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

  “Easily the best baseball book of this year. . . . It took a writer of David Maraniss’s ability to cut through the haze of legend and make Clemente human again. . . . Maraniss writes deftly and does fine reporting. . . . Maraniss’s prose is elegant.”

  —Bob D’Angelo, The Tampa Tribune

  “Clemente can keep the memory of The Great One alive.”

  —Bob Hoover, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

  “Splendid. . . . This biography offers Clemente as a model for the international future of baseball and a hope for the future of the game.”

  —Patrick Willard, The Tennessean

  “In David Maraniss, the great right fielder of the Pittsburgh Pirates has a worthy biographer, and Clemente is the best baseball book of 2006 so far.”

  —Bruce Dancis, The Sacramento Bee

  “Brilliant. . . . What puts Maraniss in the top league is his ability not only to describe all the trees but to go above them—to show a profound understanding of his subject from every angle.”

  —Kim Eisler, Washingtonian

  “A compelling biography. . . . Maraniss is a charismatic listener, a strong archival researcher, and a fluid writer. . . . Maraniss captures, simultaneously, Clemente the baseball star, Clemente the family man, Clemente the civil rights pioneer, Clemente the humanitarian, and Clemente the occasional diva. . . . Maraniss’s biography is worthy enough to serve as a memorial.”

  —Steven Weinberg, The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)

  “Clemente is a hit. . . . Maraniss’s new biography of the first Latino Hall of Famer [is] a treasure: It is doggedly researched . . . and provides a rounded portrait of a seminal figure in baseball history.”

  —Neil Best, Newsday (column)

  “David Maraniss, whose biography of Vince Lombardi was a tour de force, has delivered another brilliant effort with Clemente.”

  —Bill Madden, Daily News (New York)

  “Authoritative. . . . Maraniss brings Clemente to life beyond the enviable on-field statistics and storied laser-like heaves to third and home from deep in the right-field corner.”

  —Ray Sanchez, Newsday

  “Maraniss brings the Pittsburgh outfielder’s life back to us in vivid and entrancing detail. . . . As Clemente’s rifle throws almost always did, Maraniss’s writing hits the mark again.”

  —Bryan French, Fort Worth Star-Telegram

  “Superb. . . . I had hopes that Maraniss’s biography would be as good as his previous sports biography, When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi. I was not disappointed. . . . Maraniss loves baseball, and the book is a pleasure to read. . . . This is an American story, in the broadest sense of the term.”

  —Elizabeth DiNovella, The Progressive

  “This baseball season is fielding an unusually rich, deep selection of books. . . . At the top is David Maraniss’s biography, Clemente.”

  —Carol Herwig, USA Today

  “Maraniss brings imagination, energy, and even poetry to his superb biography of one of the greatest ballplayers ever to delight a stadium full of fans. . . . Clemente’s exceptional story . . . is well known among baseball fans. The achievement of Maraniss’s book should be to introduce this remarkable man to a much wider audience.”

  —Bill Littlefield, The Boston Globe

  “Maraniss captures Clemente in all his ‘beautiful fury.’ . . . Maraniss’s skills as a reporter raise this above many sports biographies.”

  —John Wilkens, The San Diego Union-Tribune

  “Thoroughly entertaining.”

  —Erik Spanberg, The Christian Science Monitor

  “[Maraniss is] one of the two premier sports biographers of the era.”

  —Jeff Pearlman, Newsday

  “Maraniss admirably fills in the blanks in a life and a death each shrouded in its own kind of mystery. . . . Maraniss does a thorough job of revealing the public and the inner Clemente and adding to the historical record of the tragic plane crash. . . . [An] intriguing picture of baseball’s first Latin American Hall of Famer.”

  —Peter Schmuck, Baltimore Sun

  “A graceful and informative biography. . . . Box scores and season totals are brought to life by ex-players reminiscing. . . . And there are priceless baseball back stories.”

  —James Rowen, The Capital Times (Madison, Wisconsin)

  “Fantastic.”

