Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero

by David Maraniss

  At the same hour, the Steelers of the National Football League were hosting the New York Giants in Pittsburgh. In the second quarter, as the Giants were driving, quarterback George Shaw approached the line of scrimmage to take the snap and was startled by a thunderous roar echoing through the stands of Pitt Stadium. Over thousands of transistor radios, NBC announcers Chuck Thompson and Jack Quin-land had just reported that Vern Law had doubled in the tying run at Yankee Stadium in the middle of a three-run rally for the Pirates. As two more runs scored, the roar at Pitt Stadium grew louder, confusing Shaw so much that a referee eventually had to call time. Pennsylvania Governor David Lawrence, the former Pittsburgh mayor who also scribbled a column for the Post-Gazette that week, was in the Pitt Stadium crowd, listening on his own portable radio, and chronicled the eeriness of hearing a hometown throng “cheer at the same time the Giants were moving against our Steelers.”

  Law kept the Yankees off the board in the fifth and sixth, but by the seventh the pain in his ankle was so intense that he could barely land on it. Skowron, first up for New York, lined an opposite field double that bounced into the right-field stands, and McDougald slapped another single to right. Clemente scooped up the ball and fired a dead-true, no-bounce strike to the plate, a throw that Red Smith described as “low and baleful.” The third-base coach, Frank Crosetti, keenly aware of Clemente’s arm, had held Skowron at third or he would have been moose meat. Richardson then bounced a grounder to Maz, who stepped on second but had a slight hitch getting the ball out of his glove, allowing Richardson to beat the throw and barely avoid a double play. No-touch, they called Maz, for the way he could turn the double play seemingly without ever touching the ball, but in this case his touch was uncertain. Skowron came home, making the score 3–2. John Blanchard, another left-handed Yankee slugger, pinch hit for the pitcher and singled to right, sending Richardson to second. That was enough for Murtaugh, who walked slowly to the mound to get his ace. Before taking the ball, he placed his hand out, palm down, waist high, and in came Face. Photographers captured the transition, a classic tableau of baseball courage. In the background, the little reliever stood on the mound, rubbing the ball and talking to Smoky Burgess, as Law, his work done, his glove dangling from his pitching hand, limped slump-shouldered toward the dugout. His arm felt like he could go eighteen innings, Law recalled—he had indeed pitched eighteen innings in a game several years earlier—but “the leg was beginning to pain me something awful late in the game and I’m glad Face was ready to do the job.”

  One out, men on first and second, here came the forkball, and there it went, soaring off the bat of Bob Cerv, arcing toward the fence in deep right-center, a virtual duplicate of the ball Berra had struck in the opener. And here came Clemente again, racing from right, and Virdon flying in from center, and Virdon leaping and bringing the ball in with both hands, then falling against the wall at the 407 mark but holding on. Richardson tagged and went to third, but died there when Kubek bounced out. And that was the last threat against Face, who shut down the Yankees for two and two-thirds innings, the final out coming on a fly to Clemente in right. Series tied, two games apiece.

  Bob Friend was ready for Game 5 on Monday, but Murtaugh decided to go with Harvey Haddix, his little lefthander, which caused some grumbling among the locals in the press box but not in the clubhouse. Why gamble with Friend rested? a writer deigned to ask. “What the god damn hell are you talking about?” responded Tiger Hoak, never at a loss for words, or expletives. “It’s no god damn gamble. That god damn little shit has a heart as big as a god damn barrel!” It was a sun-splashed day, and the little guys made it look easy. Haddix and Face, again, combined on a five-hitter, striking out seven and never really seeming in danger. When Face was on the mound, the Crow, as Yankees third-base coach Crosetti was called, would usually study his finger work in the glove and yell out, “Here it comes!” when he could detect a forkball. Hoak, at third base, was on to this and came up with a foil, yelling, “Here it comes!” on every pitch. But in this fifth game Hoak could see that Face was unhittable, so he didn’t even bother yelling. Another two-and-two-thirds, this time with no hits.

