• • •
In 1955, with no help from the baseball team, not yet, the city of steel was undertaking what civic leaders called the Pittsburgh Renaissance. Mayor David Lawrence, with the cooperation of the corporate elite, had already pushed through smoke ordinances to clean the air, which had grown so thick during the industrial frenzy of World War II that a photograph showed cars driving through town at noon with headlights on. Now they were cleaning the rivers, clearing land, razing buildings, and remaking downtown and nearby neighborhoods, for better and for worse; better for some businessmen and merchants, largely worse for displaced residents. Pittsburgh was a city of neighborhoods, with a rich ethnic mix. Every immigrant group was said to have its own hill, and newspaper. Along with the three dailies and the black-owned Courier, there was also the Jewish Criterion, the Sokol Polski weekly, the Italian Unione, the Nardoni Slovu for Ukrainians, and the Serbian Daily.
It was only at the top that everyone appeared the same. Margaret Bourke-White, the great Time-Life photographer, came to Pittsburgh and took a picture of the manufacturers and financiers who ran the city in the mid-fifties. They posed inside the Duquesne Club on Sixth Avenue, some standing, others settled comfortably in plush leather chairs, with portraits of successive generations of Mellon men looking down from the back wall. Gray and black suits, dark ties, crossed legs, manicured fingers, scrubbed faces, hair combed back—here was the power of Pittsburgh assembled for an executive session of what was known as the Allegheny Conference: United States Steel, Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company, Westinghouse Electric Corporation, Mellon National Bank, Mine Safety Appliances Company, Allegheny Ludlum Steel Corporation, Aluminum Company of America, Consolidation Coal Company, Gulf Oil Corporation, H. J. Heinz Company, Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation, Fisher Scientific Company, Duquesne Light Company, Oliver Tyrone Corporation, Carnegie Institute, Mellon Institute. World-class fortunes were made in Pittsburgh, most from the days when it was called “hell with the lid off.”
A losing baseball team played a minuscule role in the economy of Pittsburgh, but it was one of the few institutions that everyone in the city could get behind. Old Forbes Field, built in 1909 and named for a general in the French and Indian War, was easily accessible by bus and trolley. It was located in the Oakland neighborhood, at the edge of the University of Pittsburgh, two miles east of downtown along Forbes Avenue. Across the street, visible over the left-field fence, were the trees of Schenley Park, where the city had just unveiled a new eighteen-foot-high statue of Honus Wagner, shortstop for the first seventeen years of the century, the first and then the greatest of all great Pittsburgh Pirates. Most of the 34,361 seats inside Forbes were affordable for steelworkers as well as executives. Bleacher seats along the left-field line went for a buck. General admission seating in the lower and upper decks of right field cost $1.40. The most expensive season ticket package, known as Plan E, which included field level box seats for seventy-seven games plus a throw-in of sixty-six general admission tickets, went for $143. It was almost enough to draw crowds, but that was something only a better team could make happen. Attendance in 1954 had been the worst since the war years, and 1955 was showing little improvement, under a half-million for the entire home season.
For those who did attend, the rookie stationed in right field offered full entertainment value, whether he was hitting or in a slump. Opposing teams kept trying to run on him, and consistently ran themselves out of innings as he compiled eighteen outfield assists. Deep in the summer, Monte Irvin, Momen’s childhood hero, was sold by the Giants to their minor league club in Minneapolis, his career nearing an end. At about the same time, Clemente—beset by nagging injuries: the wrenched spine and neck from the car accident, a sore ankle, a banged-up shin—fell into a slump that would find him struggling at the plate for the rest of the season, with his average eventually dipping to .255 (with five home runs and forty-seven runs batted in). The Pirates would slip with him, finding solace only in the fact that they avoided losing a hundred games. But there was something about Clemente that went beyond results. His little underhanded flips and basket catches, the way he ran hard and threw harder and swung hardest, even the élan with which he wore the traditional cut of the white Pirates uniform with black sleeves, all of this was absorbed and appreciated by patrons who sat down the right-field line, and by the knothole gang youngsters and families who gazed down on him from the stands above the high right-field wall.
