Clemente: The Passion And Grace Of Baseball's Last Hero Part 4

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 ap.r.o.n, 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 cliche meant.

The game stopped and attention turned to the fallen Kubek. Stengel made the long walk from the dugout to check on his young shortstop, who had celebrated his twenty-fourth birthday earlier in the series. Kubek was spitting blood and couldn't really talk, but signaled to Stengel that he wanted to stay in the game. It was a gutsy request, but Stengel ignored him and took him out, and soon he was being transported to Pittsburgh's Eye and Ear Hospital, where Dr. H. K. Sherman determined that he had internal bleeding and a severely bruised vocal chord and needed to stay overnight for observation. Joe DeMaestri was sent in to play short. Now it was Shantz facing d.i.c.k Groat, who had struggled during the series with only five hits in twenty-seven at-bats. Shantz decided to pitch him inside, not wanting the skilled batsman to poke the ball to right. He came inside three straight times. By the third pitch, Groat had adjusted, and pulled the ball down the third-base line, past Boyer, for a run-scoring single. Stengel decided Shantz was through, and replaced him with Jim Coates. Everyone knew the next batter, Skinner, would bunt, and he did, dropping the ball down the third-base line, moving the runners up to second and third. Rocky Nelson had another chance at heroics, but failed to reach the right-field porch this time, instead lofting a routine fly ball to Maris.

Two out, men in scoring position, Roberto Clemente stepped to the plate. Coates decided to pitch him outside, hoping to get the free-swinger to lunge at a bad pitch. Clemente, in his eagerness, flailed at three straight outside pitches and fouled them off, breaking his bat in the process. He strolled back to the dugout for another Frenchy Uhalt model. In the radio booth, NBC's Chuck Thompson was calling the play-by-play. "In typical World Series fashion this one appears to be going right down to the wire," he said. "Now Blanchard pumpin' out the sign to Coates, who wigwags with that glove just a bit. He wants to see the sign again. Now Coates is into the move, the one-two to Clemente."

Thompson's voice quickened. "He swings . . . ground ball . . . slowly hit off the first base side. Charging is Skowron. He makes the pickup. There'll be no play and the run scores!" A thunderous roar filled Forbes Field, and Thompson waited for the decibels to lower slightly before continuing. "Clemente hit a slow roller down the first-base way, wide of the bag, about ten or twelve feet to the right, or to the second-base side. Skowron came charging in, made the pickup on the ball. Had no chance of a play at the plate because Virdon broke with the crack of the bat. And then realized that he couldn't get over there in time to get Clemente at first base. So the infield hit by Clemente has driven in the sixth Pirate run. Down to third base goes Groat. Two outs. It's the Yankees seven, the Pirates six. And the batter will be catcher Hal Smith."

The New York writers went into a tizzy over this play. Where was Coates? they wanted to know. He should have been at the bag to take Skowron's throw, complained Arthur Daley, but "was probably so busy trying to figure out what his share of the winners' purse would be that he forgot to cover the bag." Clemente, racing down the line, was certain that he would have beaten any throw to the bag, and many observers agreed. Coates did not delay leaving the mound, but had to circle around Skowron on his way to the bag. In any case, the Pirates were still alive, sending up Hal Smith, the backup catcher who had replaced Burgess in the seventh. "Smith steps in with two down, runners at first and third, and this ballpark is going crazy," Thompson reported. An electric current seemed to run through the stands of Forbes Field, every fan plugged in, wired, lit up, a sensation that only late-inning October baseball could create. In downtown Pittsburgh, crowds bubbled on the sidewalks outside department stores showing the game on televisions in their display windows. All work stopped. Thompson returned to the microphone . . .

"Coates into the set . . . he throws . . . takes a strike right down the pike. And Smitty was giving it a good look. One strike to the right-hand batting Hal Smith. Clemente hit a little dribbler off the first-base side, wide of the bag at first and legged it out for a base hit. And Virdon was able to score the sixth run. Now the one-strike pitch coming to Smith. It's high, a ball. One ball, one strike. Well, the Pirate opportunity in this inning came about on the bad-hop ball that hit Kubek in the throat and knocked him out of the ball game. Now the one-one pitch to Smith. There it is. Swing and a miss, strike two. He really pulled the trigger. One ball, two strikes to Hal Smith. He gave it the big ripple, the Sunday punch, and couldn't find it. The tying run is at third base in the person of d.i.c.k Groat. The go-ahead run is at first base in the person of Roberto Clemente. And now the set, the one-two pitch to Hal Smith."

On the mound, Coates had decided to climb the ladder, hoping that Smith would swing at a high hard one. "Coates throws," announced Thompson. "He started to swing and held back. And took it high for a ball. A checked swing. Ball two. Two and two now. And for just a split-second every move in the Pirate dugout came to a stop on that call out there at the plate. It was a high pitch and Smith held back on the swing. So the count at two and two."

At the plate, Smith stood ready, whispering a quiet mantra to himself. Meet the ball. Meet the ball. "Coates into the stretch. He sets. And the two-two to Smith. He swings." Anyone listening on the radio could hear the sharp crack of the bat. "A long fly ball deep to left. I don't know, it might go out of here! It is going . . . going . . . gone! Forbes Field at this moment is an outdoor insane asylum! We have shared in one of baseball's great moments!"

Smith liked to golf low pitches and could tell by the "feel" that he had connected. Coates could tell, too, and threw his glove in the air in disgust. As Smith rounded first base and saw Berra and Mantle stop in their tracks and the ball soar over the 406 sign and far beyond into Schenley Park, he had to fight off the urge to turn a celebratory somersault. Stengel had crab-walked out of the dugout by then and was signaling in Ralph Terry from the bullpen. Coates departed, head down, and Stengel followed behind, his team now losing 97. Hoak flied to left, and the Yankees came in for their last at-bat.

Haddix and Friend had been warming up in the bullpen for the Pirates. "You're the one," Haddix said, and Friend hitched his pants and marched to the mound. He had been the loser in games two and six, but here was his chance to make amends. He had a rubber arm and wasn't feeling tired. You can rest all winter, Murtaugh had told him. It was all happening so fast now, and here he was, facing the top of the order. Four pitches later, there he went, heading toward the dugout, distraught, having given up singles to Richardson and pinch hitter Dale Long. Now Haddix was the one. Hoak looked over from third and thought Haddix looked "as cool as fish on ice." Lefty against lefty, he got Maris to pop up to the catcher. But Mantle, batting right-handed, smashed a line drive to right-center, sending Richardson home and Long to third. The stadium fell silent. Gil McDougald went in to run for Long, representing the tying run at third. Berra, the feared clutch hitter, slashed a sharp drive to the first-base side. Rocky Nelson, never known for his fielding, snared the ball on a short hop, saving a double, and made a split second decision. Should he throw to second to try for a first-short-first double play or step on the bag for a sure out and then throw to second to try to get Mantle on a tag play? Step on the bag, Nelson said to himself, and as he touched the bag and turned to make the play, where was Mantle? Not heading toward second but sliding back into first. Nelson was frozen in surprise. Mantle swerved to avoid the tag in a brilliant bit of base running. In retrospect, it was apparent that Nelson could have tagged Mantle first and then stepped on the bag for an easy, game-ending double play, but both players were reacting on instinct, and Mantle's instincts were superior. The tying run scored from third and the game was still on. The next batter, Skowron, hit into a force play at second, and the Pirates raced to their dugout. Nine-nine, bottom of the ninth.

