|
David Maraniss,
author of
Clemente:
The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero
____________________
On New Year's Eve 1972, following eighteen magnificent
seasons in the major leagues, Roberto Clemente died a hero's death, killed
in a plane crash as he attempted to deliver food and medical supplies to
Nicaragua after a devastating earthquake. Author David Maraniss now brings
the great baseball player brilliantly back to life in Clemente: The Passion
and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero.
While Maraniss offers thrilling accounts of Clemente's
underdog Pirates' two World Series victories, Clemente is more than
just another baseball book. Roberto Clemente was a work of art in a game
too often defined by statistics. He was also that rare athlete who rose above
sports to become a symbol of larger themes, the Jackie Robinson of the
Spanish-speaking world, who paved the way for waves of Latino players who
followed in later generations.
The Clemente that Maraniss evokes was a ballplayer of
determination, grace, and dignity who insisted that his responsibilities
extended beyond the playing field.#
Jerry Jazz Musician
contributor Paul Hallaman talks with Maraniss about Clemente's baseball
career and of the final days of an American hero whose impact on the world
of baseball and beyond lives on.
Interview Topics
Roberto Clemente's childhood
Clemente discovered as a
ballplayer
The challenges of life in
Canada
Segregation during
spring training in Florida
Life in Pittsburgh
Being passed over as MVP
How Clemente was portrayed
in the media
The sources Maraniss used
for the book
Clemente's doomed flight
to Nicaragua
Clemente's tough side
Clemente the hypochondriac
The abduction story
Clemente's role in
the birth of free agency
His 1971 World Series
performance
Clemente's legendary
status among Latino players
_____________________________________
"I want to be remembered as a ballplayer who gave all he had to give."
-Roberto Clemente
*
Ti Mon Bo  ,
by Tito Puente
________________________________________________
PH
After having written this book, is it possible for you to say who Roberto
Clemente was?
DM Who can know if it is possible to know
who any human being is or was? It is the challenge of the biographer
to try to understand somebody, and the forces that shaped him and why they
do what they do. I think you can get close in those regards, but ninety percent
of anyone's life is played in their own brain, and even the people closest
to them don't really know that part of the person. I think I could
understand why Clemente was the way he was, but to say that you really know
any other human being is pretty difficult. You can only get so far.
PH As a biographer, was Clemente more of an
enigma than your earlier subjects, Vince Lombardi and Bill Clinton?
DM A little more than Lombardi, but no more
than Bill Clinton, who was contradictory and sort of hard to figure out.
But it was during my work on the Clinton book when I figured out my philosophy
of biography and dealing with humans, which is that every human being is
a bundle of contradictions.
A young Roberto Clemente, in the uniform of the Sello Rojo team
_____
Caravan ,
by Duke Ellington (written by Juan Tizol) |
PH Clemente's childhood was spent in Carolina,
Puerto Rico. What were his parents like?
DM His father Melchor was a foreman in the
sugar cane fields of Carolina, and his mother Luisa also worked as, among
other things, a butcher. Clemente would often say that he got his strong
right throwing arm from his mom. Although Clemente was born in 1934
-- in the heart of the depression -- they weren't poor by Puerto Rican standards.
He had several older brothers and an older sister, who tragically died when
Clemente was an infant. She burned to death on a stove outside her house,
which was a family trauma.
All anyone remembers about Roberto Clemente is that from a very early age
he always had something in his hand that resembled a ball. It may have been
a roll of tape, or a sock or bottle caps -- whatever it was, he was always
throwing something. He loved baseball, and would take the bus from Carolina
to San Juan to watch the Winter League baseball games. In that era, many
of the Negro League stars who played in the United States would go play there.
Clemente's first hero was Monte Irvin of the Negro League's New York Eagles,
and who later played for the New York Giants. Clemente was kind of a shy
kid, and he would stand outside of Sixto Escobar, the stadium where Irwin
played, and wait for him to walk by so he could carry his suit bag into the
stadium. |
Monte Irvin
_____
Go Man Go! ,
by Cesar Concepcion |
Al Campanis
*
Photograph by Harold Rhodenbaugh
Branch Rickey |
PH
Eventually Clemente was discovered by a Dodgers scout, Al Campanis.