  —Daniel Brown, San Jose Mercury News

  “A welcome addition to the baseball library. Maraniss . . . is adept at laying the cultural groundwork, no insignificant thing in Clemente’s story.”

  —Bill Reynolds, The Providence Journal

  “Maraniss does a great job of conveying Clemente’s fierce pride and genuinely heroic philanthropy.”

  —Philip Martin, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

  “Clemente is much like the man. Dignified. Proud. Elegant. Graceful. . . . The definitive book on the late Clemente.”

  —Bob Hersom, The Sunday Oklahoman

  “An out-of-the-park tape-measure blast that could be one of the best sports biographies ever written.”

  —Marc Horton, Edmonton Journal (Alberta)

  “A thorough and engaging look at Clemente. . . . Maraniss has done a good job providing a look at a fallible but heroic figure.”

  —David King, San Antonio Express-News

  “Maraniss wipes away the mist of time to restore Clemente’s depth and sharp edges. It’s a celebratory book, because Maraniss is a fan. But it’s also an honest biography. . . . Reading Maraniss’s chapters on the plane crash is like reading Gabriel García Márquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold.”

  —Jim Higgins, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (feature)

  “A finely paced account of the Puerto Rican player’s life by a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter.”

  —John B. Saul, The Seattle Times

  “Maraniss is a skillful, thorough writer with an eye for telling detail. His books bespeak his passion and compassion without gilding their subjects. . . . [Maraniss is] a fact-finding contemporary historian with an artist’s touch and feel.”

  —Ed Bark, The Dallas Morning News

  “For once, a player is measured not by his stats but by the personal qualities and quirks that made him special. Maraniss’s bio is poetic, conveying the outfielder’s talent, drive, and love for his Puerto Rican homeland. No wonder he’s practically a saint in Latin America.”

  —Entertainment Weekly (Grade: A-)

  “The too-short life and tragic death of the beloved Hall of Fame Pirates slugger and Latino trailblazer take center-field honors in this incisive, lyrical chronicle by a Pulitzer-winning journalist.”

  —Entertainment Weekly (“The Must List”)

  “I felt . . . joy and astonishment reading through David Maraniss’s compelling biography Clemente. . . . What makes this book so good is that Maraniss is such a fine researcher. . . . Maraniss is able to peel back one layer after another on what had been the accepted and conventional sports reporting of that era. . . . This book draws a compassionate account that gives the human dimension to the life of this remarkable ballplayer.”

  —John C. Ensslin, Rocky Mountain News

  “The stats are not what made Clemente a legend, and author David Maraniss’s wonderful narrative details the reasons why Clemente the humanitarian is revered to this day. . . . The story that Maraniss tells is one of a real man, not of a saint. Clemente would have been pleased.”

  —Pamela Moreland, San Jose Mercury News

  “Maraniss gets across both Clemente’s feeling of being underappreciated, his truly spectacular talents, and his commitment to Hispanic players. His accou
nt of the events leading up to Clemente’s death in 1972 in a rackety plane trying to get relief supplies to Nicaraguan earthquake victims is excellent and detailed.”

  —Katherine A. Powers, The Boston Globe

  “Maraniss has done here for Clemente what his When Pride Still Mattered did for Vince Lombardi; namely, to put a stamp of immortality on his subject without casting him in bronze. . . . Maraniss’s Clemente is the first biography to approach Clemente’s story with both a fan’s passion and an outsider’s ability to convey that passion.”

  —Allen Barra, The New York Sun

  “Captures the pride, anger, artistry, and flair that made the Pittsburgh Pirate right fielder so special. It is an admiring portrait, but written with an awareness of its subject’s flaws. . . . Despite Maraniss’s grasp of the intangible elements of Clemente’s greatness, it is his no-nonsense research and reporting that sets this book apart. His mining of contemporaneous newspaper and magazine clips, and radio transcripts, gives a freshness to decades-old material. . . . His interviews and document-gathering provide the most detailed picture yet of Clemente’s fateful final months. . . . Maraniss’s book brings a new sense of heartache and outrage to the tragedy and a fresh appreciation of Clemente’s life as a whole.”