Mazeroski was first up for Pittsburgh.

That was the brilliant last line of Red Smith's column the next day.

Maz was made for Pittsburgh. He grew up nearby, in Wheeling, West Virginia, and was tough, quiet, modest, ethnic, the son of a coal miner who had lost a foot in a mining accident and died young of lung cancer. For five seasons, since he came up at age nineteen, Maz had struggled to fulfill his potential as a boy wonder. He was up one year, down the next, but had rebounded from a dismal 1959 season to help lead the Pirates to the pennant this year, at age twenty-four, fielding brilliantly and hitting .273 with eleven home runs and sixty-four runs batted in. Like his counterpart on the Yankees, Bobby Richardson, he could seem lost in the lineup until a tense moment arose, and then his teammates were encouraged to see him walk to the plate.

Now here he stood, No. 9, waiting for Ralph Terry, his jaw working a wad of tobacco. d.i.c.k Stuart, the slumping but dangerous slugger, had lumbered out to the on-deck circle, ready to pinch-hit for the pitcher. Stuart was certain that he would hit a home run to win the game. In the dugout, Bob Friend stared down at his spikes, swearing at himself, brooding about his pitching and not getting the job done. Vern Law was hoping, even praying, that all would turn out right. Clemente sat nearby. He was scheduled to be the fifth batter that inning. He was preparing himself mentally for the possibility of coming to bat with two outs and two on. In the radio booth, Chuck Thompson had almost exhausted his superlatives with all the dramatic plays he had called in the last twenty minutes.

"The last half of the ninth inning," Thompson began prosaically. "Changes made by the Yankees: McDougald goes to third base. Cletus Boyer moves over to play shortstop. And Ralph Terry of course on the mound will be facing Mazeroski. . . . Here's a ball one, too high now to Mazeroski. The Yankees have tied the game in the top of the ninth inning. A little while ago, we mentioned that this one in typical fashion was going right down to the wire. Little did we know. Terry throws . . . here's a high fly ball going deep to left. This may do it. Back to the wall goes Berra . . ."

Third baseman McDougald is still looking toward home plate as the ball sails over his head. The third-base and left-field umpires, neatly aligned along the line, are also looking in. This clout does not have the towering parabola of Hal Smith's, but the ball keeps going. Murtaugh thinks it will be caught. So does Bob Friend. Mazeroski is not sure, barely looking, sprinting hard to first, no easy home-run trot. From the Pirates dugout, Ducky Schofield, the reserve infielder, watches Berra retreat to the wall and look up, ready to play the ball off the wall. Then Yogi turns and bends and slumps, his knees almost buckling. And it is over.

Behind the ivy wall, the square Longines clock reads 3:37 P.M. Murtaugh wants to kiss his wife. Unbelievable, thinks Friend. "It is . . . over the fence, home run, the Pirates win!" shouts Chuck Thompson. A staggering roar shakes the stands. "Ladies and gentlemen, Mazeroski has. .h.i.t a one-nothing pitch over the left-field fence at Forbes Field to win the 1960 World Series for the Pittsburgh Pirates . . ." Ralph Terry throws his glove and stalks from the mound. He has no idea what kind of pitch it was, he will say later, only that it was the wrong one. Maz is dancing, leaping high, like he's riding an imaginary bronco, waving his helmet instead of a cowboy hat; now prancing around second and taking the joyous homeward turn at third. The diamond is madness, fans rushing forward, a raving, wild-eyed convoy, a boy reaches out, and then another, men in suits and shirtsleeves scramble into the action, city cops and state troopers with billy clubs race-waddle in from the left-field side, the Pirate dugout empties and forms a buzzing, delirious hive, bobbing behind the plate, waiting, fortunes changed in a second; and now the final steps, the crew-cut hero arriving with all of Pittsburgh in loving pursuit, and the ump clears the way, arms out, and Maz takes a final leap on the plate and disappears, everyone grabbing, pounding, like going fifteen rounds with Floyd Patterson, he thinks, but he's too happy to feel the pain, and Clemente and a few teammates try to protect him as they bounce back to the dugout and through the underground dimness to the dressing room.

The field is left to the fans, hundreds of them, running aimlessly, singing endless choruses of what Red Smith now calls "the tinny horror ent.i.tled 'The Bucs Are Going All the Way.'" A man in a brown suit brings out a spade and literally digs up home plate and walks away with it. Life is a series of sensations, and here is an unforgettable one for all Pirates fans. For the rest of the afternoon and late into the night, the streets belong to the people. Everything upside down, an act of rebellion at the dawn of the sixties, the establishment losing a first round.

Bob Prince, working the television broadcast with Mel Allen, missed calling Maz's home run. The Gunner had left the booth early to reach the dressing room in time for postgame interviews. There was a noisy, bustling traffic jam inside the clubhouse door, making it almost impossible to get through. John Galbreath and his son Danny needed an eight-man police wedge to join the celebration. Cimoli, Stuart, Hoak, Face, Mizell, all drenched in champagne, came rushing over to douse the owner. Prince groped around for interviews.

"Beat 'em, Bucs!" Cimoli shouted into the microphone. "Can't beat our Buccos, tell you that. Yes, sir, we got 'em, we got 'em. They broke all the records and we won the game."

"Here's the president of the ball club, Mr. John Galbreath," Prince said.

"I just want to ask you one question that you asked me," Galbreath said, his voice urgent and hoa.r.s.e. "Have we paid our debt to this city, the people of Pittsburgh?"

"I think you have," Prince said. "And you've given your voice to it, too, haven't you?"

"I'll give it all I've got," Galbreath said.

"You wouldn't trade a Kentucky Derby for this, John," Prince added, referring to the owner's obsession with thoroughbred racing.

"You, you're trying to get me where I'm vulnerable," Galbreath responded.