DM Yes. Campanis came over from Cuba, where
he had been coaching. He was a scout in Puerto Rico too, and his first scouting
report gave Clemente all "A's." The Dodgers signed him to a bonus on the
basis of that report. Clemente very much wanted to play in New York because
it was a place he had heard of -- there was, of course, a very strong connection
between Puerto Rico and New York City. He also wanted to play there
because he had some relatives in New York. After he signed as an
eighteen-year-old bonus baby with the Dodgers, he went to Montreal, which
was the Dodger's AAA affiliate club in the International League. After
he joined the team, Clemente didn't really know what was going on for awhile
because they weren't playing him, and in fact they were trying to hide him.
Since they didn't put him on their forty-man roster, he only got to
play occasionally. It was the most frustrating season of his baseball
career.
PH
His living in Canada must have posed some interesting challenges for
him…
DM It was his first time living outside of
Puerto Rico, so it was particularly interesting since he was dealing not
with just one new language, but two -- French and English. He knew
a little bit of English, and the daughter of the French-Canadian he was living
with knew some English, so he communicated with her. His roommate was
a Cuban shortstop named Chico Fernandez, who was playing every day, and who
spent much of his time counseling Clemente not to give up and to hang in
there, that there were reasons why he wasn't playing. The real reason was
that the Dodgers were trying to hide him from anybody who may draft him in
the supplemental draft.
PH But they couldn't hide him from Branch
Rickey, could they?
DM That's right. By this time, there
was no love lost between Rickey and Walter O'Malley of the Dodgers, who had
let him go. So, he hated the Dodgers. He was now trying to rebuild
the Pittsburgh Pirates, and had the help of two great scouts, Clyde Sukeforth
and Howie Haak, both of whom knew about Clemente. They would go up
to watch the Montreal team play, and even if Clemente didn't get into the
game, they would see him in batting practice or fielding practice before.
They had him earmarked as their top pick, and wound up stealing him
from the Dodgers after the season was over. |
Roberto Clemente in a Montreal uniform |
| PH After Clemente was signed by the Pirate organization
in 1955, he experienced a segregated spring training camp in Fort Myers,
Florida. Can you talk a little about that?
DM Yes, it was absolutely segregated. The
first black player, a second baseman named Curt Roberts, had come before
him. Clemente and the other black players on the Pirates didn't stay
with the rest of the team at the downtown Fort Myers hotel, but instead stayed
with black families who lived in the poor neighborhoods of the community.
When they traveled to other spring training games, they usually couldn't
eat in the restaurants the white players did, so they would have to stay
on the team bus. That infuriated Clemente so much that he demanded
the general manager buy a station wagon for the black and Latino players
to travel in so they wouldn't have to be subjected to waiting for the white
players while they ate. This went on for the first eight years of
Clemente's career. Imagine that in the spring training of 1961 -- the
year following the Pirate's World Series victory over the Yankees -- Clemente
couldn't attend the celebration the team held because it took place at a
country club that didn't allow blacks! Here he was, the star of the
world championship baseball team, a man who was treated as a hero in Puerto
Rico when he went home that winter, yet unable to play in the spring golf
outings with his teammates because of segregation. That spring of 1961
was during the early stages of the civil rights movement, and black players
-- Clemente being among them -- were starting to say "enough of this." |
photo Clemente Family collection
Clemente and wife Vera during spring training
"Beneath the apparently tranquil surface of baseball there is a
growing feeling of resentment among Negro major leaguers who still experience
embarrassment, humiliation, and even indignities during spring training in
the south. The Negro player who is accepted as a first class citizen in the
regular season is tired of being a second class citizen in spring
training."
- Wendell Smith, Pittsburgh Courier, January 23, 1961
_____
Dile Que Por Mi No Tema , by Celia Cruz and Tito Puente |
"Bob" Clemente, 1961 Topps baseball card
*
*
photo by George Silk
World Series, Pittsburgh, 1960
"The field is left to the fans, hundreds of them, running aimlessly,
singing endless choruses of what Red Smith now calls "'the tinny horror entitled
"The Bucs are Going All the Way.'" A man in a brown shirt 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."
