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

by David Maraniss

  Later that night, back at the Commodore, Clemente was sleepless as usual, and called Carolyn’s room and asked if she wanted to talk. She agreed, and they stayed up until three, sharing the stories of their lives. Clemente asked her whether she knew the name of the town where he was born. No, she said. “The name is Carolina,” he said. “And that is what I’m going to call you. You are my Carolina. You’re going to be my sister. You are going to be my family from now on.” Clemente was warm but unthreatening; there were no sexual overtones in his dealings with either the mother or daughter. He was a man of many sides, and he kept that side from them. Women were constantly flattering him, flirting with him, throwing themselves at him, calling his room at every road hotel. His friend Phil Dorsey, if he was around, screened the calls for Clemente. Other friends filled the same role when Dorsey was not there. For all his love of Vera, Roberto was not above temptation. But with Carolyn and Carol his passion was about family. He had lost his only sister, Anairis, before he was old enough to know her, but had always felt her presence. Now he would have two American sisters, Carolina and Carolina. From now on, he would visit them whenever he came to Philadelphia, and they would come see him play in New York and make visits to Pittsburgh. And, he said again, they must come visit him in Puerto Rico.

  • • •

  When he first saw Forbes Field in 1955, Clemente told himself to forget about hitting home runs. The outfield was among the most spacious in baseball: 365 feet to the left-field fence, 442 to dead center, 436 to right-center, and right field was topped by an eighteen-foot-high wire screen. “I was strong, but nobody was that strong,” Clemente said. The implication was that he could hit home runs if he wanted to, but smartly adapted his game to the surroundings. There is undoubtedly some truth to that, but it is also true that the arc of his swing simply did not produce home runs in the way that those of Henry Aaron and Frank Robinson did, to name the two other great all-around right fielders of his era. The issue was not raw power—at times, Clemente could clout the ball monstrous distances, as far as Mickey Mantle, Frank Howard, Willie Stargell, or any of the prodigious sluggers, a fact that he constantly reiterated to sportswriters and teammates. But when he stepped to the plate, he thought about getting a base hit and keeping his average above .300 and helping his team win, but never visualized hitting one over the fence. Never, that is, except in 1966, after he and Harry Walker patched up their differences. It was then that Walker told Clemente that the Pirates needed more power from him if they were to contend for a pennant, and that providing more power was part of what he had to do as the team leader, and that if he hit more home runs and the team won he might finally get the prize that had eluded him and bothered him for so many years, the MVP award.

  “So the story goes, Harry said, ‘I need more power from you,’ and so Clemente goes out and hits twenty-nine home runs and drives in 119 runs,” said the pitcher Steve Blass. “Now that’s scary.” Those were Clemente’s power numbers for 1966, the best of his career, and though he said he was afraid his batting average would fall dramatically if he went for home runs, the drop was minor, down to .317. The tradeoff seemed worth it. And there was no padding in Clemente’s statistics. Day after day, his hits came when they were needed, not at the end of a lopsided game. His play in right field was as thrilling as ever. He led the league in outfield assists, with seventeen, and it was difficult to calculate all the ways that his arm made a difference. Gaylord Perry, the crafty spitballer who won twenty-one games for San Francisco that year, would never forget a game when the score was tied in the late innings and Willie Mays was on second and there was a hit to right—“and Mays rounds third and screeches to a halt” because Clemente was in right. “When you have the world’s best base runner put on the brakes on a hit to right, you know it’s because the world’s best arm is in right,” said Perry later, shaking his head. “And it was a close game. We needed that run.”

