• • •
Cope did not get out of Puerto Rico without one touch of poetic justice. Lounging at his hotel pool one hot afternoon, he took a misstep on the deck and cut his toes so badly that a rich matron, tanning herself nearby, snapped at him, “Do something about that foot, it’s attracting flies!” The chronicler of the chronic complainer took home a souvenir pain of his own, and it felt authentic enough to him.
A few days after Cope left, Clemente received a letter from Joe L. Brown on Pittsburgh Athletic Company, Inc., stationery, copies of which were also sent to the other Latin players on the Pirates—Matty Alou, Al McBean, Manny Mota, José Pagán, Andre Rodgers, and Manny Sanguillen. Five seasons after the glory of the World Series, Brown was desperately trying to turn things around, and his effort now included this no-more-Mr.-Nice-guy edict to all his Caribbean players. “In the recent past, it was the practice of a number of our players from the Caribbean area who train with the Pittsburgh club to report to Fort Myers several days after the date set for their arrival,” Brown wrote. “In the majority of cases, the lateness of their arrival was due either to carelessness or complete indifference. This will not be permitted in 1966 or in the future. If you are not in uniform in Fort Myers prepared to work out at the time and date on which you were requested to report, you will be fined One Hundred Dollars (100.00) for each day that you are late, and this money will not be given back to you at a later date.” For pitchers and catchers, Brown repeated, the arrival date was February 23, for infielders and outfielders, February 27. “If you have not already done so, it is recommended that you make arrangements immediately for your plane reservations, visa or passport (if required) and anything else that will require advance preparations . . . 1966 can be a wonderful year for everyone with the Pirates and it is important that all of our players report on time. Your attention to this letter is IMPERATIVE, both for you and the club.”
It was a perennial lament, the late arrival of Latin players. What interested Clemente and the others most about Brown’s latest missive was the line that said any fines will not be given back to you at a later date. Maybe, this time, he was serious. But the letter did not please the proud Clemente. He saw it as a reiteration of the stereotypes he was trying to overcome, that Latins were lazy and irresponsible. And as the letter related to his own situation, it was true that he was a few weeks late reporting to spring training the year before, but was Brown insinuating that his malaria was a matter of complete indifference?
Clemente reported on time, leaving Vera in Río Piedras, where she not only took care of the infant Robertito but also made all the other arrangements for Pittsburgh. A week after her husband left, she wrote a note to Phil Dorsey, their friend and aide in the States. ‘I’m fine but the baby has a cold now,” she began. After a few more pleasantries, she got down to business.
Phil, I sent the car this week by the Transamerican Steamship Corp. and will arrive in Newark, New Jersey on Tuesday or Wednesday [March 16]. I paid the expenses here. Enclosed are the key, the paper you have to present there and the car license. You can call the following person to ask if the car arrived. Mr. Ernie Caballero. Shed 152. Berth 20. Telephone BD 9-1700 (office). Newark, New Jersey. I sent some clothes and other things in the car, including one package of Mrs. Mota [wife of Clemente’s teammate]. I hope you don’t have trouble receiving the car. My best regards to Carole and kids and say them that I will see them on April. Please, excuse my bad English.
Sincerely, Vera.
Three years earlier, Clemente had begun shipping his car to the States for use during the season. Dorsey would pick it up at the port of Newark and drive it back to Pittsburgh. The bill of lading showed that it cost Clemente $203.76 to send his ton-and-a-half white Cadillac by freighter. It was part of the seasonal routine now, the Caddy following Momen on his migrations between island and mainland. In many ways, this new season marked a turning point for Clemente, a time when he was approaching the fullness of his life and career, but his days still were not without some rough spots.
The sixth of May rarely found Clemente at his best. In 1965, that was the day of reaction to his “trade me!” outburst. In 1966 his explosion was not verbal but physical. In the ledger of his life, here was a day for the case against sainthood. Not everything about him could be resolved with the explanation that he was misunderstood. The truth was he had a temper and occasionally did stupid things. This was one such time. The Pirates were on the road, playing the Phillies in Philadelphia. They had begun the season solidly, with thirteen wins in the first nineteen games, good enough for first place. But on this Friday night, after tying the game in the late innings and taking a four-run lead in the eleventh, the Pirates fell apart, their loose play allowing the Phils to come back with five in the bottom of the frame to win, eight to seven. A key error in the sloppy rally came when Clemente fired a strike toward home after a bloop single to right and the ball caromed off the leg of cut-off man Donn Clendenon, the first baseman. After the loss, the visitors’ locker room at Connie Mack Stadium was a trough of grumpy, foul-mouthed men.