- David Maraniss
_____
Pirate fans
celebrate
the 1960 victory |
PH
While he wanted to sign with one of the New York clubs because
of its rich culture and his connection to family there, he wound up in
Pittsburgh, which, as you point out in your book, lacked a significant Hispanic
community. His life in Pittsburgh was pretty challenging, wasn't it?
DM Absolutely. Pittsburgh of that era
had no Latino population to speak of, so he faced a double barrel of race
and language. For many years, he lived with a family in a black
neighborhood of the Hill District, but he was still somewhat apart because
of the language barrier. That made it a difficult situation, along with the
fact that Pittsburgh was not an easy place to live because it was a
quintessentially white, blue collar, ethnic town. It took a long time for
Clemente and Pittsburgh to find one another, but it eventually happened,
which is a testament to both of them.
PH
The Pirates had a dream season in 1960, yet Clemente was passed over
in the Most Valuable Player voting...
DM He was passed over for the entire decade,
and in that year, not only was he passed over, he finished eighth in the
voting. He also discovered that one of the leading Pittsburgh sports
writers was actively campaigning against him. So, he wasn't just upset
because his teammate Dick Groat received the award, or that several other
less worthy people like Lindy McDaniel of the Cardinals got more votes, he
was most upset because some people really didn't want him to receive any
recognition, which infuriated him all winter. When he came back from
San Juan that spring, he was angry and determined, which fueled him for the
entire incredible decade of the sixties, when he was the best hitter in the
National League.
PH Clemente was pretty outspoken about being
overlooked. At the 1961 All Star game, he said, "I had the best year in the
majors, but I didn't get one first place vote." In fact, he did get one first
place vote, nonetheless it was quite a snub considering the year he had in
1960.
DM When a team that isn't expected to win
the pennant has a successful year, it is usually because they get off to
a brilliant start and then carry that magic through the rest of the year.
Most people acknowledge that Clemente was the spark plug on the team
the entire season, and in particular he carried the Pirates during April,
May and June. He then finished the season with the most runs batted
in on the team, and had one of the greatest right fielding seasons in history.
Despite this, he finished third in MVP voting among his own team behind
Groat and Don Hoak. He wasn't upset that Groat and Hoak or any of his
other teammates got this recognition -- he just felt that he was overlooked
because of his race and language.
PH
He was constantly being quoted by American newspapers in broken
English…
DM He was a very intelligent man, and he
was reduced to something less than that by sportswriters who didn't know
any Spanish. That was not something he took lightly. |
PH Interestingly enough, even the Pittsburgh
Courier -- the major black newspaper at the time -- did the same thing.
DM Yes, that's right. He had some tension
with that paper, who questioned him about whether or not he considered himself
to be black. It was very interesting for me to research the back issues
of the Courier and study Clemente from that perspective, which I don't
think had been done before. They really covered black baseball players
throughout the major leagues with a depth and warmth you didn't see from
the mainstream press.
PH
How long did it take for you to complete this book, and what were some
of the sources you used?
DM It took about three years to write the
book. I took two extended trips to Puerto Rico, where I interviewed many
people, including his widow, brother, sons, and several of his old buddy
ballplayers like Vic Power, who happened to be one of my favorite players
when I was a kid. I also traveled around the country to interview old
Pirate players, several of whom still live in Pittsburgh. I did a lot of
research at the Library of Congress in Washington as well. It turns out that
Branch Rickey's papers are housed there because of his sociological importance
in American history -- specifically bringing Jackie Robinson to the Dodgers
and breaking the color line. Rickey had voluminous records, which helped
me learn about the Pirates of the 1950's. The Pittsburgh Courier was
a major source, and I also had help from friends and researchers who looked
at papers in Fort Myers as well as in Pittsburgh. The final one-fifth
or so of the book is about the plane crash that killed Clemente, and it took
a lot of effort to finally get all of the internal documents on the crash
as well as the depositions of people who were involved with the plane beforehand.