By the time Bill Nunn Jr. reached the dressing room, his friend Clemente was sitting alone in the corner, "happy but unconcerned with all the fanfare." He had been the only player to get a hit in all seven games. He had performed flawlessly in the field. His dribbling hit and dash to first base in the eighth inning had kept Pirate hopes alive. Now he said he planned to use his World Series money to buy a house for his mother in Carolina. "It's something I've always wanted to do for her after all she's done for me," he said. "I can't wait to see the joy on her face the first time she sees her new home." Nunn noticed that Clemente had showered and was packing his large duffel bag as champagne flew around him.

"What's the hurry?" the Courier editor asked.

Clemente was slipping a glove into the bag. "I catch plane at six o'clock for New York," he answered. "I stay there tonight and then I head for home."

"What about the victory party they're holding for the team? You certainly belong in that group," Nunn said.

"I don't like those kind of things," Clemente said. "There is not fun for me. Last one I went to all I did was stand in a corner."

A teammate handed Clemente a cup of champagne. He smiled and took a sip, then gestured to his friend Diomedes Antonio Olivo, the forty-one-year-old Latin pitcher, a legend in the Dominican Republic, who did not make the World Series roster but threw batting practice for the Pirates. Olivo, who spoke no English, would accompany Clemente to New York and back to the Caribbean. Nunn noticed that Clemente "paid special attention to a box he had next to him. In it was a trophy voted to him by Pirates fans as the most popular of all Pittsburgh players."

Olivo was ready to go. Clemente turned to Nunn and asked if he could give them a ride to the airport. On the way out, Clemente shook hands with Gene Baker, then slipped from the clubhouse and took a side exit, hoping to avoid the crowds. In an earlier conversation, he had told Nunn that he was worried the Pirates would not reward his excellent year with a sufficient raise. "It looks like everything is going to be all right next season," he said now. He had talked to Joe Brown the day before, and Brown had told him there would be no contract trouble. The general manager also asked him not to play winter ball when he got home to Puerto Rico.

As soon as they emerged from the stadium someone shouted, "There's Clemente!" and soon a crowd engulfed them. They walked a few yards, then were stopped again by another adoring throng, the jubilant scrum inching along toward Nunn's car. It took nearly an hour. By that time Clemente was radiating happiness. The fans of Pittsburgh, he said, made everything worthwhile. They were the reason he was glad the Pirates won the World Series. They were the best fans in the world.

7.

Pride and Prejudice

IN THE SEASONAL MOVEMENTS OF ROBERTO CLEMENTE'S baseball life, October was the month of return. He not only could go home again, he loved to go home to Puerto Rico. Delayed ten days by the World Series, Clemente's homecoming in October 1960 was unlike any he had experienced before. His countrymen had followed the dramatic seven-game series between the Pirates and mighty Yankees with an intensity perhaps matched only in Pittsburgh and New York. All seven games were broadcast in Spanish over WAPA radio in San Juan, and the newspapers provided in-depth coverage, much of it focused on the Pittsburgh right fielder. Almost every day, his photograph appeared in the sports sections under captions like . . . Roberto Clemente . . . throw saves run. His batting averages for the season (.314) and series (.310, with a hit in every game) could be cited by most every fan on the island. And now, on the afternoon of October 16, as he stepped down the portable stairs leading off the Pan Am jet that had carried him home, he was greeted as the triumphant son.

Handmade welcome-home placards bobbed in the milling crowd of several hundred people that awaited him on the tarmac. The sign that captured Clemente's feelings read simply La Familia. He embraced his father, kissed his mother, and hugged his brothers and various cousins, nephews, and nieces who came out to see him, but family in this case went beyond blood relatives. His family was all of Puerto Rico. The words of the poet Enrique Zorrilla, father of his baseball patron, Pedrin Zorrilla, were Clemente's now: My pride is my land/For I was born here/ I don't love it because it is beautiful/ I love it because it is mine/ Poor or rich, with burning/ I want it for my own. And his land wanted him, in a way that North America, despite his connection with Pittsburgh fans, seemingly could not. Clemente was on the ground only a minute when he was swept up by the adoring mob, raised high into the air, and carried on shoulders toward the airport gate, a ragtag band of horns, drums, and whistles lending a surging salsa rhythm to the jubilant parade.

There was only one small note of disappointment. When a local sportswriter asked Clemente whether he intended to play winter baseball, he paused and answered, "I don't know yet." Those four words were grist for an ongoing conversation. The winter league in Puerto Rico was struggling enough already, as Ponce, Mayagez, and San Juan all had lost money the previous season. The future looked no more promising despite the virtual collapse of the main compet.i.tion, the Cuban winter league, under the weight of the Castro revolution. Ballparks in Havana, Cienfuegos, and Marianao were going dark night after night. "Be a patriot and go to the ball games," Cuban government broadcasts urged, but the campaign was flopping. All the baseball equipment that came from the United States had been embargoed, and of more significance so had the talented U.S. ballplayers. Following the lead of the International League's Havana Sugar Kings, who fled for Jersey City in July 1960, soon after Castro took over, the major leagues now were also abandoning Cuba. Winter league teams that traditionally fielded eight major leaguers apiece had zero since commissioner Ford Frick imposed a ban on Cuban play. That meant even more Americans would come to Puerto Rico, but the teams there still relied heavily on the draw of local stars, none of whom glowed brighter than Clemente. Four days after his arrival, Clemente's ambivalence remained a major story. In a television interview with Pantalones Santiago, the colorful old pitcher who had thrown to him during his first professional tryout in 1952, the twenty-six-year-old Clemente lamented that he was so tired he could "hardly lift a bat." Maybe he would suit up later in the season, he said, if he felt better.

During his first month in Puerto Rico, Clemente attended almost nightly banquets in his honor, large and small. He received the Star trophy as the outstanding Latin American ballplayer in the major leagues. He brought his full Pirate uniform home from Pittsburgh with him, and began wearing it at baseball clinics he held for boys in towns around San Juan. Joe L. Brown, the Pirates general manager, came down on a sunny scouting mission and the local papers reported rumors that he had signed Clemente to a big new contract. The San Juan Star, citing "a source which is right at least half the time," said Clemente had been signed for $40,000, which was termed "a considerable sum even if some jockeys and some professional wrestlers make more." In fact, Clemente had not yet signed, and the amount he eventually agreed to was less than the reported figure. According to doc.u.ments filed with the National League and eventually archived at the National Baseball Library at the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, Clemente's 1961 one-year contract paid him a salary of $35,000 plus a possible bonus if he avoided winter ball.

