Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero (19 page)

Clemente, batting third for the Pirates, had two hits, as did each of the next four men in the lineup (Nelson, Cimoli, Burgess, and Hoak), but Bob Turley, the Yankees starter, was able to scatter thirteen hits and allow only three runs from the losing side.
The batting star of the game was Mickey Mantle, who drove in five and clouted two homers, including a tape-measure blast that he hit right-handed. The ball landed in an area over the right-center field vines that had been reached only by lefty sluggers Stan Musial, Duke Snider, and Dale Long. A city policeman who happened to be standing near where the ball came down helped estimate its distance at 478 feet. Handsome Mick was an irresistible story line in the press box. Stengel talked about how he played on one leg and about how he laboriously taped his aching legs for an hour before each game. “He’ll always be a hero in our book,” wrote David Condon of the
Chicago Tribune.
“He had human faults, but he has super human courage.”

Mantle also had more baseball common sense than most sportswriters. Arthur Daley of the
Times,
in prose only slightly more dismissive than his peers, wrote that “the Pirates may never recover from the humiliation of their horrendous rout. It was one that didn’t just jar them to their shoe tops. It had to penetrate deeper, all the way to the subconscious, and create a fear complex that could destroy morale.” The Mick would have none of that. He understood the rhythms of the game, and the dangers of depleting energy in a one-sided contest. To Mantle, the home runs were a waste, since they came in a blowout. “I wish I could have saved them for a time when they meant something,” he said.

With the series now moving to New York, the Pirates left Pittsburgh at six o’clock that night, flying the same United Airlines charter they had used all season. The pilot, Captain Joe Magnano, was from Long Island and had grown up a Yankees fan, but came to identify with the Pirates. Law, Burgess, and Cimoli were interested in flying and were always hanging around the cockpit. Clemente was among those who hated to fly and tried, usually in vain, to sleep on the plane so he
wouldn’t have to brood about every thump or bump. The Yankees, at Stengel’s insistence (he wanted to “ride herd” on them, it was said), traveled by train, reserving five Pullman cars in the Pennsylvania Railroad’s
Pittsburgher
express. The sportswriting tribe tagged along, as did a few hundred boisterous Pirates fans, who upon arrival in New York found themselves virtually alone in the belief that the series would last enough games for a return to Forbes Field. Al Abrams, the
Post-Gazette
sports editor, strolled into the lobby of the Commodore Hotel to see a tabloid headline about Game 2—
MURDER IN PITTSBURGH.
“Every time I go outside the hotel,” he noted, “I hear dire consequences for the Pirates.” When the teams worked out at Yankee Stadium on Friday, the off-day, there was no front-page headline, though Red Smith might have appreciated this priority: Khrushchev moved out of the Waldorf-Astoria, making room for the World Series headquarters. There was no citywide delirium like in Pittsburgh; a World Series was considered an annual event in New York, but still by eight on the morning of game day there were three thousand people waiting in line for bleacher seats, and five hours later the stadium was filling with seventy thousand fans.

With Clemente on the Pirates and countryman Luis (Tite) Arroyo pitching in relief for the Yankees, the series was drawing great interest in Puerto Rico and all of the Caribbean. The North American press tended to treat the Latin contingent as fodder for lighthearted comedy. There was nothing malevolent about this, but it reflected the attitudes of the time and the fact that Spanish-speaking players and their culture were still regarded as oddities. Clemente was quoted in the locker room before the third game telling his teammates how thrilled he was that his family and friends in Puerto Rico could see him play on television for the first time. “I shave, put on cologne and powder so I smell good for television,” he reportedly said. As the game was getting under way, with Vinegar Bend Mizell starting for the Pirates, there was guffawing in the press box about what Al Abrams called a “crisis” faced by Latin American journalists, who struggled with the pronunciation of Mizell’s colorful appellation. Vinegar Bend was the name of the hamlet where he grew up in rural Alabama. “So they just called him Wilmer,” Abrams reported.