From the beginning, there was a bond between Clemente and many baseball fans, especially kids. If they were not bound by prejudice, if they could appreciate Clemente for what he was, they were his. As Branch Rickey said, the law of cause and effect and causality both work the same with inexorable exactitudes. Sportswriters would almost always frustrate Clemente; either they couldn’t see his perspective or he didn’t think they could. The system, whatever it was, whatever was holding him back—that ticked him off. Seeing other people get more recognition upset him. The stereotypes of Puerto Ricans made him mad. Being told where he couldn’t sit or eat or sleep infuriated him. All of that angered him so much he once called himself a double nigger, resorting to a word that also irritated him. But the fans were something else. As a young ballplayer, lonely and burning, he found relief with the fans, and after games, with no wife or children to go home to, Momen loved nothing more than to stand surrounded by admiring strangers—momentito, momentito—and sign his autograph in a sweet-flowing cursive scrawl on their scorecards and baseballs for as long as they wished.
5
¡Arriba! ¡Arriba!
BOB PRINCE, THE PLAY-BY-PLAY ANNOUNCER ON PIRATES radio and television broadcasts, had a nickname for everyone. That included Prince himself, who was known in Pittsburgh as “the Gunner.” Where that nickname came from is a matter of dispute; either it was descriptive of his announcing style or—an equally likely story—his friends started calling him the Gunner after an unhappy husband pulled a gun on him for talking to the man’s wife. With his deep, raspy voice, goofy, bespectacled face, skinny legs, ugly plaid sport coats, unbridled home-club shilling, keen sense of humor and intelligence, and bottomless supply of nicknames, metaphors, jinxes, good-luck charms, and idiomatic sayings, Prince was not just the voice of the Pirates, he was in many ways their creator. Baseball teams live in the public imagination, and the Pirates came to life as imagined first by Bob Prince.
At his side in the broadcast booth was Jim Woods, who in Prince’s world was called Possum. For those who grew up listening to Prince, there were phrases that transcended cliché because they were embedded so deeply in the cultural fabric of Pittsburgh during that era. We had ’em all the way. Said only after a tense game when it seemed that the Pirates would lose. You can kiss it good-bye. Prince’s defining call for a home run. How sweet it is! Proclaimed after a particularly satisfying victory or winning streak. The bases were not loaded but F.O.B., full of Bucs. A ball was not barely foul but foul by a gnat’s eyelash. He also had colorful names for the players. Bill Virdon, who roamed center field in wire-rimmed glasses, was Quail. Smoky Burgess, the rotund catcher, was Shake, rattle, and roll. Vernon Law, the clean-living Mormon pitching ace, was Deacon. Third baseman Don Hoak, aggressive and fearless, was Tiger. Bob Skinner, the lanky, sweet-swinging lefty who played left field, was Dog, or Doggie. Little Elroy Face, the forkball artist who had an unhittable season in 1959, going 18–1, was The Baron of the Bullpen. He tried calling Dick Groat, the captain and shortstop, No. 24, Double Dozen, but that name never caught on. Dick Schofield, the utility infielder, was Ducky. And then there was Roberto Clemente.
From the beginning, the Gunner seemed to appreciate Clemente, at first as a circus barker might appreciate the virtuosity of his most dazzling trapeze artist, and later as a friend would admire a friend. There was rarely tension between the two, as there was between Clemente and many members of the press. Prince was among the few people who could call him Bob or Bobby with no hard feelings. He also called him Roberto often enough. And when
Clemente entered the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves near the end of the 1958 season and took basic training at Parris Island with Platoon 346 of the 3rd Recruit Battalion, he came back to find Prince saluting him as Private Clemente, the leatherneck. But whenever Clemente approached the plate, Prince greeted him with a phrase that came to define their relationship. ¡Arriba! ¡Arriba! He had heard Lino Donoso, a Spanish-speaking teammate, say it to Clemente once, early in his career, and liked the sound of it. Translated, it means something like Get there! Go up! Arise! Let’s go! The etymology goes back to the Latin words for reaching shore. ¡Arriba! The double r’s would trill on Prince’s tongue with fluid, exaggerated delight.
