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

by David Maraniss

  Clemente spoke up in Flood’s defense, pointing out that to that point he was the only player with the courage to take action. “So far,” Clemente said, “no one is doing anything.”

  If they supported Flood, Bunning said, picking up Pappas’s train of thought, what would they tell the next player who wanted their support for a similar case?

  “We must say to the second player that it is not in the interest of the players association to have multiple cases,” Miller said. “We’re supporting a test case.”

  “What other thing can we do?” asked McCarver, making his position clear. “I think there is no choice [but to support Flood].”

  “I agree,” said Miller. “It is the cleanest way to establish a position.”

  Clemente then returned to the emotional heart of Flood’s case, the imbalance of power that allowed owners to control a player’s fate. He told the story of how he was signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers fifteen years earlier because he wanted to play in New York, even though the Milwaukee Braves offered him three times more money. But the Dodgers decided not to protect him on their major league roster and tried to hide him on the bench with the Montreal Royals. Clemente had no say in this, and was helpless when the Pittsburgh Pirates took him away from Brooklyn in the supplemental draft. With the owners having all the power, he told his fellow player reps, his initial decision to choose location over money was rendered meaningless. It cost the Pirates only $5,000 to draft him, Clemente said, and for that meager sum, as he said of general manager Joe L. Brown, “He had me.” Over fifteen years, by Clemente’s conservative estimate, if the Pirates made an extra $300,000 by having him on their team, their profit was $295,000.

  Dick Moss, the counsel, said later that when Clemente spoke everyone listened. Even though he was relating his own story, the point Clemente was making was not the complaint of a wealthy super-star—among the few players in the room then making more than $100,000 a year—but a statement of solidarity for younger players. “Roberto was respected by everyone,” Moss said. “He was very important to us.”

  After Clemente’s story, the players returned to the specifics of taking up Flood’s case. Max Alvis wanted to know how quickly it would get into court. Reggie Jackson asked whether the situation would have been different had St. Louis consulted Flood about a trade. “Basically, yes,” Flood said. Jim Bunning asked how Flood and the players association would split the court costs. Haller said there was no problem with the union’s finances. Joe Torre said that as long as Curt Flood was serious, and he seemed to be, they had to back him.

  The discussion had gone on for more than an hour when Flood was excused from the room. “Are there people here who feel we should not assist?” Miller asked.

  There were none. Brand made the motion to support Flood. McCarver seconded. Clemente, Bunning, and all their younger colleagues voted aye—unanimous, 25–0. In the minutes of the meeting, the Executive Board made a point of emphasizing that it was not seeking radical change. “The Board reiterated the position of the Association that our goal is not to do away with the entire reserve system and substitute nothing in its place—rather, we seek to make appropriate revisions which will enhance the players’ position but which, at the same time, will not endanger the integrity and appeal of the game and will not affect the value of the franchises.” It was the modest first step into a new world, though none of those players could then realize how long the journey would take or how different that new world would be. How could Cardinals player representative Joe Torre, in the prime of his playing days, imagine that three-and-a-half decades later he would be managing a $220 million payroll of mercenary Yankees, many of whom made more in a year than he would earn his entire career?

  • • •

  Clemente had intended to take a break from winter baseball in 1969, just as he had the previous year. But he received a call in early December from his old friend and first professional boss, Pedrin Zorrilla, the original owner of the Santurce Cangrejeros, who had returned to the winter leagues as general manager of San Juan. “Would you consider playing here?” Zorrilla asked, knowing that Clemente’s contract with the Pirates provided a bonus if he did not play winter ball. “Don Pedro, whatever you say, I will play,” Clemente answered. His respect for Zorrilla was so deep that he signed a contract without looking at the salary—different culture, different history, different circumstances from the major leagues and his disdain for the dominance of owners.