A half hour later, as the Pirates were boarding the team bus at Lehigh Avenue near Twenty-first Street to return to the Warwick Hotel, Clemente was surrounded by several young fans. Among them was Bernie Heller, a nineteen-year-old from the village of Mary D, who was studying sheet metal work at Theodore Stevens Trade School in Lancaster. As Heller later described the scene, he and two friends had been walking to their car when “we seen where the players were coming out, and they happened to be giving autographs.” Heller got in line and waited, holding a ball he wanted signed. Clemente was doing most of the signing, a task that he did day after day, often joyously, usually without complaint. Now there was some movement in the crowd, people pushing for position, and Clemente, with one foot on the pavement and another on the bottom step of the bus, ready to board, suddenly wheeled around and clocked young Heller with a swift fist. “All I seen is his right hand. He got me right in the mouth. All I seen is a big white star.” Heller recalled forty years later. In his memory, Heller thinks he was knocked unconscious. According to police reports at the time, he told authorities that the blow buckled his knees and he fell to the cement, but got up and walked away, only then realizing that three of his teeth had been jarred loose. His friends escorted him to the stadium first-aid room, and from there he was taken to Women’s Medical College Hospital, where he was kept overnight for observation and X rays.
By the accounts of other witnesses, Clemente seemed unperturbed by the incident, almost as though he didn’t realize what had happened. After Heller fell to the ground, Clemente continued signing a ball for a young girl, then boarded the bus, and signed more scorecards and papers that were handed to him through an open window. The next morning, accompanied by Harry Walker and the traveling secretary, Bob Rice, he went down to police headquarters to be interviewed by Detective James Coyle. According to Coyle, Clemente told him that he didn’t know who he hit or where he hit him, but that there was a scuffle near the bus and that he “might have hit somebody as he was getting on.” Later, Clemente admitted directly that he threw the punch. He said that someone grabbed him and spun him around as he was boarding the bus. He then saw Heller with his hands up. “I took a punch at him,” Clemente said. “Not a real punch, just more to stay away from him.” What was Clemente’s concept of a real punch? By any definition his was strong enough. According to Detective Coyle, Heller’s teeth “were so loose they practically were falling out of his mouth.” John Heller, Bernie’s older brother, visited Bernie in the hospital in the middle of the night and said he looked “like a dog who had just had a fight with a skunk.”
There was talk of a lawsuit, and the Hellers hired a lawyer, but before matters went further Clemente apologized. “I’m very sorry it happened,” he said. “I hear [Heller’s] a nice fellow.” Harry Walker paid a visit to the hospital and brought along one of Clemente’s gloves and a bat, a 36-inch Frenchy Uhalt model Louisville Slugger that
flared without a knob at the end and had No. 21 etched into the bottom. An out-of-court settlement of a few thousand dollars paid for Bernie Heller’s hospital bill; there were also free tickets for the family whenever the Pirates were in Philadelphia. Forty years later, Heller, who worked as the postmaster in St. Clair, Pennsylvania, still had the bat and glove, but not the ball that he brought to Connie Mack Stadium that long ago afternoon. “I took the ball with me from home to get autographs, but . . . I think the ball and everything went flying. I don’t have the ball anymore. Like I said, when he hit me the only thing I seen, it looked like a big white meteor . . . Nobody could understand why he did it.”
Much later, when reports of the incident filtered back to Puerto Rico, an embarrassed Clemente would concoct a version of the story that had centered on someone calling him names in the right-field bleachers during the game and then continuing the harassment afterward. But that story had nothing to do with the reality of his encounter with Bernie Heller. The punch seemed more instinctive, and part of a pattern. Clemente had reacted similarly in 1964 outside Forbes Field, pushing two fans who were jostling too close to him, though no one had his teeth knocked loose that time. And in May 1963 he had been suspended for five days and fined $250 for accosting umpire Bill Jackowski during a home game against the Phillies. After being called out at first on a double-play grounder, he flew into a five-minute rage, twice bumping against Jackowski. In the clubhouse later, he defended his behavior by saying that he and the Pirates never got any breaks. “Other teams argue and get close decisions. Dodgers get every close play. Why? We don’t argue and we don’t get them.” Bad calls, he added, were costing him fifteen to twenty points a year on his batting average. “I seldom argue unless I feel the umpire is wrong,” he said. “I have a good record in the league office, but this is the worst year for umpiring I have ever seen.” Warren Giles, the National League president, sent a telegram to Clemente announcing his suspension and calling his actions “the most serious reported to our office in several years.”