The favorite phrase of San Juan sportswriters during Clemente's period of inactivity that winter was that he was "resting on his World Series laurels." Resting, perhaps, but not peacefully. On a physical level, he was an insomniac who rarely slept. And mentally, he was churning more than usual. The satisfaction he drew from starring on a championship team was tempered by a long-simmering frustration over his place in the major league firmament. Hank Aaron of the Braves and Frank Robinson of the Reds, the other great right fielders in the National League, had been dominant from the start, but it had taken Clemente six long seasons to make his breakthrough, longer than the career of the average player. Even Orlando Cepeda of the Giants, the former Santurce batboy, who idolized Roberto as a big brother, seemed to have surpa.s.sed him, hitting for a higher average, stroking nearly twice as many home runs, and driving in nearly as many runs as his Puerto Rican elder in only half as many big league seasons. To watch Clemente play was an aesthetic experience. He was an expressionist art form all his own, yet something had been holding him back. Was it his inexperience in the early years, or the reality of his uneven play, or the misperceptions of managers and sportswriters, or the lingering effects of the 1954 traffic accident, or the extra pressure of being a Spanish-speaking black Latin, or bad luck, or some combination of all of those?

Whatever the cause, the most profound effect came on November 17, when the vote for the National League Most Valuable Player award was announced. His brother Matino had predicted that Clemente would win, but Momen knew better. He told Matino about how Les Biederman, the influential beat writer for the Pittsburgh Press, had been dismissive of Clemente when talking to his brethren in other National League towns, and talking up other Pirates. The winner was indeed a Pirate, but not Clemente. It was d.i.c.k Groat, the shortstop, who led the league in batting with a .325 average, but hit only two home runs with fifty runs batted in. Groat was a studious player, a college man from Duke, a favorite with the writers, and respected as a quiet leader by his teammates. He was a popular choice, compiling sixteen of twenty-two first-place votes and finishing more than a hundred points ahead of the next player, but was he most valuable? When Groat had missed the last three weeks of the season with a wrist injury, Ducky Schofield had filled in well enough that the Pirates just kept winning. The second place vote-getter also was a Pirate, again not Clemente. It was third baseman Don Hoak, the club's tobacco-spitting vocal sparkplug, whose statistics (.282 average, sixteen homers, seventy-nine runs batted in) were good but unexceptional. After that were the league's two perennial stars, Willie Mays and Ernie Banks. Next? Finishing fifth was not Clemente but Lindy McDaniel, a St. Louis relief pitcher with a 124 record. Tied for sixth were Ken Boyer of the Cardinals and yet another Pirate, Vernon Law, ace of the pitching staff, who would win the Cy Young award as the best pitcher. Finally, down in eighth place, there was Clemente, with 62 points from the writers, 214 fewer than Groat.

With Clemente, this was a matter of pride. No doubt he would have been pleased had he won the award, but it was finishing eighth that wounded him deeply. He felt alienated, marked as different. Groat was a Pittsburgh area boy. Hoak had married a Pittsburgh area girl. The MVP vote, Clemente believed, was confirmation that Pittsburgh writers had campaigned against him. "The writers make me feel bad when you don't even get considered," he said. Before the vote, he had been brooding; afterward, he was enraged. He carried the slight with him for the rest of his career, for better and worse. He brought it up every year during contract negotiations with Joe L. Brown, the first in a perennial litany of perceived inequities. "There was this burr under his saddle," Brown said later. "I said, 'Bobby, you're too big to be concerned about that. You are a great player and n.o.body can take that away from you. Your best years are ahead of you. You played on a World Championship team and were a big part of our winning. If someone screwed you, tough luck. You are still great." All true, but the pain stayed with Clemente, and it was this pain that drove him forward-to prove his doubters wrong.

Soon enough that winter, Clemente felt ready to lift a bat again and was back in uniform for the San Juan Senadores, the favorite team of his childhood. The Senadores were the third club of his winter ball career. He had played for the Santurce Cangrejeros for four and a half seasons, until founding owner Pedrin Zorrilla, out of money, had been forced to sell the franchise two days after Christmas 1956, bringing to a sad and sudden end a remarkable two-decade run from Josh Gibson through Willie Mays. As Zorrilla's son, named Enrique in honor of his poet grandfather, later explained: "My father was a boy in a man's body. He loved the game and couldn't bear the thought of losing his team. But he couldn't bear the thought of trading ballplayers to get the money to pay his debts." Zorrilla conditioned the team's sale on a promise from the new owners that they would not dump players to reduce the debt, but that promise was broken in a single day. The first action the new owners took was to sell Clemente, Juan Pizarro, and Ronnie Sanford to the Caguas Criollos for $30,000. The initial public reports said the sale of Clemente had been arranged with Zorrilla's knowledge. By his son's account, this infuriated the Big Crab. "That is a time when my father later told me he regretted the way he acted in a way. He stormed out of the house, went to the new owner and told him, 'You take it back and tell the truth or I am not responsible for what I can do.' He regretted saying that. But it was important for him for the truth to be known. That day on local radio at noon everything was cleared up and it was said the deal was made after the club's sale, without his knowledge. But that is how the great Roberto Clemente went away from Santurce."

Caguas, an interior mountain city fifteen miles south of San Juan, was never more than a sideshow for Clemente. He led the league in hitting for the Criollos, but had no real commitment to playing there, even though his manager was Vic Power, his fellow major leaguer. Power and Clemente were fast friends off the field, but there was always some compet.i.tive jousting in the manager-player relationship. In his good-natured way, Power essentially accused the proud Clemente of manipulating his image. "At the start it was kind of hard because he was hurt all the time. His neck hurt. His back hurt," Power recalled. "When I told him, 'Okay, I'll put someone in for you,' he'd say, 'No, let me play.' And then he played. And every time he played hurt, he got two hits. I was wondering, one time when I played him if he went 0 for 4, and the press asked him, 'Hey, what's the matter?' and he would say, 'Well, I told the manager I was sick.'" Power, in other words, thought Clemente slyly used his ailments to place himself in a no-lose situation. If a Pittsburgh sportswriter had expressed the same thought, an icy stare or severe lecture would come his way, but Power could tease Clemente, no hard feelings.

The difference was a matter of culture and familiarity. Power had endured the same slights and had been stereotyped in the same ways. Between the two of them, there was no fear of being misunderstood, but at the same time Clemente couldn't fool Power, or bluff him, or intimidate him-they knew each other too well. Away from the ballpark, Momen and Vic enjoyed hanging out-together and with young women, the pursuers and the pursued-in Caguas, San Juan, and all points between. Clemente had cla.s.sical style and good looks, but Power was more freewheeling, their different personalities most obvious at the dance halls. Power, all loose limbs, loved the salsa and merengue. For Clemente, those moves were too fast, undignified, not cool enough, and he wasn't any good at them. He liked the boleros, the slow dances. Sometimes, Power said, Clemente would go after his girls, but no problem, he had so many he could share them. One night on a double date, Roberto took out a girl who had to be home by midnight. When they were an hour late, she told Clemente that her father would be waiting outside with a shotgun. As they approached her house, Clemente pretended his car had run out of gas. He even forced Power to get out and push. Anything to avoid the censure of an elder.