The pronunciation problem was resolved soon enough in any case, since Mizell lasted only a third of an inning. He gave up four runs on three hits before Murtaugh replaced him with Clem Labine, who proved no more effective than he had been in Game 2. It was 6–0 at the end of one, and 10–0 by the end of four. Pirates pitchers consistently fell behind in the count and ended up grooving fastballs for the Yankees to feast on. Gino Cimoli, playing left, tried Ring Lardner’s favorite Alibi Ike complaint, that the sun was in his eyes, but teammate Rocky Nelson shut him up by noting that Cimoli had no excuses since he was usually turned away from the sun looking at balls soar over his head. By the middle innings, binoculars turned from the field to the stands for celebrity spotting. Herbert Hoover, the former President, showed up in the fourth wearing a gray fedora, taking his seat in time for another Mantle home run. He was barely noticed, which someone noted was an improvement on his World Series appearance at Philadelphia’s Shibe Park during the depths of the Depression in 1931, when he was roundly booed. Jawaharlal Nehru, the prime minister of India, appeared in the sixth. It was appropriate, Red Smith observed, that a “man of peace” would not arrive until the “carnage was over.” One fan supposedly mistook Nehru for a hot dog vendor in his white cap. Mildred McGuire, a fan from Wayne, New Jersey, seated nearby, reported that he spoke perfect English. Though Mantle had four hits including the home run, the stars for the Yankees this time were Whitey Ford, who tossed a complete game shutout, and second baseman Bobby Richardson, who drove in six runs, four of them on a fly ball that reached the close, cozy corner of the left-field stands for a grand slam.

Clemente kept his hitting streak alive by singling with two out in the ninth, and flashed his fielding brilliance a few times with rocket throws from right and a difficult catch of a Maris line shot to right center. All piddling and forgettable when your team gets drubbed 10 to zip. “That game didn’t make me feel any younger,” said Danny Murtaugh, who had turned forty-three that day. In the press box, there was a rush to bury the Pirates. The lone writer who thought Pittsburgh still had a chance was Don Hoak, who in his column after the game declared: “
If you quit on the Pirates now there’s a very good chance you’ll have to eat your words in a few days.”

For the critical fourth game on Sunday, October 9, the Pirates were able to turn again to Vernon Law. The Deacon and Mrs. Law had been unable to attend church that morning, much to his dismay, but they prayed in their hotel room at the Commodore. For all of his devotion, Law was not the proselytizing sort, never bugged his teammates to stop doing this or that, and never tried to pretend the Lord was on his side, or taking any side at all in a sporting event. “We prayed that no one on either side would get hurt and that everyone would do as well as they possibly could,” he reported. “We did not pray for victory because that would be a selfish prayer.”

The way the first inning started, it looked as though Law could have tried some selfish prayer. Bob Cerv cracked an inside pitch to left for a single and Tony Kubek followed by doubling a low, outside pitch to left, the forty-ninth and fiftieth Yankee hits of the series. Hoak approached the mound from third and said, “Deacon, we’ve been pitching that Kubek wrong. The reports on him are wrong. Let’s pitch him up and in instead of down and away.” Law was so accustomed to Hoak’s yammering that he paid little attention. But he nodded and registered the suggestion, which was what he was thinking anyway. And he “wasn’t too worried,” he reported later, about having runners on second and third, because he knew that if he got Maris out he could walk Mantle and try for a double play. That was precisely what happened, with Berra grounding to Hoak for an around-the-horn twin-killing that ended the inning. Law coasted until the fourth, when Moose Skowron homered to give the Yankees a 1–0 lead.

At the same hour, the Steelers of the National Football League were hosting the New York Giants in Pittsburgh. In the second quarter, as the Giants were driving, quarterback George Shaw approached the line of scrimmage to take the snap and was startled by a thunderous roar echoing through the stands of Pitt Stadium. Over thousands of transistor radios, NBC announcers Chuck Thompson and Jack Quin-land had just reported that Vern Law had doubled in the tying run at Yankee Stadium in the middle of a three-run rally for the Pirates. As two more runs scored, the roar at Pitt Stadium grew louder, confusing Shaw so much that a referee eventually had to call time. Pennsylvania Governor David Lawrence, the former Pittsburgh mayor who also
scribbled a column for the
Post-Gazette
that week, was in the Pitt Stadium crowd, listening on his own portable radio, and chronicled the eeriness of hearing a hometown throng “cheer at the same time the Giants were moving against our Steelers.”