In the early winter of 1960, at the dawn of the sixties decade, Prince and the Pirates and all the baseball world were still waiting for Clemente to get there. At age twenty-five, after five full seasons in the major leagues, he remained a player with more promise than results. He had batted over .300 only once, during his sophomore season in 1956. His third year had been almost a complete washout; he was disabled by a painful back and spine and hit a meager .253 with thirty runs batted in. At the close of the 1958 season and into the following preseason his baseball had been interrupted by the Marine Corps training, and for much of that time he was plagued with a sore right arm. He had played for three managers already—Fred Haney, Bobby Bragan, and Danny Murtaugh—and feared that they had misinterpreted his pride and perfectionism as malingering, not realizing how much he was hurting. On the field, he was such a dashing ballplayer—¡Arriba!—yet the cold numbers were unimposing. In no season had he driven in more than sixty runs or hit more than seven home runs. Even his stunning arm in right field had a downside; along with high assist totals and highlight reel plays came too many errors. All these deficiencies had been pointed out by general manger Joe L. Brown when he offered Clemente a contract of $27,500 plus bonuses for the 1960 season.
On February 26, 1960, after signing for a sixth season with the Pirates, Clemente wrote Brown a letter and included it with the agreement he sent back to Pittsburgh. The typewritten letter, composed by Clemente in English, unpolished but improving, was his answer to any and all criticism.
Dear Joe,
Here is the 1960 contract.
I want to tell you that last year I played most of the season sick. Just because when I said when my arm was sore nobody believed it and I played that way until I almost lost my arm. I think that if somebody is sick you should know if he can’t play or not, but with me is different. Is different occasion I can’t see where I stand with Pittsburgh club when I said that something is wrong with me.
Clemente had played fewer games in 1959 (105) than in any previous year. Murtaugh, who took over as manager midway through 1957, Clemente’s worst season, was a hard-charging Irishman who wanted his men to play hurt and wasn’t particularly interested in explanations.
Okay, I was the player who make more errors. I can play like Skinner and make one error or nothing and Virdon and make not so many assists and I’d be way ahead, too. So Please don’t count those errors because playing safe everyone can field .1000.
Clemente made thirteen errors in 104 games in right field and had a fielding percentage of only .948 in 1959. His attempt to contrast his play with left fielder Bob Skinner and center fielder Bill Virdon was not entirely on the mark. Clemente had ten outfield assists in 1959, below his totals of previous years, while Skinner had nine assists and Virdon sixteen. While Skinner was clearly less adventurous in the field than Clemente, Virdon covered as much ground and took nearly as many chances, yet had a fielding percentage of .979. Most of Clemente’s errors were on wild throws, often to third base. Some fans with seats in the third base boxes brought gloves to games with the specific hope of catching an errant heave from Roberto.
With the RBI if I hit third I can get some but not hitting seventh with nobody on base. Well, I think that is all for now. My car leaves the 26th for Miami. I would like the 28th to pick it up in Miami. With best regards.
Roberto Clemente
In 1954, when Momen left Puerto Rico for his first spring training, he was still a naïve teenager, healthy, happy, and hungry for fame. Now, six years later, he returned to the mainland struggling to find a comfortable mental equilibrium. The fire inside him burned hotter than ever. He was still trying to show the world the full measure of his talent and character. At the time he wrote his letter to Brown, he felt in the best physical condition of his career and had just finished a stellar season in the Puerto Rican winter league. He had batted .334, trailing only his pal Vic Power, and drove in forty-two runs, only eight fewer in four dozen games than he had knocked home in all of the previous year for Pittsburgh.
Clemente’s slow rise and seeming readiness to break through at long last in 1960 mirrored the frustratingly slow ascent of the ball club. A decade had passed since Branch Rickey unveiled his five-year plan for pennant contention in Pittsburgh. Rickey had come and gone, no longer even a consultant to the club. He had spent the final years of the fifties obsessed with a new idea—to create a third major league, the Continental League, which would never come to fruition but would help major league expansion. His successor was Joe L. Brown, who had been trained by Rickey and was the baseball-loving son of comedian and actor Joe E. Brown. The younger Brown had been focused on baseball since age eleven when he traveled and trained with the old San Francisco Missions and Hollywood Stars. By twenty he had his first pro front office job with Lubbock in a low Class-D League, and from then on relied more on hard work and talent than celebrity connections to make his way up the ladder, becoming general manager at AAA New Orleans and then Rickey’s successor after only one year in the front office of the big club. As much as he admired Rickey’s brain, Brown realized that the Mahatma had failed in Pittsburgh and that a new course had to be followed. He brought in more veteran talent and paid the players better. “Mr. Rickey was penurious with salaries; if he could save a thousand or two, he did it,” Brown recalled. “I made a decision to pay them even more than they were worth . . . I felt the players should have somebody who believed in them, and one of the best ways to show a man is worthy is to put it in his paycheck.” By 1960, ten years into the rebuilding program, Brown’s reconfiguration of the Rickey plan had finally molded a balanced team that was ready to contend.