The supposed ineptitude of major league umpires could not explain a winter league incident back home in Puerto Rico, when Clemente had been suspended for a playing field dispute during which he kicked an umpire and broke a rib. His pal Vic Power kept a photograph of that incident to remind himself and the world that not even the revered Roberto Clemente was beyond human lapses of self-control. “He fought, yeah, he got mad like every human being,” Power recalled in his blunt yet good-natured fashion. “The Puerto Rican people, I think 99 percent have bad tempers. They get bad temper, ohhh, baby.” It was not for nothing that Carolina became known as the town of those who cut off arms. Within the world of baseball, there was that glint of unpredictability to Clemente. If one examines videotapes of the most famous moment in Pirate history, Maz bounding toward the plate after clouting the homer that beat the mighty Yanks in the bottom of the ninth of the seventh game of the 1960 World Series, there is Clemente greeting him near the plate, and some fans rush close, and No. 21 jerks around—was he threatened by the approaching shadows?—and it seems as though he is about to deck a fan who is getting too close. He doesn’t, the threat passes in a split-second, and the celebration resumes all the way to the dugout, but in that moment there is a surprising intimation of unpremeditated violence.
Clemente’s edginess seemed confined to his profession. He was gentle at home, no sudden explosions. In later years, when he had three sons, he never spanked them, but could quiet them with a solemn look. In his life away from the game, he did not appear driven to affirm his manhood through the social rituals of machismo.
Random physics, an unpremeditated moment, and for better or worse a life changes forever. Bernie Heller never forgot Clemente’s blow; Carol Brezovec would only see his kindness. The trajectory of their stories arced in opposite directions, yet both started in precisely the same spot—on the concourse outside old Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia.
Six weeks after the Heller incident, the Pirates were back in Philadelphia for another series, and among the fans attending the Sunday afternoon game were Carol and her dad, John Brezovec. They both loved baseball, and the tickets to the game were a Father’s Day present from Carol, who was then seventeen. Her parents were divorced. John, a barber and musician, lived in Bethlehem; Carol and her younger sister, Sharon, lived with their mother, Carolyn, in Allentown. They all were regulars at the stadium, known to ushers and many Phillies players. John was around so much he became virtually part of the team, able to come and go in the home clubhouse. Carol would draw sketches of her favorite players and gather with autograph hounds outside the players gate after games, but she was so shy that she often came home without any signatures. She was out there trying for autographs after the Sunday game on June 26, which the Pirates won, 2–0, when she noticed a crowd gathering around a Pittsburgh player. For some reason, the Brezovecs had never seen the Pirates before, so Carol was unfamiliar with the faces, if not the names. She stayed in the background until the circle around the player dissolved, then approached and asked quietly, “May I please have your autograph?” He signed his name, Roberto Clemente. Carol had just started studying Spanish in high school. She thanked him by saying, “Muchas gracias.”
Clemente began talking to her in Spanish. Feeling embarrassed, she had to confess that she didn’t have a clue what he said. In English, Clemente asked her where she was from and why she was studying Spanish. His teammate Andre Rodgers, a shortstop from the Bahamas who had come over to the Pirates from the Cubs the previous year, was standing nearby, listening. There was something about Clemente’s warmth and directness that helped Carol overcome her shyness, and they talked easily about language, home, and family. Why are you here alone? Clemente asked. Carol said she was with her father, who was over in the Phillies clubhouse. They talked on, losing track of time, until a security guard came by and announced that the Pirates’ bus to the airport had departed, leaving Clemente and Rodgers behind. Carol was red-faced again. “Oh, my God. I’m so sorry!” she said. “Wait here and I’ll go get my dad and we’ll drive you to the airport.” She ran to the Phillies clubhouse, found her father, and explained that they had to leave immediately for the airport because of an emergency.