Law kept the Yankees off the board in the fifth and sixth, but by the seventh the pain in his ankle was so intense that he could barely land on it. Skowron, first up for New York, lined an opposite field double that bounced into the right-field stands, and McDougald slapped another single to right. Clemente scooped up the ball and fired a dead-true, no-bounce strike to the plate, a throw that Red Smith described as “low and baleful.” The third-base coach, Frank Crosetti, keenly aware of Clemente’s arm, had held Skowron at third or he would have been moose meat. Richardson then bounced a grounder to Maz, who stepped on second but had a slight hitch getting the ball out of his glove, allowing Richardson to beat the throw and barely avoid a double play. No-touch, they called Maz, for the way he could turn the double play seemingly without ever touching the ball, but in this case his touch was uncertain. Skowron came home, making the score 3–2. John Blanchard, another left-handed Yankee slugger, pinch hit for the pitcher and singled to right, sending Richardson to second. That was enough for Murtaugh, who walked slowly to the mound to get his ace. Before taking the ball, he placed his hand out, palm down, waist high, and in came Face. Photographers captured the transition, a classic tableau of baseball courage. In the background, the little reliever stood on the mound, rubbing the ball and talking to Smoky Burgess, as Law, his work done, his glove dangling from his pitching hand, limped slump-shouldered toward the dugout. His arm felt like he could go eighteen innings, Law recalled—he had indeed pitched eighteen innings in a game several years earlier—but “the leg was beginning to pain me something awful late in the game and I’m glad Face was ready to do the job.”

One out, men on first and second, here came the forkball, and there it went, soaring off the bat of Bob Cerv, arcing toward the fence in deep right-center, a virtual duplicate of the ball Berra had struck in the opener. And here came Clemente again, racing from right, and Virdon flying in from center, and Virdon leaping and bringing the ball in with both hands, then falling against the wall at the 407 mark but holding
on. Richardson tagged and went to third, but died there when Kubek bounced out. And that was the last threat against Face, who shut down the Yankees for two and two-thirds innings, the final out coming on a fly to Clemente in right. Series tied, two games apiece.

Bob Friend was ready for Game 5 on Monday, but Murtaugh decided to go with Harvey Haddix, his little lefthander, which caused some grumbling among the locals in the press box but not in the clubhouse. Why gamble with Friend rested? a writer deigned to ask. “What the god damn hell are you talking about?” responded Tiger Hoak, never at a loss for words, or expletives. “It’s no god damn gamble. That god damn little shit has a heart as big as a god damn barrel!” It was a sun-splashed day, and the little guys made it look easy. Haddix and Face, again, combined on a five-hitter, striking out seven and never really seeming in danger. When Face was on the mound, the Crow, as Yankees third-base coach Crosetti was called, would usually study his finger work in the glove and yell out, “Here it comes!” when he could detect a forkball. Hoak, at third base, was on to this and came up with a foil, yelling, “Here it comes!” on every pitch. But in this fifth game Hoak could see that Face was unhittable, so he didn’t even bother yelling. Another two-and-two-thirds, this time with no hits.

The Bucs had ten hits, including a key run-scoring single by Clemente off his countryman, Arroyo, who thought he had made the perfect pitch and threw up his arms in exasperation as the ball screamed toward the outfield grass. Clemente had now hit safely in all five games, and was starting to get a bit of recognition for his play.
In the locker room after the game, which the Pirates won 5–2, Ted Meir of the Associated Press decided to step away from the crowd and write something about Roberto. “The unsung star of the World Series?” his report began. “That phrase could well apply to Roberto Clemente, the Pittsburgh right fielder with the rifle arm.” Scores of reporters, Meir observed . . .

. . . surrounded pitchers Elroy Face and Harvey Haddix after Pittsburgh’s 5–2 victory over New York Monday. Off to one side Clemente sat in front of his locker—alone.

Yet here was the player whose bullet throwing arm had stopped the Yankees from taking an extra base on hits to his territory, a feat that contributed mightily to Pittsburgh’s three victories.

He beamed as his throwing arm was compared to the famed one of Hazen (Kiki) Cuyler, who played the same right field for the Bucs in 1925 when they won the World Championship by beating Washington and Hall of Fame pitcher Walter Johnson.

“Sure,” Roberto grinned happily. “Nobody can run on me.” Clemente put the fear into the Yankee base runners in the first game at Pittsburgh. In the second inning, after Yogi Berra and Bill Skowron had singled with none out, he gathered in pinch hitter Dale Long’s fly and just missed doubling Berra at second with a rifle peg.