  The Bucs had ten hits, including a key run-scoring single by Clemente off his countryman, Arroyo, who thought he had made the perfect pitch and threw up his arms in exasperation as the ball screamed toward the outfield grass. Clemente had now hit safely in all five games, and was starting to get a bit of recognition for his play. In the locker room after the game, which the Pirates won 5–2, Ted Meir of the Associated Press decided to step away from the crowd and write something about Roberto. “The unsung star of the World Series?” his report began. “That phrase could well apply to Roberto Clemente, the Pittsburgh right fielder with the rifle arm.” Scores of reporters, Meir observed . . .

  . . . surrounded pitchers Elroy Face and Harvey Haddix after Pittsburgh’s 5–2 victory over New York Monday. Off to one side Clemente sat in front of his locker—alone.

  Yet here was the player whose bullet throwing arm had stopped the Yankees from taking an extra base on hits to his territory, a feat that contributed mightily to Pittsburgh’s three victories.

  He beamed as his throwing arm was compared to the famed one of Hazen (Kiki) Cuyler, who played the same right field for the Bucs in 1925 when they won the World Championship by beating Washington and Hall of Fame pitcher Walter Johnson.

  “Sure,” Roberto grinned happily. “Nobody can run on me.” Clemente put the fear into the Yankee base runners in the first game at Pittsburgh. In the second inning, after Yogi Berra and Bill Skowron had singled with none out, he gathered in pinch hitter Dale Long’s fly and just missed doubling Berra at second with a rifle peg.

  “We discovered then,” Yankee manager Casey Stengel said later, “that they have a good right fielder.”

  Meir wrote that Clemente had made the last putout in the fifth game and had given the ball to the Pirates owner, John Galbreath. “My son’s wife is expecting a baby any day in Columbus, Ohio,” Galbreath said. “If it’s a boy, that ball will be his first present.” (The ball remained with the Galbreaths and forty-five years later Squire Galbreath, the grandson born just after the World Series, kept it in a display case at the family estate, Darby Dan, near Columbus, Ohio.)

  The focus of the world seemed to shift back to Pittsburgh that night. The Yankees, Pirates, and John F. Kennedy all were coming to town. Kennedy arrived first for an appearance at Gateway Center, where thousands jostled for viewing position to see the Democratic presidential candidate, at one point bursting through the police lines. (Most of the Pirates were Republicans—Bob Friend would later serve as a delegate for Kennedy’s opponent, Nixon—but Clemente was a staunch Kennedy man.) At the Penn-Sheraton Hotel downtown, Kennedy issued what was described as his strongest-ever speech in support of civil rights. Then came the Yankees, who drew only a sprinkling of autograph seekers at the airport. “I understand we made a lot of people happy here and they’re glad to see us back,” Casey Stengel said as he stepped from the plane. An hour later, when the Pirates charter eased toward the terminal, the players peered out portholes to a stunning sight—more than ten thousand fans cheering behind the gate along a line that stretched ten deep for a quarter of a mile. Kennedy and Nixon held little interest for this crowd. MURTAUGH FOR PRESIDENT signs were more prominent. Such was the reception for a team that in the first five games of the World Series had been outscored 34–17, outhit 61–42, outhomered 8–1, trailed in total bases 95–59, and in team batting average .325 to .245. All true, and yet only one statistic mattered. The Pirates led the Yankees three games to two.

  Stengel had a decision to make on whom to start in the sixth game, and explained his reasoning in a way only he could articulate. “I asked my players if they wanted Ford to start and they all did except six or eight; they was the other pitchers which wanted to start themselves.” Whitey was tired, his fast ball had little zip and his curve wasn’t breaking much, but most pitchers would give anything for hi
s problems. With his day-old blond stubble and crafty determination, he tossed another complete game shutout, throwing only 114 pitches and inducing the Pirates to hit into seventeen ground outs and three double-play grounders. Clemente singled in his first at-bat to keep his string alive, but spent the rest of the game chasing down singles and doubles. “The fellow who did the most throwing than any other Pirate was Roberto Clemente,” reported the game story in the Times. “So many hits whistled into his territory that he was forever firing the ball into the infield.” It was another rout, with the Yankees banging out seventeen more hits and Bobby Richardson again stealing the show from the sluggers, driving in three more runs for a record total of twelve for the series. The final score was 12–0, yet somehow to the Pirates it seemed like no big deal. “All three of our defeats have been shellackings but that doesn’t hurt our pride one bit,” Hoak observed. “When you’ve had the tar kicked out of you, you don’t lose sleep replaying the game.”