As the odd quartet—father and daughter Phillies fans in front, visiting team right fielder and shortstop in back—pulled out of stadium traffic, John Brezovec turned to Carol and asked, in his blunt way, “Can you tell me what the fuck is going on? Who are these people?” Carol had not bothered to tell him who the passengers were. “Let me introduce you,” she said. “This is Roberto Clemente and Andre Rodgers.” He was stunned. How did this happen? She said she would explain it all on the way. Clemente appeared unfazed by his predicament and perfectly content in the backseat. From his traveling bag, he pulled out a battery-powered portable record player and a selection of albums, and the sweet lyricism of Roberto Ledesma’s island ballads started filling the car. John Brezovec, who wrote his own polkas and waltzes, loved the music, and he and Clemente struck up a conversation about their favorite songs as the music played in the background. They discovered that they had other things in common, and the foursome talked animatedly all the way to the airport. Instead of dropping Clemente and Rodgers off at the departure curb, Brezovec parked the car and he and his daughter escorted the ball players to the Pirates’ airline gate. The plane, as it turned out, had not left yet.
Clemente was still in no hurry. He seemed less interested in the flight than in his newfound friends. “This is incredible,” he told Carol. “It feels like I’ve known you my whole life.” He said he wanted them to meet his wife, Vera, and his family back in Puerto Rico. The Pirates wouldn’t return to Philadelphia until late September, but he hoped to see them again before then. Would they like to come to New York the following week and see the Pirates play at Shea Stadium? He asked for a telephone number and said that he would call and make arrangements. Then, before boarding the plane, he autographed his Roberto Ledesma album and han
ded it to Carol.
All the way home, the Brezovecs kept saying to each other, no one will believe this. A half hour after Carol got back to her house in Allentown, the phone rang. Her mother answered. “Is this Carolina?” the voice on the other end asked, in a soft Spanish accent.
Close enough. Yes.
“This is Roberto Clemente. I met your daughter tonight and wanted to be sure she is home. Did she get home safely?” Carolyn said yes and asked whether he wanted to talk to her. No, he said, just wanted to make sure. Then he asked, “Do you like baseball?”
Love baseball, she said, adding that she usually went to the games with Carol, but her father took her tonight. Good, Clemente said. If they would come to New York next week, he would get tickets for them to see him play at Shea Stadium. That would be fun, Carolyn said. But where should they stay? Don’t worry about any of that, Clemente said. Just come. His friend Phil Dorsey would take care of everything. The tickets would be waiting. And he had family in New York who would look after them, too. A day later, Dorsey called and said a room had been reserved for them at the Hotel Commodore at Forty-second and Lexington, where the Pirates stayed, and there would be tickets for the games on Saturday July 2 and Sunday July 3 waiting for them at the players’ window at the stadium.
As Carol and Carolyn took their seats behind the visitors’ dugout at Shea for the Saturday game, they looked out to right field. “Carol, there’s Roberto,” Carolyn said to her daughter. “I can’t believe this . . . he’s waving at us.” Before the game, Clemente sent a note up with a batboy asking them to wait for him afterward. The Pirates were hot, having won six straight, with Clemente, Stargell, Clendenon, Manny Mota, and Matty Alou all hitting over .300. In the series opener on Friday night, a young lefthander named Woody Fryman had given up a leadoff hit to Mets second baseman Ron Hunt in the first inning and then retired the next twenty-seven Mets in order, a one-hitter and near perfect game. On Saturday, Clemente’s new friends from Allentown watched him stroke a home run, his twelfth of the year, but it was not his best game. Twice in the late innings he made an out with the bases loaded, and the Pirates lost 4–3. When the game ended, Clemente met his guests outside the visitors’ clubhouse and announced that he was taking them out to eat at an elegant Spanish restaurant in midtown Manhattan. Clemente’s friends Carlos and Carmen Llanos—he called them cousins, though they were not related—were there, along with José Pagán and Andre Rodgers and a few other Latin players. Carol ate paella for the first time, and was starstruck, and quickly agreed to come along after dinner when Clemente said they were heading up to a party at the Llanoses apartment. Her mother politely declined, saying she was tired. A half hour later, Clemente sent back an emissary to assure her that Carol was in safe company.
Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero Page 24