After spending parts of two campaigns with Power in Caguas, Clemente was traded to San Juan, which would remain his home team for the rest of his career. It was for the Senadores that he finally lifted his bat in the winter of his rage, after the 1960 World Series and the eighth-place finish for most valuable player. The rejuvenation of a struggling San Juan team was immediate with Clemente in the lineup. The Senadores swept to the regular season championship, won the league playoffs, and then flew south to Venezuela in February 1961 to represent Puerto Rico in the InterAmerican series, a makeshift tournament designed to replace the Caribbean World Series, which had been sc.r.a.pped because of the political situation in Cuba. San Juan was a formidable team, with Clemente banging away and t.i.te Arroyo, the proficient Yankee reliever, on the mound, and the regular season lineup was fortified for the tournament by two additions from Santurce, Clemente's friends Orlando Cepeda and Juan Pizarro. In a short series, though, one great pitcher can always make the difference, and a team from Venezuela had that one unhittable ace just coming into his own-young Bob Gibson of the St. Louis Cardinals, who shut out San Juan 10.

All of this, in any case, was just prelude for Clemente, preparation for a season on the mainland that would make him impossible to ignore any longer.

Momen arrived at Pirates camp to train for the 1961 season on March 2, a day late. He and t.i.te Arroyo had been delayed entry from Puerto Rico to Florida until tests came back proving they did not have the bubonic plague, a few cases of which had broken out in Venezuela during the tournament.

On the day he reached Fort Myers, free from the plague, a story ran on the front page of the New York Times under the headline: NEGROES SAY CONDITIONS IN U.S. EXPLAIN NATIONALISTS' MILITANCY. One of the key figures quoted in the story was Malcolm X, the Black Muslim leader, who in the Times account was referred to as Minister Malcolm. Interviewed at a Muslim-run restaurant on Lenox Avenue in Harlem, Malcolm X said the only answer to America's racial dilemma was for blacks to segregate themselves, by their own choice, with their own land and financial reparations due them from centuries of slavery. He dismissed the tactics of the civil rights movement as humiliating, especially the lunch-counter sit-ins that were taking place throughout the South. "To beg a white man to let you into his restaurant feeds his ego," Minister Malcolm told the newspaper.

This was fourteen years after Jackie Robinson broke the major league color line, seven years after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the separate-but-equal doctrine of segregated schools, five years after Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. led the bus boycott in Montgomery, four years after the Little Rock Nine desegregated Central High School in the capital of Arkansas, one year after the first lunch-counter sit-in in Greensboro. Year by year, the issue of race was becoming more urgent. The momentum was on the side of change, but the questions were how and how fast. In baseball, where once there had been no black ballplayers, now there were a hundred competing for major league jobs, and along with numbers came enormous talent, with ten past and future most valuable players among them. Yet every black player who reported to training camp in Florida that spring of 1961 still had to confront Jim Crow segregation. Even if their private emotions were sympathetic to Malcolm X's rage at having to beg a white man to let you into his restaurant, the issue in baseball was necessarily shaped by its own history. Having moved away from the professional Negro Leagues and busted through the twentieth century's racial barrier, black players did not view voluntary resegregation as an option, and separate and unequal off the field was no longer tolerable.

Wendell Smith, the influential black sportswriter who still had a column in the weekly Pittsburgh Courier but wrote daily now for the white-owned newspaper Chicago's American, began a concerted campaign against training camp segregation that year. On January 23, a month before the spring camps opened, Smith wrote a seminal article that appeared on the top of the front page of Chicago's American headlined NEGRO BALL PLAYERS WANT RIGHTS IN SOUTH. "Beneath the apparently tranquil surface of baseball there is a growing feeling of resentment among Negro major leaguers who still experience embarra.s.sment, humiliation, and even indignities during spring training in the south," Smith wrote. "The Negro player who is accepted as a first cla.s.s citizen in the regular season is tired of being a second cla.s.s citizen in spring training." Smith added that leading black players were "moving cautiously and were anxious to avert becoming engulfed in fiery debate over civil rights," but nonetheless were preparing to meet with club owners and league executives to talk about the problem and make it a front-burner issue for the players a.s.sociation.

In a drumbeat of stories for Chicago's American and columns for the Courier, Smith doc.u.mented the life of black players in Florida. While his scope was national and his campaign was for all of baseball, he often focused on the travails of black players on Chicago's American League team, the White Sox, who trained in Sarasota. Those players included Minnie Minoso, Al Smith, and Juan Pizarro, Clemente's friend and sometimes teammate in Puerto Rico, who had been traded from the Braves. "If you are Minoso, Smith or Pizarro . . . you are a man of great pride and perseverance . . . Otherwise you would not be where you are today, training with a major league team in Sarasota, Fla.," Smith wrote in a Courier column. "Yet despite all your achievements and fame, the vicious system of racial segregation in Florida's hick towns condemns you to a life of humiliation and ostracism." Among the indignities, he wrote: You cannot live with your teammates.

You cannot eat the type of food that your athletic body requires.

You cannot get a cab in the mornings to take you to the ball park, unless it happens to be Negro-driven.

You cannot enter the hotel in which your manager lives without first receiving special permission.

You cannot go to a movie or night club in the heart of town, nor enjoy any of the other normal recreational facilities your white teammates enjoy so matter of factly.

You cannot bring your wife and children to the town where you are training because accommodations are not available where you are imprisoned.

You cannot, even if there are facilities, take them to the town's sprawling beaches or parks, unless, of course, they are designated as "Negro."

You cannot do anything that you would normally do in any of the major league cities where you make your living during the summer.

You are quartered in a neighborhood that ordinarily you would be ashamed to be seen in.

You are horribly embarra.s.sed each day when the bus returning the players from the ball park stops on "this side of the railroad tracks" and deposits you in "Colored Town," and then proceeds on to the plush hotel where your white teammates live in splendor and luxury.

You suffered a bruised leg sliding into second base, but you cannot receive immediate treatment from the club trainer because he is living in the "white" hotel. If he can get away during the night and come to your segregated quarters, he will, of course; but for obvious reasons, he prefers to wait until daylight.

Your wife cannot call you in case of emergency from your home because the place where you are incarcerated does not have phone facilities available at all times.

That is what it is like to be a Negro big leaguer in Florida during spring training . . . And the story has been only half told.