  —George Bennett, The Palm Beach Post

  “It is high time that such a heavyweight as David Maraniss . . . should deliver such a thorough and enjoyable read as Clemente. . . . Maraniss nails the legend perfectly.”

  —Garth Woolsey, The Toronto Star

  “A well-balanced look at a complicated man who truly left the Earth too soon.”

  —Rick Shefchik, Saint Paul Pioneer Press

  “To say that [Maraniss] hits a home run is an understatement. . . . The book is a lot like its subject . . . powerful, intense, hard-hitting and loaded with soul.”

  —Latino SUAVE magazine

  “What Maraniss unearths is not only a complex view of a hero but a vivid portrait of the cultural landscape of the United States. . . . Readers will walk away with an understanding of the myth and the man.”

  —Segunda Juventud

  “A detailed, well-researched testament to Clemente’s intense, all-too-brief life.”

  —BookPage

  “A nuanced, expertly written life of much more than a sports hero. . . . He is clearly at home with the workings of the game. . . . Yet Maraniss scores a double play by tracking Clemente’s evolution as a social force.”

  —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

  “Maraniss sticks to the facts in this respectful and dispassionate account. . . . Maraniss deftly balances baseball and loftier concerns like racism; he presents a nuanced picture of a ballplayer more complicated than the encomiums would suggest, while still wholly deserving them.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “David Maraniss weaves a compelling narrative of the pride, petulance, passion, will, and humanity of one of baseball’s most accomplished and tragic figures.”

  —Pages magazine

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  Contents

  Memory and Myth

  1. Something That Never Ends

  2. Where Momen Came From

  3. Dream of Deeds

  4. The Residue of Design

  5. ¡Arriba! ¡Arriba!

  6. Alone at the Miracle

  7. Pride and Prejudice

  8. Fever

  9. Passion

  10. A Circular Stage

  11. El Día Más Grande

  12. Tip of the Cap

  13. Temblor

  14. Cockroach Corner

  15. December

  16. Out of the Sea

  Myth and Memory

  Photographs

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Notes

  Appendix

  Selected Bibliography

  Index

  In memory of Elliott Maraniss,

  my wonderful dad,

  the sweet-swinging left hander

  from Abraham Lincoln High

  Good actions ennoble us, we are the sons of our own deeds.

  —MIGUEL DE CERVANTES

  PHOTO BY LINDA MARANISS

  Memory and Myth

  THE FAMILIAR SOUNDS OF MODERN BASEBALL, PINGS OF aluminum bats punctuating the steady drone of a crowd, can be heard from the street a half-block away. It is late on a Sunday afternoon in February, overcast and drizzly in Carolina, Puerto Rico. Inside the stadium, there is a game going on, the Escuela de Deportiva against Bayamón. Nothing special, just teenage boys playing ball, the way they do every afternoon, and then the right fielder from Deportiva scoops up a base hit and fires to second, his throw a bullet—low, hard, right on the bag. Groups of men huddle in the stands, talking, laughing, playing cards, barely paying attention, or so it seems until the throw. It elicits a murmur of recognition, and suddenly they come alive, stirred by communal memory. All fires are one fire, the novelist Julio Cortázar once wrote. And all arms are one arm. The throw from right field reminds them of the original, the unsurpassable arm of the man for whom the stadium is named, Roberto Clemente.