That was really the major reporting coup of the book.
| PH
The final days of Clemente's life were spent in response to the major
earthquake in Managua, Nicaragua, a few days before Christmas in 1972.
DM Yes, it is a tragic and depressing story,
because it could have been prevented. It is also a very heroic story.
Clemente had been in Nicaragua a month earlier as the manager of the
Puerto Rican team entered in the amateur World Series. When he heard about
the earthquake on December twenty-third, he immediately went into action.
He organized a committee in San Juan and raised money for, among other
things, medical equipment and food to be sent to Nicaragua. He leased
a plane that took two planeloads of humanitarian aid to Managua, but then
received reports that it was being diverted by Anastasio Somoza, who was
the strong-arm leader of Nicaragua at that time. Clemente felt that
if he went, the aid would get to the people.
So, he got on a DC-7 that was purchased a few months earlier in an area of
the Miami International Airport they called "Cockroach Corner," which is
where the tramp airline operators bought and sold their crummy old planes.
If there ever was a plane that should not have been allowed to take
off, it was that plane. The owner didn't know how to fly it, yet he
was the co-pilot on the ill-fated flight. The pilot was someone the
owner rounded up, and he had several violations against him. For one
thing, he was being chased by the Federal Aviation Administration because
he had sixty-six earlier violations for taking off in planes that never should
have left the ground. On top of that, he hadn't slept for thirty hours.
There was no flight engineer available, so he rounded up a mechanic
to be the flight engineer. In addition to all this ineptitude, the
plane was overloaded by five thousand pounds. That was the plane that
Roberto Clemente unwittingly boarded, not knowing any of that history. The
plane never should have been allowed to take off. |
Managua, Nicaragua, in ruins, December 23, 1972
*
From the air, Managua seemed a city under siege. Flames poured from its shattered downtown area, people and traffic scrambled through whole neighborhoods of rubble, searching out the remnants of lives and belongings. For those who could remember March 31, 1931, this was another visit by an old enemy, the first recurrence of a seismic nightmare 41 years past.
The earthquake which struck the Nicaraguan capital near midnight on December 23 broke ground, streets, and structures with its earth-heaving blows from below, and transformed the Central American nation's only major city into a ruined graveyard. Although not a large earthquake at magnitude 6.2, the Nicaraguan shock appeared to have had a shallow focus virtually beneath the city, so that much of the seismic energy released had to be absorbed by Managua.
For almost a day, the crippled city lay in dreadful silence, cut off from the world except for occasional broadcasts received from ham radio operators before Managua's power failed. Then, as relief agencies in the United States and in nations around the Americas and the world went to work, grim reports began to come in. Two-thirds of Managua's 325,000 residents were displaced, and three-quarters of the city shaken to rubble. Worse, dry-season winds had readied the city for fire, and the tremor torched it off with broken pilot lights and gas lines and severed electrical cables. Famine and disease stalked the survivors.
Between 3,000 and 7,000 persons were killed by the earthquake, and some 15,000 were injured. The full figure may never be known, for fear of epidemic disease from rubble-entombed, decomposing bodies led authorities to level the worst areas into mass graveyards. In terms of deaths, this appears to have been the worst seismic disaster ever recorded for this hemisphere above South America. Until the Managua event, the worst earthquake of record for this part of the world was a tremor at Kingston, Jamaica, in 1692, which killed more than 2,000 persons.
Abridged from Earthquake Information Bulletin, January-Febuary 1973, Volume 5, Number 1.
|
Three weeks before Clemente's death, the DC-7 he flew in is taxied
into a ditch at San Juan International Airport
*
"On the Saturday morning of December 2, [pilot Arthur S.] Rivera and a relative, who knew even less about DC-7s than he did, took the plane out for what was called a run-up, meaning they would taxi around the airstrip, warming up the engines, but not try to fly. As practice runs go, this one was a fiasco. Rivera, in the pilot's seat, forgot to close the hydraulic pump bypass, which caused him to lose steering control. He shut down all four engines in an effort to slow the plane's momentum, but it ended up rolling in the drainage ditch. When it came to a stop, the nose of the plane was leaning down and the wings were so low that two propellers touched the ground. It is not every day that a DC-7 plunges into a ditch. Everyone who worked at the airport knew about the 'incident' (as it was called, rather than an accident), especially since it blocked the taxiway for several hours and forced air traffic controllers to reroute traffic until heavy equipment was brought in to hoist the plane out of the ditch and tow it ignominiously back to the east ramp. If Federal Aviation Administration officials in San Juan needed a reminder to keep close watch on the comings and goings of Arthur Rivera, this was it, but with his aviation history, one might assume that no further warnings would have been needed."