  The San Juan Senadores had several top major leaguers, including Indians outfielder José Cardenal, Reds first baseman Lee May, and Orioles pitcher Miguel Cuellar, but even with Clemente in the lineup they struggled as a middling .500 team, far behind the Santurce Cangrejeros, who were managed that season by another of baseball’s great right fielders, Frank Robinson. At lunch one day during a weekend road trip to Mayagüez on Puerto Rico’s west coast, Clemente was talking with Zorrilla about the team’s troubles and how they could improve things. Listening in on the conversation, Zorrilla’s young son Enrique, named for his grandfather, the nationalist poet Enrique Zorrilla, blurted out to Clemente, “Well, that’s what we have you there for!” The father gave his son a stern look, and Enrique felt embarrassed for talking without thinking and saying something so embarrassing.

  At the stadium that night, before the game, Clemente found Enrique and said softly, “Come with me.” Enrique was anxious, still ashamed of what he had said. Clemente led him into the clubhouse and started to change into his uniform as he talked about what it took to be a great baseball player. Enrique was thirteen, standing in front of the great Clemente, who was in his underwear. “You know,” Clemente said, “everybody thinks it’s easy to go out there and hit and run. But you have to be in good physical condition, because you have to play this game well, especially if you love this game. And if you want to do what you love most in life, you have to be prepared for it. And also, you are playing for people who pay to see you. You are giving entertainment to people. So you have to be the best. So that’s why I keep in shape.”

  Clemente then stretched and asked Enrique to feel his calf. It was rock hard. “A baseball player is just legs. Strong legs. You have to run every day.” Clemente had now changed into his San Juan uniform. “Come with me,” he said again, and Enrique followed him into the dugout and sat next to him the entire game.

  “I had felt so bad for my comment,” Enrique Zorrilla said decades later, the memory still fresh in his mind. “And I know that my father must have told him, ‘My son feels so bad, so ashamed.’ And for at least two or three hours Roberto Clemente dedicated his time to give me some peace of mind. And he gave me the best day of my life, because I will never forget that. It was so heartfelt.”

  This was typical Clemente. In his world, kids and sportswriters were at opposite poles. Sportswriters rarely understood him, he thought. When they were nearby his tendency was often to retreat to the trainer’s room or berate them for a few minutes to release his frustrations. But he sensed that young people understood him intuitively, and he wanted to be around them. Over the Christmas holidays that winter, the Clementes invited another thirteen-year-old to their home in Río Piedras. It was Nancy Golding, who lived on Fair Oaks Street in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood. A few months earlier, Clemente had visited his accountant, Henry Kantrowitz, who lived a few houses down from the Goldings. Kantrowitz’s wife, Pearl, adored Roberto and often invited him over for meals. On one of his visits, Nancy had been urged to stop by and play catch with him in the driveway. That experience was unbelievable enough, but then seemingly out of nowhere came a letter from Vera Clemente saying that they would love for her to visit them in Puerto Rico. Nancy’s parents agreed, and she found herself flying alone to San Juan at the Christmas break.

  “I don’t know why they invited me,” Golding said decades later. “I wasn’t a peer. Not a babysitter. I didn’t bring with me anything special to them. I hardly knew them, and they invited me.” These are her memories: They were extre
mely nice to her. She had her own bedroom. One room in the house was just for his trophies. Four silver bats and all those gold gloves: 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968. Always visitors at the house in Río Piedras. Lots of parties. Commotion, laughing, late into the night. Everything gracious and warm. Clemente busy playing baseball. He took her to Hiram Bithorn Stadium and showed her where he played. She knew little Spanish. Vera spoke a little English with a thick accent. But there was no trouble communicating. She had never before seen someone so revered as Clemente. He was stunningly handsome, extremely soft-spoken, charismatic. You got the sense that he was the king. It awakened her to the realization that there were special people in this world and things happened around them. When she was trying to fly home, Pittsburgh was buried in a snowstorm and she was having a hard time arranging a flight back to the States. Clemente came with her to the ticket counter and in a flash she was on a plane. From then on, Nancy Golding’s favorite number was 21. Later in life, she even used it for her garage code.