  They had lost three games by a composite score of 38–3, yet they had the Yankees right where they wanted them. Vern Law was ready for the seventh game, with Face backing him up, whereas Stengel had used up Ford and had no one comparable to Law available, facing a choice among Bob Turley, twenty-two-year-old rookie Bill Stafford, and little Bobby Shantz. “I’ve got to talk to Turley and see how he feels,” Stengel said. “He did a lot of warming up in the bullpen [during game six] and I want to make sure he isn’t too tired.”

  • • •

  The thirteenth of October was another dreamy day in western Pennsylvania, with a summery haze and temperatures in the low seventies. It was a weekday in Pittsburgh, a Thursday, yet the city had the feel of an August vacation weekend. Thousands of children stayed home from school to watch the final game of the World Series on television. Hordes of businessmen and government workers also contrived excuses to play hooky. “Our other grandmother died,” read a sign in the county clerk’s office. “We’ve gone to bury her with the Yanks.”

  Most fans were not so confident about which team was to be buried. Of the three games the home crowds had witnessed at Forbes Field, the Yankees had won two, and by the monstrous scores of 16–3 and 12–0. During the sixth-game trouncing, demoralized Pittsburghers started streaming out of the stadium in the third inning and the stands were half-empty by the seventh. Those holding tickets for the decisive seventh game arrived in a subdued mood. Benny Benack and his Iron City Six set up outside the stadium at the corner of Boquet and Sennott and valiantly tried to energize the faithful, but people seemed reluctant even to shout “Beat ’em, Bucs!” There was a sense that the Bucs had gone a long, long way already, but maybe they would finish one game short of all the way. The Yankees certainly felt that way. Two of their stars, Mantle and Berra, were quoted in the Post-Gazette that morning saying that they had the far superior team, and would still have the better team even if by some fluke the Pirates happened to win. Their comments further stirred the Pirates. “We’d read the Post-Gazette . . . you bet we did,” Don Hoak reported from the clubhouse.

  Casey Stengel chose a symbolic way to inform Bob Turley that he was starting the seventh game. He never spoke directly to the pitcher, but after the team bus pulled up to Forbes Field from the downtown Hilton and Turley reached his locker, he found a baseball inside one of his spikes, placed there by third-base coach Crosetti. “It was a brand-new ball and that was the tip-off that I was to be the starter,” Turley explained during batting practice. “Sure, I had an idea I would be it, but you never can tell with Casey.” Perhaps Casey couldn’t tell about himself, either. From Turley’s first pitch, he had both Stafford and Shantz warming up in the bullpen. “It was something less than a rousing vote in Turley’s skills,” observed Shirley Povich of the Washington Post.

  Murtaugh stocked his lineup with left-handed hitters, including Skinner, who had been out for most of the series with a sore thumb, and Rocky Nelson, who took over at first for Dick Stuart, slump-ridden with only three hits, all singles, in twenty at-bats. The move paid quick dividends in the first inning when Skinner walked with two outs and Nelson then homered to right to give the Pirates a 2–0 lead. Redemption of this sort had been a long time coming for Glenn Richard Nelson. Since making a major league roster in 1949, he had played for the Cardinals, Pirates, White Sox, Dodgers, Indians, Dodgers again, Cardinals again, and finally the Pirates a second time, with long spells in the minors all during that stretch. Rocky was a nomadic baseball lifer, so attached to the game that during one of his minor league stints he got married at home plate. Thirty-five and balding now, he was the oldest of the Pirates, called “Old Dad” by his teammates. Clemente had first played with him in 1954 on the International League’s Montreal Royals, where Nelson was the reigning home-run champ and a fan favorite but annoyed manager Max Macon with his lackadaisical fielding. He had what was called minor league power and hit more round-trippers in one season at Montreal than in his full major league career. His trademark was his odd stance—body turned, front foot facing the pitcher, bat held high, posture so formal and rigid that writers called it the John L. Sullivan stance, evoking the old boxer’s pose. After years of frustration it served its purpose this one magical time, delivering a crucial early blow to the cocksure Yankees.