  Beyond the stadium, closer to the street, stands a cenotaph thirty feet long and seven and a half feet high. It is the nearest thing to a headstone for Carolina’s favorite son. On its three panels the sculptor José Buscaglia has etched the stations of the cross of Roberto Clemente’s thirty-eight years on this earth. In the far left panel, Roberto is a babe, held in the arms of his mother in the barrio of San Antón, and his father is seen working in the nearby cane fields. In the far right panel, Clemente passes from greatness into legend; first he is being honored for his three-thousandth hit, then his spirit is received by a figure of death in the Atlantic’s watery grave, and finally his widow holds the plaque for his induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. But the center panel is the most telling. There, between scenes of Clemente batting, running, fielding, throwing, visiting hospitals, and consoling the sick and the poor, he is depicted standing regal and alone, holding a lamb.

  Memory and myth are entwined in the Clemente story. He has been dead for more than three decades, yet he remains vivid in the sporting consciousness while other athletes come and go, and this despite the fact that he played his entire career in relative obscurity, away from the mythmakers of New York and Los Angeles. Forty public schools, two hospitals, and more than two hundred parks and ballfields bear his name, from Carolina, Puerto Rico, where he was born, to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he played, to far-off Mannheim, Germany. In the world of memorabilia, the demand for anything Clemente is second only to Mickey Mantle, and far greater than Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Juan Marichal, or any other black or Latin players. Extraordinary as he was, Clemente was not the greatest who ever played the game, yet there was something about him that elevated him into his own realm. Much of it had to do with the way he died. He was young. He went down in a plane crash. His body was lost to the sea, never found. He was on a mission of mercy, leaving his family on New Year’s Eve to come to the aid of strangers. In Spanish, Clemente means merciful. Some of it had to do with the way he looked and played on the ball field, No. 21, perfectly cut in his Pirates uniform, a portrait of solemn beauty, with his defiant jaw and soulful eyes. And much of it had to do with the way he lived. In sainthood, his people put a lamb in his arms, but he was no saint, and certainly not docile. He was agitated, beautiful, sentimental, unsettled, sweet, serious, selfless, haunted, sensitive, contradictory, and intensely proud of everything about his native land, including himself. To borrow the words of the Puerto Rican poet Enrique Zorrilla, what burned in the cheeks of Roberto Clemente was “the fire of dignity.”
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  Something That Never Ends

  IT WAS LONG PAST MIDNIGHT IN MANAGUA, NICARAGUA, and Roberto Clemente could not sleep. Not sleeping at night was part of his routine, the same wherever he went. At his apartment at Chatham West in Pittsburgh, at his house atop the hill in Río Piedras, Puerto Rico, on the team plane during late-night cross-country flights, at road-trip hotels in Chicago, St. Louis, or Cincinnati—at each of them equally he could not sleep. He might find rest after sunrise, under the covers, with the air conditioner turned full blast and the drapes shut and taped tight to the wall so no light could penetrate a blackened room. Or he might doze off at work after lunch, in some subterranean chamber of a stadium, dark and cool. In the old days at Forbes Field, he often slipped away from his teammates before a game and took a nap inside the vacant clubhouse of the football Steelers. Left-handed pitcher Juan Pizarro, his countryman and occasional teammate, found him there once and started calling him Old Sleepy Head.

  The hours from one to five in the morning were another matter. Sleep rarely came to him then, and if by chance he did drift off, he might be startled back into consciousness by a nightmare. In one bad dream that had haunted him recently, he was hiding under a house, feeling grave danger. In another, he was on a crashing plane. His wife, Vera, knew all about these recurring nightmares. She knew that he looked for omens and that he believed he would die young.

  On this night, November 15, 1972, Vera was home in Puerto Rico with their three young boys. She would join Roberto in Managua in a few days. Until then he was on his own at the Hotel Inter-Continental. His friend, Osvaldo Gil, had the adjacent room, and at Clemente’s insistence they kept the doors open between the two so they could come and go like family. Deep into the night, they stayed up talking, Roberto down to his boxer shorts. That was all he would wear in the hotel room, his sculpted mahogany torso at age thirty-eight still evoking a world-class ballet dancer, with muscled shoulders rippling down to a narrow waist, thirty inches, the same measurement he had as a teenager, and powerful wrists, and hands so magical they were said to have eyes at their fingertips.