  As the year went on, his teammates noticed that Clemente’s power, perfectly rounding out his game, was accompanied by a more assertive attitude. He seemed less preoccupied with himself and more obsessed with winning. He had always played hard, every play of every game he was in, but now he talked about it more in the clubhouse, urging his fellow Pirates to put out more every day, saying they owed it to the city and its fans. Only four players remained from the World Series champions, Law and Face on the mound and Clemente and Mazeroski on the field, and this was now becoming Clemente’s team. The twenty-five-man squad included nine blacks and Latins, often five in the starting lineup, with Bob Veale emerging as their best pitcher. And it was an increasingly loose bunch. “We haven’t got a sane guy on this ball club,” declared catcher Jim Pagliaroni, who could be seen wearing an old leather pilot’s helmet and goggles. Clemente’s countryman, José Pagán of Barceloneta, Puerto Rico, was now playing third base and he and his wife, Delia, lived in the other apartment on the second floor of Mrs. Harris’s house, making it feel more like home for Roberto and Vera when she was in town. After a game, the smell of bacalaitos filled the house, as Vera fried his favorite cod-cake fritters. All of this made Clemente more comfortable, and the more at ease he was the more he asserted his will on his teammates.

  It was not a complete transformation; there were still times when he appeared agitated and oversensitive. In the heat of the pennant race, when the Pirates visited Los Angeles in mid-September to play the streaking Dodgers, he grew angry after a crucial loss in which he had gone hitless in four at-bats against Sandy Koufax. He had read and heard that Koufax was complaining about an arthritic elbow yet pitching one superb game after another. “Sore arm, my foot! He couldn’t pitch like that if it hurt very bad,” Clemente told the press afterward, straight-faced, failing to see the irony of that particular statement coming from a player known for playing his best when he had some physical complaint.

  But was Clemente really angry about Koufax or once again expressing the hurt he felt over being misunderstood? As he continued talking in the clubhouse, the latter seemed to be the case. “When my back hurts they call me goldbrick,” he said. “But when Koufax says his elbow hurts, they call him a hero.” It was as though he were beseeching the world: When will people start calling Roberto Clemente a hero?

  The Pirates finished twenty-two games over .500, at 92–70, good but not quite good enough, three games behind the pennant-winning Dodgers. But for so many Pirates, led by Clemente, 1966 was a most productive year. The middle infield combination of young Gene Alley at shortstop and veteran Mazeroski was perhaps the best in the league in the field and at the plate. Stargell, the big lefty slugger, had the highest power numbers of his young career, hitting thirty-three home runs and driving in 102. Matty Alou, his hitting style revamped, largely by Clemente in daily tutoring sessions, transformed himself from a weak lefty pull hitter into a dangerous all-fields slap hitter and led the league with a .342 average. The team as a whole had the highest cumulative batting average in the league at .279. And all of this was accomplished during a season when National League pitching was dominant, led by the big three of Koufax, Marichal, and Gibson. Clemente was wrong about Koufax—the pain in his arm was not a ruse but enough to make him retire; 1966 would be the final brilliant season of his too-brief career. Juan Marichal of the Giants was still in the middle of his nearly decade-long string of great seasons. And Bob Gibson of the Cardinals had become virtually unhittable. Koufax, Marichal, Gibson—their numbers that year were golden. Gibson had twenty-one wins, twenty complete games, 225 strikeouts, and an earned-run average of 2.44. Not as good as Marichal, who won twenty-five games, had twenty-five complete games, 222 strikeouts, and an earned-run average of 2.23. Which was not as good as Koufax, who finished the season with twenty-seven wins, twenty-seven complete games, 317 strikeouts, and an earned-run average of 1.73.

  Manager Harry Walker attended the World Series that year as a fan, watching the Dodgers lose to the young Baltimore Orioles. All he wanted to do was talk about his team, and especially abo
ut his team leader. In Walker’s own peculiar way, knocking someone down and then building him up higher, he promoted Clemente as the most valuable player in the league. “Clemente has his critics,” he said. “He’s such a hypochondriac that some people also think he’s a malingerer. But no man ever gave more of himself or worked more unselfishly for the good of the team than Roberto. I know the votes are already in for most valuable player. I’m convinced that Clemente deserves it. Whether he gets it or not, he’s most valuable in my book.”