  When Smoky Burgess led off the second with a shot into the right-field corner, his slowpoke gait and Maris’s quick recovery holding him to a single, the edgy Stengel had seen enough. He ambled out to the mound, mumbled something to himself, and “out came Turley like a loose tooth,” as Red Smith reported. In came the rookie Stafford, who walked Hoak on four pitches and gave up a bunt hit to Mazeroski to load the bases. Vern Law, unable to duplicate his hitting magic of Game 4, bounced into a double play, pitcher to home to first, but then leadoff man Virdon singled to right-center to make the score 4–0. The fan anxiety that had enveloped the stadium before the game suddenly lifted. Up four, the Deacon on the mound, it all looked good for Pittsburgh.

  Through four innings, Law had allowed only one hit, a single by Hector Lopez, but it was obvious that he was in pain every time he put weight on his ankle. In the fifth, Moose Skowron led off with a home run that fell just inside the foul pole in the right-field stands. Law retired the next three batters with no trouble, but when he started the sixth by giving up a single to Richardson and walking Kubek, Murtaugh came to get him. “I knew his ankle was hurting him and he might have injured his pitching arm if he’d stayed in any longer,” Murtaugh explained later. “Winning a World Series is important but not at the cost of ruining a pitcher like Vernon Law.” In fact, Law would go on to pitch for another seven seasons in his fine career, but never again win twenty games or approach the level of dominance he reached in this series, when he battled the Yankees on one leg and left every game with his team in the lead.

  There’s no tomorrow is the old seventh-game cliché, and Murtaugh used it on his pitchers before the game, saying they should all be ready in the bullpen. Bob Friend, Harvey Haddix, and all the others were available, but when Law had to come out, even though it was just the sixth inning, Murtaugh had only one thought in mind. He brought in Face one last time. Perhaps it was once too many. Face had gone more than two innings in each of the previous two wins, and his arm was shot. He retired the first batter, Maris, on a foul out, but then Mantle bounded a single up the middle, scoring Richardson, and Berra crushed a three-run home run that landed barely fair in the upper deck in right. In an instant, the Pirates had lost the lead and the Yankees seemed transformed again into the murderous bunch of games two, three, and six.

  Face got out of the inning after that and the next inning and a half were uneventful except for one move that seemed utterly insignificant at the time. Burgess singled in the Pirates half of the seventh and left the game for a pinch runner, who was stranded. When the Yankees came to bat in the eighth, Hal Smith replaced Burgess at catcher. Face, still plugging away with no strength or stuff, retired Maris and Mantle, then ran into trouble again. Singles by Skowron and Jo
hnny Blanchard and a double by Cletus Boyer—the same Boyer who had been humiliated by Stengel in the first game—brought in two more runs, giving the Yankees a 7–4 lead going into the bottom of the eighth. All of this was mere prelude to the dramatic final act.

  Since their early-inning explosion, the Pirates had been tamed by New York’s own little giant, lefty Bobby Shantz, who had encountered fifteen batters and given up only one hit and a walk. Up first for the Pirates now was Gino Cimoli, pinch hitting for Face. As he described it later to the Post-Gazette’s Myron Cope, Cimoli felt “slightly weak at the stomach” as he plucked his bat from the rack and walked to the plate. He worked the count to two and two, staying off Shantz’s pitches that hit the low, outside corner of the strike zone, and then found one more to his liking and dropped a single into right field between Maris running in and Richardson hustling out. Next up was Virdon. On the second pitch, he cracked a two-hop grounder to shortstop Kubek. “Oh, heck, a double play,” Virdon thought to himself as he ran to first. But on its last hop on the infield apron, the hard surface the Yankees had been complaining about all series long, the ball took a bad bounce, higher than Kubek expected, and struck him in the throat. In excruciating pain, he fell to the ground and the ball rolled free. Two on, no out instead of two out, bases empty. In the press box, the Post’s Povich recalled the famous pebble play of the seventh game of the 1924 World Series when Earl McNeely of the Senators grounded to third but the ball struck an infield pebble and bounded over New York third baseman Freddie Lindstrom’s head, allowing the winning run to score. The way the ball bounces: so that’s what the cliché meant.