest fastball a batter can face. One of those boys was Dizzy Dean. The other is Ron Necciai.” All baseball lovers know Dizzy Dean. Necciai won exactly one game in the major leagues. Second, despite those rare raves, Rickey tended to look for a player’s faults, and was merciless in doing so. Of Tony Bartirome, a prospect in 1955, he wrote: “A puny hitter. He never will go major.” (Perhaps Rickey had forgotten, but he had called up the 5’9’’ Bartirome briefly to start 135 games at first base in 1952 as part of the midget infield.) A pitching prospect named Jackie Brown was lucky not to see Rickey’s private assessment of him: “Brown was born prematurely, and has never caught up. I don’t think he ever has a thought. He has never related an incident in his life, never told a story in his life, never had a belly laugh in his life. He would be incapable of comprehension to so deep a point.” Could Rickey be any crueler? Yes. In another report he noted that Brown “is also afflicted with rectal warts.”
It also must be said that Rickey’s scouting report on Clemente was not completely inaccurate. Clemente did have an odd running style, and looked a bit faster than he really was. While he never stole many bases, though, he was regarded as a smart base runner and thrilled fans with his dashes from first to third and second to home. The prediction that he would become “a very fine hitter” turned out to be a severe understatement. As to power, Rickey was at least half right. Clemente never was a big home-run hitter, though on occasion he could hit mammoth shots, and he frequently drove the ball deep into the gaps for doubles and triples. Based on Clemente’s statistics in 1955 and the next few years, Rickey’s assessment that he needed a few more years of seasoning was within the realm of debate. But where Rickey was most mistaken was in his conclusion that Clemente’s game lacked adventure. It was true that he did not steal many bases, but to think of him as timid was wildly off the mark. Clemente in the field, sprinting in and sliding across the grass to make a catch; on the base paths, legs flying, arms pumping furiously as he ran out every ground ball or raced from first to third; at the plate, daring a pitcher to get it by him no matter where he threw it—everything about his play evoked a sense of adventure. An essential fact of which Rickey seemed unaware when he wrote the scouting report is that Clemente had been in a car accident less than a month earlier and was suffering from neck and back troubles that would plague him off and on for the rest of his life.
• • •
On his way back to Pittsburgh from the Caribbean scouting mission, Rickey stopped in Fort Myers, a city on the Florida Gulf Coast that was preparing a new training camp for his Pittsburgh club. The Pirates had been spring vagabonds in the years of Rickey’s reign, moving from San Bernardino in 1952 to Havana in 1953 to Fort Pierce in 1954, but now they were ready to settle down. The Fort Myers Chamber of Commerce had recruited them with a sweet offer. Here was a new stadium and clubhouse at Terry Park, constructed with $80,000 in city and county funds. Here was a guarantee from local businessmen of two thousand Grapefruit League season tickets worth $30,000. Here was a fleet of new Pontiacs from baseball booster Al Gallman, a local car dealer, for the use of club officials. Town leaders would even send several hundred citizens up to Pittsburgh for Fort Myers Day during the regular season and fill the Forbes Field outfield with a tractor-trailer’s worth of free coconuts. It might seem like small stuff compared with the desperate inducements Florida towns would throw at major league teams decades later, but it was enough to get the job done in 1955. The only possible drawback Pirates officials could think of was that there was no top-flight racetrack nearby for the thoroughbred horses of Mr. Galbreath.
Rickey arrived at Terry Park on the morning of January 29 to find another baseball legend waiting for him. “God bless you, Connie,” he said in greeting. “I’m sure glad to see you.” It was Connie Mack Sr., who had managed the Philadelphia Athletics for half a century, from 1901 to 1950, and was now ninety-two. The Athletics had trained in Fort Myers in the late 1920s, and Mack still spent the winters there with his son. He was perhaps the only person alive who knew more baseball than Branch Ric
key, and he had come out to the park to show his compatriot around. Together the Mahatma and the Tall Tactician, with a hundred years of baseball experience between them, but both dressed like bankers, inspected the clubhouse, the infield, and the fences (set deep, 360 down the lines and 415 in center to give the feel of spacious Forbes Field up North). Rickey was impressed by the smoothness of the infield dirt and the luxurious green outfield, and decided that the team should stay off the main diamond and play only on the practice field for a few weeks, at least until owner Galbreath arrived. The clubhouse met his exacting standards. He said it was better than most clubhouses in the majors, and he was especially satisfied with the color choice for the shower room, a shade of light green that he considered good for morale.
After the brief tour, the two venerable baseball hands sat in the sun and talked. Len Harsh, the young sports editor of the local paper, the Fort Myers News-Press, stood nearby, awed by the great men, and eavesdropped on their conversation. Rickey and Mack chatted like old codgers who had seen it all. Who lost more stock in the Wall Street crash of 1929. The peaks and valleys of their careers. Mack had ended his baseball years in a valley, a long string of losing seasons for his once champion Athletics, and now Rickey was hoping to avoid the same fate. As the conversation ended, he invited Mack to throw out the first pitch at the preseason opener, then left to go deep sea fishing with a local doctor. He would return to snowy Pittsburgh for ten days to get the team’s affairs in order before flying South again to the sunshine and the start of camp.
The sportswriters who covered the Pirates were waiting for Rickey when he got back to Pittsburgh. They were hungry for news about his scouting trip, especially his assessment of the young Pirate who was tearing up the winter league for Santurce. Was Clemente really that good? asked Jack Hernon of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Without going into the precise critical analysis of his scouting report, Rickey put the best light on it while saying that he was not sure. “The boy is a great prospect, just as I was told. But you must remember he is only twenty years old and had almost no competition last season at Montreal. He is a big boy. He can run, throw, and hit. He needs much polishing because he is a rough diamond. He might go to town, but you can’t tell. He might (make it) but he’ll have his hands full.” Hernon wrote up the story for his paper and the Sporting News before leaving for Fort Myers with his writing brethren, Al Abrams, the Post-Gazette sports editor, Les Biederman of the Press, and Chilly Doyle of the Sun-Telegraph. None of the old boys would be Roberto men, as it turned out, and Hernon least of all.
Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero Page 8