  • • •

  When Danny Murtaugh made his first comeback as manager of the Pirates, replacing Harry Walker in the middle of the 1967 season, Clemente was so distraught that he closed the door to the trainer’s room and asked Tony Bartirome for advice. “I’m in trouble, Dago, what should I do?” he asked. Bartirome told him to forget the past. In the old days, Clemente had felt hurt that Murtaugh considered him a malingerer. The second managing go-round didn’t last long; Murtaugh finished out the season and then retired again. A few years later, when the Pirates looked for a manager again before the 1970 season, many people thought the choice would be Don Hoak, the fiery third baseman from the 1960 championship team. Hoak had been campaigning for the job, and that would have been fine with Clemente, but instead, Joe L. Brown turned a third time to his old reliable, Murtaugh. On the very day that Murtaugh was chosen, Tiger Hoak died of a heart attack on the streets of Pittsburgh, chasing after a thief who had stolen his brother-in-law’s car. And so—Murtaugh and Clemente, again. Would it be more of the same for the manager and his star player? Both said no. “As a man and a player, we didn’t communicate,” Clemente said of their previous relationship. “But as a person I think I’m different now and as a manager I think he’s different.” Murtaugh, in his own way, agreed. “Clemente’s Clemente,” he told the press. “He’s the best player I’ve ever seen.”

  Clemente was thirty-five now and had some physical and psychological bumps during the season. In early May, he bruised his left heel when he caught it on the back of first base rounding the bag in a game against the Atlanta Braves. That injury kept him sidelined for a week. He also suffered from a sore neck, and was in and out of the lineup, but Murtaugh appreciated it when he played and told him to sit—no hard feelings—when his body was overwhelmed. In early July, when he was not elected to the starting All-Star team, but named as the fourth outfielder (behind the Giants’ Willie Mays and Hank Aaron and Rico Carty of the Braves), he made the mistake of saying publicly that he would rather take the three days off to rest his shoulder. One reporter quoted him as saying, “To hell with the All-Star game.” This was not a misquote—Clemente could sound profane and petulant—but he said it as a means of emphasizing that he cared more about the Pirates and the pennant race than about an exhibition game. He said it the wrong way in the wrong year. This was the first year in decades that the starters were chosen by popular vote, making his remarks seem directed at the fans, the very people he courted assiduously. In the end, Clemente did participate in the All-Star contest in Cincinnati, and helped the National League prevail again. In a legendary game that ended 5–4 in the bottom of the twelfth with Pete Rose, the hell-bent hometown hero, barreling over Indians catcher Ray Fosse for the winning run, Clemente set the stage by driving in the tying run in the bottom of the ninth.

  In Pittsburgh two days later, a new era began with the opening of Three Rivers Stadium. Forbes Field, with its ivy-covered wall in left, and stylish fourteen-foot Longines clock above the scoreboard, and center field so vast they stored the batting cage out there . . . Forbes Field, with its high screen at the flagpole in right, and cement-hard infield, and obstructed seats, and dingy and dank locker rooms, and tunnel rats, and Forbes Avenue trolleys, and hucksters and peanut men on Bouquet—old Forbes was obsolete. Now, near where the Monongahela and Allegheny converge to form the Ohio, here rose Three Rivers, a sleek concrete bowl with a record sixty-one turnstiles and sophisticated scoreboard and synthetic playing field and synthetic, zipperless, buttonless lightweight stretch uniforms to match—all the latest in modern artificiality. Forbes Field served the city well for more than sixty years, noted the Pittsburgh Press. “Here’s to the next 60 at Three Rivers Stadium.” (But they didn’t build them the way they used to—only thirty years and Three Rivers was gone.)

  The Pirates were in a pennant race that July, leading the Mets and Cubs in the NL Eastern Division, but even with a solid team and a new stadium they were not attracting big crowds. On July 23 against the Atlanta Braves, they drew only 14,327 fans. One night later, the stadium was packed, 43,290 in attendance. It was not the game that brought them, but the man being honored. July 24 was Roberto Clemente night at Three Rivers Stadium. In the crowd were several planeloads of Puerto Ricans who had been flown up for the event, many of them wearing pavas, the traditional straw hats of Jibaros, the island’s rural peasants. Ramiro Martínez, the Cuban-born announcer and jack-of-all-trades who had moved to San Juan in the early 1960s, and had first met Clemente when the Montreal Royals played the Havana Sugar Kings in 1954, helped organize the ceremonies, which were bicultural in every respect, half conducted in Spanish, half in English.