The spring training headquarters for the White Sox was the Sarasota Terrace Hotel, which banned journalist Smith and the black players. When Smith pressed the owner, a building contractor named James Ewell, to explain his policy, Ewell said he was following the social practices of the Sarasota community. Also, he claimed that if he opened his establishment to blacks he would lose contracting work: "My clients throughout Florida and other sections of the south would reject my business, I believe." The White Sox situation was made more interesting by the fact that the team's president, Bill Veeck, had been in the forefront of integrating baseball and was not oblivious to the plight of his black players. Veeck had found another place for them, the DeSoto Motel, which was run by Edward Wachtel and his wife, Lillian, a white Jewish couple from New York, who had retired to Florida and wanted in their own "quiet" way to break the segregation policies of their new home. For this gesture, the Wachtels received anonymous bomb threats, hate mail, and late-night telephone calls warning that crosses would be burned on their lawn. Their modest green-and-white one-story motel was located in a white neighborhood on Route 301 a mile or so from the rest of the team. The DeSoto was clean but modest, with far fewer services than the Sarasota Terrace. The neon sign out front boasted HEATED * AIR CONDITIONED * OVERNITES * EFFICIENCIES.

Veeck had tried to balance the conditions by hiring a cook, maid service, and transportation to and from the ball park. On the road, he had made the bold stand of pulling the White Sox from a hotel in Miami because it rejected his black players. Still, it wasn't until Wendell Smith began his incessant campaign that the White Sox took the final step of leasing their own hotel in Sarasota so the entire team could stay together.

Down at the Pirates training camp in Fort Myers, where conditions were worse, Courier sports editor Bill Nunn Jr., a journalistic disciple of Smith, was determined to lend his voice to the integration campaign. From his first day in town, Nunn began interviewing players and club executives for a full-page story. There had been few advances since 1955, the first Pirates camp in Fort Myers, when young Clemente was sent off to a rooming house in the Dunbar Heights section of town where he had to eat and sleep apart from his teammates. Including top minor leaguers, there were now fifteen black players in the Pirates camp, led by Clemente and Gene Baker, a veteran infielder. In interviews with Nunn, both expressed their disgust. "We live in a world apart down here," Baker told Nunn. "We don't like it and we've voiced our objections. We only hope we get action." At the ball park during the day, Baker said, he enjoyed talking to teammates Don Hoak and Gino Cimoli about their shared pa.s.sion, greyhound racing. But when they went to the dog track at night, Baker had to go through the entrance marked "Colored" and sit apart from them.

Clemente was described as "bitter" about the situation. Here he was, a star player on the world champions of baseball, a reservist in the U.S. Marine Corps, still treated like a second-cla.s.s citizen. "There is nothing for us to do down here," he told Nunn. "We go to the ball park, play cards, and watch television. In a way it's like being in prison. Everybody else on the team has fun during spring training. They swim, play golf, and go to the beaches. The only thing we can do is put in time until we head North. It's no fun."

Later, when asked to list his heroes, Clemente would place Martin Luther King Jr. at the top of the list. He supported integration, the norm in Puerto Rico, and believed in King's philosophy of nonviolence. Yet in some ways his sensibility brought him closer to Malcolm X. He detested any response to Jim Crow segregation that made him seem to beg. In his early years with the Pirates, whenever the team stopped at a roadside restaurant on the way to or from a spring training away game, the black players would remain on the bus, waiting for white teammates to bring out food for them. Clemente put a stop to it by telling his black teammates that anyone who begged for food would have to fight him to get it. As he recalled the scene later, he went to Joe L. Brown, the Pirates general manager, and said the situation was demeaning. "So I say to Joe Brown, 'We won't travel anymore with the bus. If we can't eat where the white players eat I don't want to go with the bus.' So Joe Brown said, 'Well, we're going to get a station wagon for you fellows to travel in.' And [now] we're traveling in a station wagon." That still left a long way to go to reach equality.

During the first week of exhibition games, Nunn interviewed Brown and asked him why he allowed the team to be divided by segregation. The general manager said that he had met with the Fort Myers town fathers, who told him local law prohibited the mingling of races in hotels or motels, but that he felt he was making progress in getting them to change their practices. "I talked to all of the city officials about this situation of separate quarters for our players this year. I didn't go to these men to make demands," Brown said. "I explained our problem to them and told them we wanted integration at all levels for our players. I was pleased with the reception I received. The city officials listened to my complaints and appeared receptive. They didn't make any promises but I believe they are just as eager to have this problem solved as we are." Integration would take time, Brown told Nunn. He considered it a step forward that city officials even agreed to talk about it. Brown was a Californian who had no use for segregation, but he also was a businessman who did not want to alienate the Fort Myers establishment. "Frankly, we have no real complaints against the city of Fort Myers," he concluded. "We have been treated wonderfully since coming here. The facilities are good and I've heard no objections from the Negro members of our club on the segregation issue."

That last comment reflected a common att.i.tude among baseball executives, and many sportswriters, who were so lulled by their own comfortable situations and the lazy ease of their sport in springtime that it was difficult for them to see the reality. When the Fort Myers Boosters Club held a Pirates Welcome Luncheon at the Hideaway, the guest list included Brown and manager Danny Murtaugh, Pennsylvania Governor David Lawrence, Ford Frick, the baseball commissioner, Warren Giles, the president of the National League, and several heroes of the World Series, but not Clemente, who could not get into the building unless he worked as a waiter or dishwasher. That same day, at ten in the morning, a forty-three-minute highlight film of the World Series was shown at the Edison Theater downtown, and notices announced there was no charge and "the public is invited-men, women and children." As long as they were white. When the Fort Myers Country Club sponsored its annual Pirates Golf Tourney, the News-Press listed the foursomes, comprised of players, coaches, businessmen, and sportswriters. Brown and Murtaugh played, along with Groat and Friend and Schofield and Stuart and twenty more members of the Pirates organization. The Pirates were described as acting "like boys let out of school." When the golfing was done, they were all served "a bountiful buffet dinner." Clemente and his black teammates were back in Dunbar Heights.

In the bonhomie of the occasion, no one noticed who wasn't there. Ducky Schofield, the utility infielder, was perhaps typical of white Pirates who were not racist but also did not seem to take into account how social conditions might have deeper effects on black teammates. When asked later whether Clemente was disliked by some of the Pirates of the late 1950s and early 1960s, Schofield said: "I'm sure there were some who didn't like him. . . . Maybe it was because he didn't put forth a whole lot of energy as far as being one of the guys. I think he pretty much stuck to himself quite a bit. In those days, guys ran in groups. Guys would eat together, have a couple of beers. Not that he had to do it, but I never saw him do it."