  When the MVP votes were counted, it turned out to be a two-man contest between Koufax and Clemente. In his darkest visions, Clemente thought there was no way he could win this contest—the darling of L.A. and New York versus the forgotten man of Pittsburgh and Carolina—the American hero, pitching through pain, versus the Puerto Rican hypochondriac and goldbricker. But now, six years after he had spiraled into bitterness over finishing eighth in the 1960 balloting, a lingering hurt that was so deep he refused thereafter to wear his 1960 World Series ring, here was redemption. Koufax received 208 votes, Clemente 218. At last, he was recognized by the North American sportswriters as the Most Valuable Player in the National League.

  • • •

  You have to visit me in Puerto Rico after the season, Clemente had told his American sisters, Carolyn and Carol, or Carolina the mother and Carolina the daughter. The mother could not get free from her job with the regional office of HUD, the federal housing agency where she worked, and was spending time with her new boyfriend, Nevin Rauch, who would soon become her husband. They decided that the daughter should go. Carol, in her senior year of high school, arrived in San Juan in mid-December 1966, during the long and joyous Christmas season, and stayed with the Clementes in the guest room at their house on the hill. She was treated like part of the family. There were two little sons now, Robertito and Luisito. The house was warm, always busy, with visitors popping in day and night. Roberto’s status on the island was higher than ever now that the mainland had recognized him as the very best, and he was constantly in demand. “He explained to me that he would be very busy, he was into so many things in the community and business,” Carol recalled. She spent most of her days with Vera, whose knowledge of English was about as limited as Carol’s rudimentary Spanish. She carried a little dictionary at her side. They spent hours in the kitchen during the day. Vera was a superb cook, but had to limit some of her recipes for her husband, who was on a protein kick. That winter he was into liver and eggs. At night, Carol and Vera would sit on a big bed in the bedroom with the two little boys and play cards and sing songs in English and Spanish.

  Carol felt as though she had been reincarnated with a Spanish soul. Clemente was always talking about how much his back hurt. He would try to teach her new words in Spanish, and learn English from her, and she would want to laugh at his English because his pronunciation was awful. “But I had to be real careful because he was real sensitive to criticism. I would say, ‘Well, you’re getting there.’” He was always getting somewhere, she thought. When he had free time, Roberto piled the family and Carol into his Cadillac and drove around the island, treating it like a Jeep. They went to the beach near the bay of crabs, where he loved to collect driftwood. Then they drove to la finca—the farm he owned outside the village of El Verde near the exotic rainforest, El Yunque. Clemente seemed like a different person at la finca, totally at ease among his pigs, horses, and goats, and walking through his fields of plantain and coffee. He proudly showed Carol how he had built the farmhouse himself and had decorated the interior with bamboo. Wherever they went, Roberto had a presence about him that amazed her, but she could see it most strongly out here in the countryside hills, the heart of his homeland. “I came back being in awe of what a humble man he was. What a regular man he was. But just so connected to the people. If children recognized him, or the most humble-looking person somewhere on a mountain hill where we were driving approached him, wherever we were, it ended in a long conversation. I never remember a moment when Roberto didn’t take the time to talk to somebody who came up to him. There never was a time when he didn’t stop. I never remember him walking away or cutting someone off. And especially if it was someone young.” Clemente among the people was an image that burned into her mind. In that setting, far from the major league stadiums, she said, “you could see him like a prophet.”

  10

  A Circular Stage

  THE PIRATES TRAINER, TONY BARTIROME, THOUGHT Roberto Clemente was a lot like his wife. Ask him how he felt and he would tell you. Well, I’ve got this thing with my neck. Clemente would not dismiss the question with an evasive fine. He took his body seriously, and regarded questions about it with earnestness. A pregame stop at the training table was a daily appointment, another of his rituals, like not sleeping at night and complaining about sportswriters. It was his way to relax, or to avoid people he didn’t want to see, but there was always fine-tuning to be done. This mostly involved rubbing. Bartirome would massage his neck for five or six minutes, kneading out the kinks. X rays showed that some stiffness in his neck was arthritis, brought on by the injuries from the auto accident in Caguas when he was driving home to see his dying brother in 1954. After the neck work, Clemente would flip onto his stomach and have his right Achilles tendon pulled for a few minutes, then attention turned to his lower back. Often he would relax to the point of almost falling asleep on the table, then emerge from semiconsciousness calling out, “Where’s Bob? Bob?”