- David Maraniss
|
PH Throughout the course of your biography,
you write about how Clemente had premonitions that he would die in a plane
crash, and that his wife Vera would survive him. Yet here he was, on a deathtrap
of an airplane on New Year's Eve -- a holiday he traditionally spent with
his family.
DM I do think he had a fatalistic streak
because he talked many times about having a feeling that he wasn't going
to live to be an old man. And, while he had nightmares about a plane
crash, he also told his friends that he could die from falling off a horse.
It remains a mystery to me why he got on that plane. The front wheels
were off the ground and the back wheels were squished, so it was pretty apparent
that something was funny about the way it was loaded, but he got on because
he trusted the pilot and the owner. It barely got off the ground and
crashed into the Atlantic, where it broke into countless pieces. His
body was never found.
PH You devoted a chapter of your book to the
aftermath of the crash, and write of the Pirate catcher Manny Sanguillen,
who actually skipped the memorial service to join the diving team that tried
to locate Clemente's body.
DM Clemente wasn't a saint, but he was beloved
for a lot of different reasons by most of his teammates, the people of Puerto
Rico and baseball-playing Latin America, and eventually by all of Pittsburgh
because he lived with such a beauty and dignity, and because he died so
heroically. Manny Sanguillen was like his little brother on the Pirates
-- he was the one guy who could tease Clemente mercilessly, but he adored
him enormously. Most of the Pirates couldn't believe that a prince
like Clemente could die, and Sanguillen was actually the one who tried to
dive in and find his body. He was so moved by his "big brother." |
| PH
As you said, Clemente was not a saint, and he had his tough side.
DM That's right, even to the point where
he once decked a fan he thought was trying to harass him outside of Connie
Mack Stadium, knocking some of the nineteen-year-old kid's teeth loose. At
times he displayed an attitude that bordered on arrogance, and he had a flash
temper, particularly when he thought he was being misunderstood by sports
writers. He was a human being who possessed all of the frailties common
to humanity, but he was also someone whose character grew over the years
-- he didn't have or need an agent to encourage him to visit sick kids in
hospitals or get on that plane to Nicaragua. He often gave a speech
about helping people, telling the audience that they are wasting their time
on earth if they don't. That was really one of the things that drove
him, and it ultimately drove him to his death. |
AP/World Wide Photos
Roberto Clemente, Jr., kissing his father's picture |
photo El Nuevo Dia
Clemente with trainer Tony Bartirome
"Since his third season, 1957, when he had suffered through a year-long
slump that he attributed to an undiagnosed malaise (eventually, it was determined
to be a lower-back condition), he had been unable to shake the reputation
of being an oversensitive hyphchondriac. In the long run, this perception
was utterly contradicted by his enduring statistics; he would break Honus
Wagner's cherished record and play more games in a Pirates uniform in Pittsburgh
history."
- David Maraniss
*
Clemente at age thirty-eight
"Clemente would always have some sharp angles to him, not the easy,
steady-as-you-go personality of the traditional clubhouse captain. He was
shy, yet bursting with pride. He was profoundly humble, yet felt misunderstood
and undervalued. Even when he wasn't angry at a sports writer or feeling
some perceived slight, it could be hard to tell by looking at him in the
clubhouse."
- David Maraniss
_____
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PH
Early in your book you wrote, "To borrow the words of the Puerto Rican
poet Enrique Zorrilla, what burned in the cheeks of Roberto Clemente was
'the fire of dignity.'" He was a very dignified man, and in addition
to the anger about being unappreciated, he was quite sensitive about the
implication that he was obsessed about his health, to the point of being
a hypochondriac.