  There were tables of plaques and gifts, but at Clemente’s request fans who wanted to show their appreciation were asked to donate money to Children’s Hospital. Juliet Schor, his devoted young fan, wearing a body cast from her back operation, was one of the youths who took the field to receive the charitable check for the hospital. Vera and the three little boys, all wearing suits, were there, along with Doña Luisa and Don Melchor, who had turned to a psychiatrist to help him overcome his fear of flying so that he could visit Pittsburgh for the first time at age eighty-seven. His friends Carol and Carolyn came over from Kutztown, along with Carolyn’s new husband, Nevin Rauch, and sat with Stanley and Mamie Garland, Phil Dorsey, and Henry and Pearl Kantrowitz, his American extended family.

  The Puerto Rican side of the ceremony began more than an hour before game time, as the park was still filling with fans. The snug, new Pirates uniforms did not flatter all who wore them, but Clemente came out looking perfect, even in their new tight-fitting synthetic clothes. His family sat on folding chairs behind him on the side of the field as Ramiro Martínez took the microphone and began the proceedings, which were being broadcast on radio and television back to Puerto Rico. He introduced the entire family. Melchor said he was very proud. Luisa said it was an honor to be in Pittsburgh with all the Puerto Ricans who came to honor Roberto. Vera said she was very touched and grateful. Robertito said his daddy was the best baseball player in the world. One by one, the Latin players, José Antonio Pagán, Orlando Peña, Manny Sanguillen, and Matty Alou, came out and embraced their friend. Then Martínez invited Clemente to speak. Clemente stood silent, hands on hips, his hat off, looking down. “Oh, Ramiro, before we get started, I’d like to send a big hug to my brothers . . .” His voice was soft, surprisingly sweet and lyrical to those who had not heard it before. He tried to continue, but choked up. Martínez, a showman never at a loss for words, filled the silence.

  “That’s okay. We understand the emotion,” Martínez said. “Roberto is reliving the last forty-eight hours. He has been nervous [with] doubts, emotions, as this moment has been approaching. This is the greatest moment of his existence. We’d like for him to say some words for us. Some words that are surrounded by tears. Men cry, but when men cry it is because their hearts are turning in happiness. And this evening, Roberto Clemente’s words f
or you . . .”

  Little Ricky, his youngest son, had escaped from an adult’s grasp and toddled toward first base. Robertito, the oldest son, mistook his father’s tears for sadness and wondered what had gone wrong. Clemente continued, slowly.

  “Ramiro, I would like to dedicate this honor to all the Puerto Rican mothers. I don’t have words to express this thankfulness. I only ask those who are watching this program and are close to their parents, ask for their blessing, and that they have each other. As those friends who are watching this program or listening to it on the radio shake each other’s hands as a sign of friendship that unites all of us Puerto Ricans. I’ve sacrificed these sixteen years, maybe I’ve lost many friendships due to the effort it takes for someone to try to do the maximum in sports and especially the work it takes for us, the Puerto Ricans, especially for the Latinos, to triumph in the big leagues. I have achieved this triumph for us the Latinos. I believe that it is a matter of pride for all of us, the Puerto Ricans as well as for all of those in the Caribbean, because we are all brothers. And I’d like to dedicate this triumph to all Puerto Rican mothers . . . and Ramiro . . . as I’ve said, for all those Puerto Rican athletes, for all of those who have triumphed and those who have not been able to. And that is why I don’t have words to express this thankfulness. And especially to see my parents, who are already old. The emotion that it gives them. And I want to send a hug to my brothers, Osvaldo, Andres, and Matino, Fafa [his niece, Rafaela], and all my friends in Puerto Rico, thank you.”

  For the Pittsburgh-oriented half of the ceremony, there were more gifts, an entire yellow pickup truck full of them, and heroic words from his pal the Gunner, Bob Prince, voice of the Pirates. ¡Arriba! ¡Arriba! And when it was over everyone rose and thunderous applause waved across the new stadium and Clemente tipped his cap in recognition. He thanked the fans again during the ball game by the way he played, cracking two hits and making two of his trademark sliding catches, before Murtaugh took him out for another standing ovation in the eighth inning.