  That would be Bob Veale, the colossal six-foot-six left-handed pitcher. Veale made the mistake of rubbing Clemente’s shoulder one afternoon, a friendly act that was followed by a good day at the plate. “From then on I had a lifetime job,” Veale remembered. “Every game I had to touch him. I had to rub his shoulder for good-luck purposes. He felt he could only have a great day if I rubbed him, and he had quite a few of those. If he said, ‘Rub hard,’ I would rub hard.” Like many ball players, Clemente had his superstitions. Some actions or totems brought good luck, some bad. He might have been wrong in the end, but during the magical 1960 season he had insisted that the team’s Dixieland band was a jinx, especially when it followed the Pirates on the road, and he didn’t want it anywhere near him. He had lucky shirts that he would wear until the Pirates lost. And now the big hands of Bob Veale were a force for the good.

  The training room was an inner sanctum for the players, but mostly it was Clemente’s lair. As much as he loved baseball, he was obsessed with the healing arts. He thought of himself as an adjunct trainer, and knew more about massage than Bartirome, a former first baseman who learned how to be a proficient trainer so that he could stay around a major league club. Whenever a teammate, coach, or friend complained of a bad back or sore joint, Clemente offered his services. In many ways, he was ahead of his time, a New Age experimentalist searching for noninvasive methods to ease pain. With his long, sensitive hands, he was especially adept at deep massages. “It was something . . . supernatural,” said his wife, Vera. “He would put pressure and say you have this or that and find the problems. He could see with his fingertips.” When Harding Peterson, a former catcher who became director of scouting, complained of a sore lower back one night at training camp, Clemente, though nattily dressed for dinner, retrieved oils from his room, took off his suit coat, rolled up his sleeves, and went to work, rubbing Peterson down for twenty minutes. He often carried liniments in his duffel bag for just such emergencies.

  Another tool of his trade seemed straight out of science fiction, an ultrashock device that reportedly went haywire and burned a red welt into coach Clyde King’s rear end. “It looked like some kind of cross between a cattle prod and flyswatter with goddamn sparks flying all over the place,” recalled pitcher Steve Blass. But Clemente could also use something as simple as his bat, which he employed to beneficial effect on Les Banos, the team photographer. Banos once complained of a stiff lower back before a game in Montreal after he had endured two cross-country flights within twenty-four hours, and Clemente
eased the pain by adeptly manipulating his Frenchy Uhalt model Louisville Slugger into the little Hungarian photographer’s pressure points, lending new meaning to the description of him as a magician with a bat in his hands.

  Over the years, as Clemente sought help for chronic pain in his back and spine, he became a devotee of chiropractics. His interest in the practice went back to 1957, his third season in the majors, when his pain was so bad that he considered retiring. During a road trip to St. Louis, he visited the Logan College of Chiropractics, where the founder Vinton Logan took X rays showing the arthritic condition in Clemente’s neck and relieved the pain. From then on, Clemente stopped in for treatment whenever the Pirates were in St. Louis, and began looking for chiropractors in San Juan and Pittsburgh as well. He learned their techniques so thoroughly that he started to think of himself as a member of their profession. Vera recalled that he had shelves of books on chiropractics. “He was a chiropractor without a license,” she said. “He worked on many patients who would have gone to surgeons.” As he began to consider his future after baseball, he often talked of two parallel dreams: One was to run a free sports city for the children of Puerto Rico; the other was to set up a lucrative chiropractic vacation spa on the ocean outside San Juan.