Exclusive events like the Fort Myers welcome luncheon and golf outing were held in spring-training towns throughout Florida. But unlike previous springs, this time they were loudly criticized. The most attention was drawn to St. Petersburg, which called itself the capital of the Grapefruit League as home to the Yankees and Cardinals. Both teams had been staying at segregated hotels, the Cardinals at the Vinoy Park and the Yankees at the Soreno, but under pressure from the local NAACP and black players, the system was finally being cracked. When Soreno's management refused to change its policy, the Yankees picked up and moved across the state to Fort Lauderdale, and in the aftermath, St. Pete officials were so worried about losing baseball entirely that the Cardinals were finally allowed to house their entire team in the same hotel. Small victories of that sort were being won here and there, rivulets in the mighty stream of civil rights. On March 13, in Miami Beach, Floyd Patterson defended his heavyweight boxing crown in a t.i.tle match with Ingemar Johansson, and along with Patterson's victory the most newsworthy aspect of the fight was that, at the champ's insistence, the color bar was lifted in the Convention Hall. "Negroes were spotted freely among the predominantly white crowd in all sections," the New York Times reported, and "so far as could be noted, no incidents arose from the integrated set-up." It was an off-day for the Pirates, and third-baseman Don Hoak, who had been a decent amateur boxer, covered the event for a Pittsburgh newspaper. Yet in Sarasota and other spring-training cities, black ballplayers wanting to watch Patterson were not allowed into the whites-only theaters.

Change was slow, and did not occur unprovoked. One of the pivotal events that spring came when the chamber of commerce held a Salute to Baseball at the St. Petersburg Yacht Club. Bill White, the Cardinals first baseman, blasted the lily-white event as a symbol of baseball's capitulation to Southern racism. His words echoed across the state and nation. "I think about this every minute of the day," White told Joe Reichler of United Press International. "This thing keeps gnawing at my heart. When will we be made to feel human?"

For Clemente, already simmering over the personal slight of the MVP vote, the second-cla.s.s treatment he encountered in Florida as a star player on a World Championship team only stoked his fire. He was a baseball player, not a journalist or politician, and it was on the baseball diamond that he expressed himself most often. In his first batting drill of the spring, he cracked a relentless volley of blistering line drives and then slammed two b.a.l.l.s out of the park, and it seemed that he never stopped hitting from there. The most antic.i.p.ated exhibition contest of the spring was a rematch with the Yankees, a game that drew a standing-room-only crowd of 5,351 to Terry Park. In the second inning of a game the Pirates won 92, Clemente started the scoring with a towering home run to left. It was just a solo homer in a meaningless spring game, but it was also a statement: Clemente was not to be ignored. Several factors were coming together to transform him from a dangerous. .h.i.tter with weaknesses into a great hitter who was essentially unpitchable.

George H. Sisler, the sweet-swinging Hall of Fame first baseman, deserved a generous share of credit. Gorgeous George, who hit for a .340 career average from 1915 to 1930 and twice batted over .400, had been working as a special a.s.sistant with the Pirates throughout Clemente's first six seasons. Even now, as he was turning sixty-eight, he still knew how to help good hitters improve, and he thought Clemente was on the verge of becoming the best hitter in the National League. Sisler's first breakthrough with Clemente had been teaching him to stop lifting his head, or bobbing it, as he strode into the swing. By holding his head still, and keeping it down, Clemente could train his eye on curveb.a.l.l.s as they broke down and away, pitches that gave him trouble earlier. As a slashing line-drive hitter himself, Sisler also helped Clemente work on staying back on the ball and keeping his hands in, close to the chest, a technique known as swinging from the inside out. Sisler had no problem with another aspect of Clemente's. .h.i.tting that others criticized, a tendency to swing at bad b.a.l.l.s; what was important, he thought, was having an idea of what pitches you could hit, and in that regard he considered Clemente uncommonly intelligent at the plate.

Paradoxical as it sounds, another factor in Clemente's development as a hitter was his aching back, which had bothered him off and on since the December 30 traffic accident in Caguas in 1954. There were times when the injury was debilitating, particularly during the 1956 season, when he developed a pinched nerve, but most of the time he could play through it. In a sense, it proved to be long-term pain for long-term gain. The pain that occasionally knifed into the lower left side of his back forced him to slow his swing-perhaps a mere nanosecond slower, but enough to prevent him from trying to pull every pitch-again, the weakness that Branch Rickey at first feared would be his undoing. Instead, he started hitting the ball more to center and right. "I learned to go with the pitch," Clemente said later, out of physical necessity. That might explain why at times during his career when he was feeling free and easy, without pain, he might end up swinging so violently his head would bob and he would lose his balance and virtually whirling-dervish his way to the ground; but conversely, whenever his teammates heard him moaning about a bad back, they joked to themselves that the opposing pitcher was in trouble and a four-hit day was in the offing.

A third element in Clemente's refinement as a hitter involved his selection of bats. Early in his career with the Pirates, he used thirty-two and thirty-three-ounce M117 (Stan Musial) model Louisville Sluggers, and then S-2s, which were first made for Vern Stephens, the power-hitting shortstop who played most of his career with the St. Louis Browns and Red Sox in the 1940s and early fifties. But by 1961 he was using much bigger and heavier bats, mostly thirty-six inches and thirty-four to thirty-five ounces. The models were U1s, named for one Bernard Bartholomew Uhalt, known to his friends as Frenchy. The major league career of Frenchy Uhalt amounted to fifty-seven games with the Chicago White Sox in 1934. His bat seemed to have very few hits in it-five doubles, one triple, thirty-four singles-yet it made a significant contribution to the history of baseball as the model favored by Roberto Clemente. What was most notable about the U1 was that it didn't have a k.n.o.b, but instead tapered out at the bottom. It felt exactly right in Clemente's sensitive hands, and the extra weight, like his bad back, had the effect of forcing him to hit more straightaway and to right.

To Clemente, a bat was not just a bat, it was an instrument that had to meet his exacting standards. "He probably knew as much about timber as anyone," recalled Rex Bradley, the Hillerich & Bradsby executive in charge of Louisville Slugger bat sales to major leaguers. "He knew if he had a good piece of bat. He would bang them together and see if they sounded good. He could tell from the sound." Wood was not only essential to Clemente's profession, it was also his hobby. During the off-season in Puerto Rico, he loved nothing more than combing the Atlantic beach from Punta Cangrejos to Punta Maldonado in search of driftwood he could use to make lamps and furniture. As an amateur carpenter, he studied the hardness and grains of different woods. He once sent a note to Bradley stating that he wanted "no red wood"-which meant no wood from the heart of the ash tree, which was a darker color. "He wanted the widest grains, always," according to Bradley. "And he knew the wide grains came in the summer growth, he was that precise."

