Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero (28 page)

During the first half of the 1964 season, several nights a week, Clemente had been calling Vera Zabala from Pittsburgh or one of the National League road cities. He was always making plans, pressing the issue of marriage. He finally persuaded Vera to come to New York for
the All-Star game in July, accompanied by Ana Maria, her protective older sister, and his mother, Doña Luisa. The combination of chaperones was enough to get the visit approved by Vera’s father and brother, and the three women flew to New York on July 6, the day before the game at Shea Stadium. They were picked up at the airport by Carlos and Carmen Llanos, longtime family friends from Carolina who now lived in the Bronx. Throughout Clemente’s major league career, the Llanoses provided him a place to stay and relax when he came to New York, and eased his homesickness by plying him with good humor and Puerto Rican food and seasonings.

The Pirates were in the middle of another middling season, but had four players on the National League team: Clemente, Mazeroski, Stargell (hot in the season’s first half with eleven homers and forty-eight runs batted in; just starting to show his slugging potential), and old Smoky Burgess, the butterball catcher who was still a dangerous hitter, even at age thirty-seven. Among the four, only Clemente, leading the league again with a .345 average, had been elected to the team as a starter; the others were added to the roster by the National League manager, Walter Alston. A noteworthy feature of the game that year was that the rosters were stocked with more Latin players than ever before. The group again was led by Clemente. It also included a trio of Cubans, rookie outfielder Tony Oliva, shortstop Leo Cardenas, and right-handed pitcher Camilo Pascual; the Venezuelan shortstop Luis Aparicio (who wouldn’t play because of a groin injury); Dominican ace Juan Marichal (in the second year of a stunning seven-year string in which he averaged twenty-two wins a season); and two of Clemente’s Puerto Rican friends, Orlando Cepeda of the Giants, starting at first base for the National League, and pitcher Juan Pizarro, enjoying his best season for the White Sox in the American League. Long since a star in his homeland, Pizarro was finally getting some recognition up North. He had won eleven games already that year on his way to a nineteen and nine record.

Clemente started the All-Star game in right field and batted leadoff for the National League. This was the summer of the World’s Fair in New York, and the area around the new ballpark in Flushing Meadows was awash with foreign tourists, Midwestern family vacationers, and
hard-core metropolitan baseball fans. Al Abrams rode the subway out to Shea, and noted in his
Post-Gazette
column that “judging by the aroma in the crowded trains, some of the great ‘unwashables’ in history were among the passengers today.” It was a hometown crowd, with a smattering of
LET’S GO, METS
! signs, and the largest pregame ovations went, in order, to Ron Hunt, scrappy second baseman for the Amazin’ Mets; Casey Stengel, the comic-foil old manager of the inept new club; and Sandy Koufax, the favorite son who had come home from the golden West. As Vera, Ana, and his mother watched from the stands, Roberto got one hit in three at-bats, singling in the fifth inning and racing around to score on a double by his former teammate, Dick Groat, who was now playing shortstop for the St. Louis Cardinals. As it turned out, Clemente’s late-inning replacement in right, Johnny Callison of the front-running Phillies, cracked a three-run home run with two out in the bottom of the ninth to give the National League a 7–4 win, a victory that at long last evened the all-time match between the two leagues at seventeen wins apiece. Here, it seemed, was the culmination of a sociological as well as sporting trend. At the close of the 1940s, the American League had to that point dominated the mid-season exhibition, winning twelve of the first sixteen contests. Since then, the National stars shone brighter, in large part because of the league’s tradition of aggressively recruiting black and Latin players.

In his ellipses-dotted “Sidelights on Sports” column the next day, Abrams took special note of the Pittsburgh contingent: “There were stars in Wilver Stargell’s eyes as he took the field with his National League teammates for batting practice. ‘I’m excited,’ the husky Pirate youngster admitted. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been as excited about anything as I am today’ . . . Roberto Clemente, Bill Mazeroski, and Smoky Burgess, old hands at this sort of thing, took things in stride . . . Clemente’s mother watched her talented son play. It was her first All-Star game. She saw Roberto perform in the 1960 World Series . . .”

Clemente and his women guests caught a flight to Pittsburgh immediately after the game; he had to get right back to work. The Pirates were not afforded the traditional extra day off after the All-Star break, but instead a makeup game was scheduled the next night against the Cincinnati Reds, an odd one-game series to open a nine-game
home stand. Baseball officials were still adjusting to the complications of fitting the expanded ten-team leagues into 162-game schedules. With great care, Clemente had already worked out his own schedule. He needed Vera around to continue their discussions about an off-season wedding, and nothing could go wrong beforehand. He had rented an apartment in Pittsburgh for the week, where he would sleep, while the women would stay at his normal lodging with Stanley and Mamie Garland. The Garlands showed great kindness to Vera, and the obvious regard they had for Roberto helped persuade sister Ana Maria of his worthiness. Vera was touched by his courtesies and graciousness. She realized for the first time how big a star he was in the States, yet celebrity didn’t seem to change his manner.
The trip was a success: Vera knew that she wanted to marry him, and she returned to San Juan with two more engagement presents, a watch and a collar of pearls, and a wedding date in November.