The acquisition of Virdon from St. Louis in 1956 had solidified the outfield, but the key trade occurred in January 1959 when Hoak, Burgess, and little left-handed pitcher Harvey Haddix arrived from the Reds in exchange for John Powers, Jim Pendleton, Whammy Douglas, and the slugger Frank Thomas. Burgess did not like to run and was adequate behind the plate but could hit in his sleep. Hoak, the hard-living, hard-playing prototype, who had married a popular singer from western Pennsylvania named Jill Corey (her real name was Norma Jean Speranza), quickly emerged as a team leader and one of Pittsburgh’s most popular players. And Haddix became the ideal third man in the rotation behind the rock-solid twosome of Law and Friend. Surpassing Face’s record-smashing win-loss percentage in 1959, that season’s most amazing feat was Haddix’s twelve-inning perfect game against the Braves at Milwaukee County Stadium. Lew Burdette had also shut out the Pirates for those twelve innings, while giving up thirteen hits, and Haddix ended up losing the game, in the thirteenth, when Hoak made an error on a Felix Mantilla grounder, Hank Aaron walked, and Joe Adcock lofted a home run (that was ruled a double because of a base-running mistake). Haddix had pitched possibly the best game in major league history and had only an L to show for it, as well as a secure place in the annals of bad luck. But the game brought more notice to the Pirates, who had been National League afterthoughts for so long. After dismal seasons in 1956 and 1957, they were now demanding attention, not just individually but as a team. They finished second in 1958 and fourth in 1959 and played the two seasons a cumulative sixteen games over .500. As the 1960 season approached, Pittsburgh seemed ready to fulfill its promise.
• • •
The regular season st
arted on the road, with an odd one-game series in Milwaukee. The Pirates treated it more like an exhibition game, and lost 4–3 when Face gave up a two-run home run in the bottom of the eighth. Clemente had two hits and a run batted in, but it was not enough. No big deal, said the Baron of the Bullpen, joking that he had already matched his loss total for the previous year. On the charter flight back from Milwaukee, Dick Groat told the beat reporters: “This is a ball club that will make its presence felt this summer—and you can mark that down in your notebooks for rehashing ’round about the end of the season.”
Two days later came the home opener, a day game, a 1:30 P.M. start, on a weekday, Thursday, April 14. Day and time seemed to make no difference in workaday Pittsburgh; whenever the game was played it would draw a packed house. In many ways, the first Pirates home game of the sixties decade was a scene from baseball past. Tribes of businessmen in gray and brown suits; crowds hopping off the No. 64, 66, and 68 streetcars on Forbes Avenue; the congenial black preacher greeting patrons near the third-base entrance, sermonizing on his quarter-bags of neatly packed peanuts. Not long after the gates opened at eleven, a sellout crowd of 34,064 started massing into Forbes Field, greeted by a ragtime band, Benny Benack and the Iron City Six, who had anointed themselves the club’s musical mascots. For the first time, Pirates fans would hear a tune that would become the season’s baseball anthem.
A face in the crowd at the home opener, making his way by streetcar from Squirrel Hill, was twelve-year-old Howard Fineman. He was the son of Mort Fineman, a shoe sales representative, who during his college years had peered down on Bucs games in the stadium below from the aerie of a library carrel on an upper floor of Pitt’s Cathedral of Learning; and the grandson of Pirates fan Max Fineman, the patriarch who at age nine ran alongside the baseball parade heading to the wondrous new Forbes Field for the 1909 World Series and was hoisted up by one of the players and carried the rest of the way in an open convertible. Grandfather and father had each seen the Pirates to glory. The youngest Fineman was ready for his turn, and the herald of better things to come; the inane words of Benny Benack’s ditty would stick with him for the rest of his life: Oh, the Bucs are going all the way, all the way, all the way. Oh, the Bucs are going all the way, all the way this year. Beat ’em, Bucs! Beat ’em, Bucs!
Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero Page 11