With all this-with pure talent, with pride and will fueled by the need to prove his doubters wrong, with the expert instruction of Hall of Famer George Sisler, with the beneficial swing adjustments arising from his bad back, and with the comfort of the heavier, k.n.o.bless Frenchy Uhalt bats, Clemente came blasting into the prime of his career.

In baseball, as in so many other ways, 1961 launched the sixties decade on its stunning trajectory. Life reinvented, and seeming so much larger. Two more teams were added to the American League: in Washington (again, a reborn version of the old last-place Senators) and Los Angeles. The National League had the Mets and Colt .45s in gestation, a year from taking the field. In persuading major league owners to grant Houston a franchise, Judge Roy Hofheinz had already wowed them with a model he had built of the world's first domed stadium. With its expansion teams, the American League had scheduled the longest regular season in major league history, extended to 162 games. Was it a prefiguring of the antiestablishment mood that emerged later in the decade, or just plain madcap hopelessness, that found the Chicago Cubs that year rejecting the concept of a single manager and instead delegating authority to a succession of feeble coaches? The Yankees still wore pinstripes, but Casey Stengel, the Ol' Perfessor, was gone, Mickey Mantle told the press he would a.s.sume a stronger leadership role, and the new boss, Ralph Houk, said his team looked lean and mean. The big bats started booming in April. By the end of the month, Mantle had fourteen home runs and his outfield mate, Roger Maris, had twelve, and the pursuit of Babe Ruth's record was on. Six months later, Maris held the record, sixty-one, ahead of Mantle's fifty-four, and four other Yankees, Moose Skowron, Yogi Berra, Elston Howard, and Johnny Blanchard, finished with more than twenty home runs each. Even taking into account the two additional teams, 1961 was prodigious, the year of the homer. The 2,730 total home runs in the two leagues were nearly five-hundred more than any previous year.

The Pittsburgh Pirates were a very small part of all this. After being picked by a majority of sportswriters to repeat as National League champs and rampaging through spring training, they finished April three games over .500, but then remained stuck at that mediocre level throughout the first half of the season. They looked more and more like the overmatched team that was walloped by the Yankees in three losing World Series games rather than the gutsy club that prevailed in the other four. Groat, the MVP, had fallen back to being a slightly-better-than-average performer. Law, the reigning Cy Young winner, tore his rotator cuff and pitched only eleven games. The pennant-fever magic of southpaw Vinegar Bend Mizell vanished. Elroy Face, the tough little relief pitcher, won only a third of his games, going six and twelve, only two years after compiling an astounding .947 winning percentage by winning eighteen and losing one. The one player who was even hotter than he had been in 1960 was Clemente. By July 10, after a torrid week in which he stroked thirteen hits in twenty-seven at-bats, including one five-hit game and another four-hit game, he was leading the league with a .357 average. With the soaring average came newfound power, with twelve home runs and fifty-four runs batted in-statistics so strong that his peers voted for him to start in right field at the July 11 All-Star game held at Candlestick Park in San Francisco.

The All-Star setting offered Clemente another chance to shine before a nationwide audience, and he seized the opportunity. He played the entire game in right field, slashed a triple to right-center off Whitey Ford in the second, knocked in an early run with a sacrifice fly, and then, in the bottom of the tenth, after Henry Aaron singled and Willie Mays doubled, he drove in Mays from second with the winning run in a 54 game. From what Jackie Robinson started in 1947, here was a benchmark of black accomplishment in the major leagues, an All-Star team with Aaron, Mays, and Clemente in a row. The rosters that day presented in stark relief the different racial histories of the two leagues. The American League had only one black player, Elston Howard, who entered the game as a defensive replacement and had no at-bats. The National League fielded five black starters-Maury Wills at shortstop, Bill White at first, Orlando Cepeda in left, Mays in center, and Clemente in right, with Aaron, Frank Robinson, George Altman, and Johnny Roseboro coming off the bench. Those nine players combined for nine of their team's eleven hits and drove in all five runs. Clemente at last was voted most valuable player, for one game.

In the locker room afterward, he was beaming about his game-winning hit off knuckleball pitcher Hoyt Wilhelm. The national press corps gathered around as he described the decisive moment. The a.s.sociated Press account quoted Clemente as he sounded, or as the reporter thought he sounded, using exaggerated phonetic spelling. (In the Post-Gazette, this account ran under the headline I GET HEET, I FEEL GOOD). "I jus' try to sacrifice myself, so I get runner to third if I do, I feel good. But I get heet and Willie scores and I feel better than good," Clemente was quoted as saying. "When I come to plate in la.s.s eening, with Mays on second and n.o.body out, I ask myself, 'Now, what would Skipper [Murtaugh] want me to do?' He want me to hit to right side to send Willie to third so he could score on grounder or fly ball. So I say, 'I 'ope that Weelhelm peetch me outside, so I could hit to right,' but he peetch me inside and I meet it and hit it in right field. Willie runs to third and to home plate and the game is over. That make me feel real good. Just like when Pittsburgh won the World Series."

Most of the press pack then moved on to the locker of Stu Miller, the little relief pitcher who had stolen the show with a comic absurdity. Before throwing his first pitch in the ninth inning, with the National Leaguers clinging to a 32 lead, Miller balked when the vicious winds at Candlestick literally blew him off the mound. The balk moved American League runners up to second and third, and the tying run then scored on an error by third baseman Ken Boyer, one of three errors in the wind-ravaged inning. For most of the press, Miller and the wind were the stories of the day. The San Francisco Chronicle ran a boldface banner headline above the masthead on the front page: HOW WIND CONQUERED MIGHTY ALL-STARS. Noting the seven errors in the contest, Chronicle sports editor Art Rosenbaum said the winds turned the game into "a Mickey Mouse comedy." As much type was devoted to mustard-stained hot-dog wrappers that swirled around the field in the late innings as to the play of the National League's right fielder.

But for those who stuck around his locker afterward, Clemente had more to say. In the AP story, it all came out, the combustible mix of pride and anger that had been churning inside him for months, in words that out of context seemed to walk a fine line between righteous plea and egotistical rant. At least the quotes this time were not presented in condescending phonetics. "I am hitting for higher average than last year and have more home runs than last year at the time of the All-Star game," Clemente said. "I had best year in majors last year and I was the league's most valuable player but I didn't get one first place vote [Not so, he did receive exactly one first-place vote]. The papers gave it to Groat, but I drive in more runs, and I hit more b.a.l.l.s and I helped win more games. I know Groat is a Pittsburgh boy, but the writers made me feel bad . . . I talked to other players in the league and they all told me I was most valuable. This year, the players voted me on the All-Star team and I am feeling very good that I did not let them down."

The next morning in the Post-Gazette, sports editor Al Abrams took note of Clemente's explosion and came to his defense. The column reflecte