DM Yes, and he came back and remarked that
hypochondriacs don't produce like he does. I am a hypochondriac, and
I know one when I see one. Clemente was a hypochondriac, but he wasn't
a slacker in any way, he was just always worried about his health. His
teammates remember that on days he complained about his health, they would
say the opposing pitcher had better watch out because Clemente will probably
go five-for-five at the plate. It is true that he constantly complained
about how he felt, but there was a physical root to the problems -- a traffic
accident he got into with one of his brothers during the winter of 1954,
which affected his neck and vertebrae. He never quite recovered from
that accident because he had back and neck problems for the rest of his life.
PH He studied a lot about chiropractic care...
DM He was an amateur at it, but he was terrific
at massages. He was way ahead of his time, and tried to find non-invasive
ways to treat his physical problems.
PH He was famous for his neck rolls at the
plate. I used to play sandlot ball with my cousin Pete Peronis, who
imitated Clemente's entire routine -- the walk, the way he held his bat behind
his head, the neck rolls…
DM That is what baseball is all about, and
Clemente certainly had the idiosyncrasies that any young kid could mimic.
PH Yes, complete with being a bad ball hitter.
He never met a pitch he didn't like.
DM It is easy to imitate Clemente walking
to the plate, but much tougher to imitate his success at it.
PH You
can't talk about Clemente without discussing the famous San Diego abduction
story, which you describe in the book.
DM Yes, and who knows if it really happened?
The story is that after a game in San Diego, he was going to a place
that sold fried chicken -- a place Willie Stargell bought chicken from before
-- and as he was crossing the street, a car pulled up and three or four guys
blindfolded him, took his wallet, and abducted him, supposedly taking him
to a park. Eventually they realized that the man they abducted was
Roberto Clemente, and they gave him back his wallet and chicken. So
he was someone even the thieves revered! I am not certain how much
of this story is real, but it definitely reflects the way Clemente was regarded.
|
| PH Clemente played a role in the birth of free agency,
and was there as a Pirate player rep…
DM That's right, he was there at the dawn
of the freedom for players. He was a member of the Major League Player's
Association at the end of the sixties, which was the time when Curt Flood
appeared before the executive board and said he was going to challenge the
reserve clause. Clemente told them the story about how he had no control
over his own baseball career, and how he had wanted to play in New York but
was unable to because he didn't have any say in that decision. According
to the people I was able to interview who witnessed this, Clemente was very
instrumental in solidifying support for Flood and his challenge to the way
the owners had controlled everything in baseball for so many decades. |
Curt Flood |
1971 World Series
*
photo El Nuevo Dia
July, 1970
_____
Drume Negrita , by Ray Barretto
|
PH
There are so many incredible exploits of Clemente's as a player.
One came at the end of his career, against the Orioles in 1971, when
he had one of the great World Series performances ever.
DM I don't think anyone has ever dominated
a World Series the way Clemente did that year, and not just at the plate,
where he hit .414, but in the field and on the bases as well. His presence
in the dugout alone had an aura that really helped carry the Pirates to that
great upset. The wonderful baseball writer Roger Angell said it was
as close to perfection as anything he had ever seen on a ball field.
When I interviewed Earl Weaver, who managed the Orioles at the time, he told
me the key play in that whole Series was not one of Clemente's line shots
to right center, or the great throw he made from deep right to third base,
but it was when he hit a dribbler between the mound and first base. He
described how startled his pitcher Mike Cuellar was after picking the ball
up and seeing Clemente sprinting toward first base with his batting helmet
flying -- so startled, in fact, that he threw the ball away. Weaver
said that Clemente's hustle on that little dribbler was the turning point
of the entire Series.
In
terms of Clemente's life, this was a very important time for him. After
the seventh game he was able to be in the spotlight alone, where he finally
received the national recognition he felt he had long before deserved.
With the national television cameras on, he said that before he would
answer any questions, he wanted to say something in Spanish to his parents
back in Puerto Rico. It was a moment that had incredible reverberations
of pride and dignity throughout the Spanish-speaking world. This moment,
combined with the way he died, made him a legend. |
| PH The White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen
did the same thing following the 2005 series…
DM Yes, he did, and he really did that in
honor of Clemente. Guillen has said that he has a little shrine in
his house in honor of Clemente, so he lives on in so many ways with the rise
of Latinos in major league baseball.
PH Latinos make up almost thirty percent of
all the major league players now.
DM Yes, and that number will keep rising,
probably. Clemente was in that first wave -- he wasn't the first Latino,
but he was the greatest of the first wave. He was the first one in
the Hall of Fame, and clearly is the patron saint of Latino major leaguers.
PH Vic Power was a Latino first baseman who
had a flamboyant flair around the bag. Both he and Clemente were criticized
in the press and by some fans for their flashy defensive styles. Can
you talk a little about this?
DM I loved interviewing Power for the book,
and was extremely saddened by his passing. He and Clemente were two
of the greatest fielders in baseball history, and they had very different
personalities around their talent. Power used to say that if he was
supposed to play first base with two hands, he would put gloves on two hands.
He laughed at the criticism of his style, saying that is just who he was.
He made a joke out of everything. Clemente, on the other hand,
would be furious at that type of criticism. They were peerless, jazzy,
cool fielders, yet they both had to deal with the stereotype of being
show-boaters.
PH Clemente had the basket catch, which was
the same way Willie Mays caught the ball.
DM Clemente didn't learn it from Mays, though.
He learned it from playing softball in Puerto Rico.
PH What are the chances of Major League Baseball
retiring Clemente's jersey number, #21?
DM I don't really have strong feelings about
that, although it probably won't happen for one very practical reason, and
that is that Bud Selig is from Milwaukie, and how do you retire Clemente's
number but not Henry Aaron's? So, I don't think it will happen, but
I think Clemente is honored, and will be honored more as time goes on. The
truth is that anyone who wears that number -- which is a favorite number
among Latino players -- is honoring and remembering him. |
Vic Power
* "Whether it was his one-handed fielding, pendulum-style batting stance, sense of humor, or his heavily-accented English, Power always seemed to be vilified, criticized, and misunderstood. At various times in his major league career, he was accused of being 'slothful, self-indulgent, a poor team man, a clubhouse lawyer, a playboy, a showboat, a hot dog, a hothead, and a losing ballplayer.' Even Power's name caused resentment and alienation, particularly in his home land of Puerto Rico."
- Russell Wolinsky
*
Clemente, Mays, Aaron
*
"The virtuosity of Roberto Clemente went virtually unnoticed outside
Pittsburgh, but those scorching line drives he thwacked during the first
day of spring training just kept flying off his Frenchy Uhalt bat month after
month. After he won a game in San Francisco with a grand slam, Danny Murtaugh,
for the first time, started comparing his right fielder with the best in
the game. 'He's as good an outfielder in right field as…Willie Mays
is in center. There isn't anything he can't do.'"
- David Maraniss
_____
Clemente (Estrella 21), by Poldo Castro and Luis Garcia
|
_____________________________________
"Always, they said Babe Ruth was the best there was. They said you’d
really have to be something to be like Babe Ruth. But Babe Ruth was an American
player. What we needed was a Puerto Rican player they could say that about,
someone to look up to and try to equal."
-Roberto Clemente
_____
El Artista "> El Artista " onclick="window.open('http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0019B4OLU?ie=UTF8&tag=jerryjazzmusicia&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B0019B4OLU')">El Artista , by Ismael Miranda
Clemente:
The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero
by
David Maraniss
*
About David Maraniss
David Maraniss is an associate editor at The Washington Post and
the author of the critically acclaimed bestsellers They Marched Into
Sunlight, When Pride Still Mattered, and First in His Class. He
won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting and has been a Pulitzer
finalist three other times. He lives in Washington, D.C., and Madison,
Wisconsin, with his wife, Linda. They have two grown children.
*
Roberto Clemente products at Amazon.com
David Maraniss products at Amazon.com
_______________________________
This interview took place on April 4, 2006
*
If you enjoyed this interview, you may want to read our interview with Jackie Robinson biographer Scott Simon.
_______________________________
Other
Jerry Jazz Musician interviews
# Text from publisher.
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