The remainder of the 1964 season offered much excitement, but not for the Pirates. From five games above the .500 mark at the All-Star break, they sputtered slowly downhill, finishing with two fewer wins than losses. Since the World Series glory of 1960, they had come in sixth in 1961, eighteen games in back of the Reds; fourth in 1962, eight games behind the Giants; eighth in 1963, twenty-five games behind the Dodgers (shades of the pathetic early fifties); and now sixth again, trailing St. Louis by thirteen games. The closest sniff the Pirates got to the pennant race this time was during four days in September, between the twenty-fourth and twenty-seventh, when they dropped five straight home games to the charging Cardinals, helping lift St. Louis over the free-falling Phils. It was, all in all, another year of mediocrity at Forbes Field, except when a ball was hit to right—baseball ecstasy, Clemente charging, scooping, unwinding overhead, the arm!—or when he made his way to the plate, his reluctant, creaky, slow-motion advance evoking the delicious contradiction of a rapacious hitter who nonetheless resembled, as Pittsburgh writers joked to one another in the press box, a condemned man heading toward the electric chair. “Roberto has been a dominant force in the Pirates’ attack,” Abrams wrote during the dog days of summer. “We shudder to think where the club would be without him.”

There were wins and losses of other sorts when the games were done. After seven and a half seasons at the helm, with that one unforgettable 1960 season and fifty-eight more total wins than losses, but two final losing seasons, Danny Murtaugh stepped down as manager. He was replaced by Harry (the Hat) Walker, the old Cardinals outfielder from the Deep South city of Pascagoula, Mississippi, son and brother of ballplayers called Dixie. The Hat was known for his skills as a teacher and for having a mouth that would never shut.

Luck is the residue of design, Branch Rickey once said. And now the Mahatma’s own grand design was nearing an end. After leaving the Pirates at the end of the fifties decade, he had found a sinecure with his first team, the Cardinals, as an adviser, and tried not very hard to repress the occasional feelings of envy or schadenfreude that seeped into his mind as he watched Joe L. Brown run his Pirates up to the heights of the World Championship and then slowly down the hill again. The Cardinals now had capped his long and eventful career by catching the Phillies and then outplaying the Yankees in a classic seven-game World Series, but in truth the old man had little to do with it.

Rickey scouted for general manager Bing Devine (indeed considered himself still the boss and tried to tell Devine what to do) and wrote his acerbic memos to the end. (At a Minnesota Twins game with secretary Ken Blackburn at his side, he said of slugger Harmon Killebrew, who must have reminded him of Ralph Kiner: “The high hard inside pitch he misses . . . Strikes out a great deal. I would not be interested in obtaining his contract in any kind of a possible trade. I don’t want him at the price.” And of pitcher Jim Kaat: “Looks like an athlete and acts like one. He can throw hard and he has a good curve—a corker most of the time. Stress does not agree with him. He is a young chap and ought to become a fine pitcher.”) Rickey also entered the personnel fray during a crucial stretch of the season as an intermediary between Dick Groat, brought over from the Pirates a season earlier, and the laconic manager, Johnny Keane, for whom Groat had no baseball respect. At a private huddle in August, as the Cardinals were about to make their move, Rickey tried to persuade Groat to agree to a trade, to no avail. In fact, Rickey had opposed the acquisition of the quick but slow-footed shortstop in the first place. Groat was stunned by the trade
attempt and said that he just wanted to win. He thought if Keane were replaced by Red Schoendienst, the talented Cards would find their way.
Groat went on to hit .292 and play almost every day in his last fine season, and the Cards won everything despite Groat’s dismal assessment of Keane, who was appreciated by other Cardinals, especially black stars Bob Gibson and Bill White.

During the World Series, Rickey cordially invited Brown, his disciple and successor, to breakfast. They had talked baseball, as always, including the future of the Pittsburgh club. Brown’s decision afterward to replace Murtaugh with Walker prompted one final polite memo from Rickey. “Dear Joe,” he wrote. “I think you have made the very best choice for your manager. I know that Danny had good reason for resigning and it was undoubtedly good judgment for him to do that. Harry is a student of baseball and he has had enough managing experience to keep him out of the experimental class. He knows how to handle his manpower. You will surely get good field results from him.”

Brown responded with a handwritten note:

Dear Mr. Rickey,

Thank you for your thoughtful note about Harry Walker . . . I was certain Harry was a good choice at the time of his appointment, and after spending four days and nights with him in Florida, I am more positive than ever. [The new coaches] Hal Smith, Clyde King, John Pesky, and Alex Grammas, who have been added to Harry’s staff . . . are all personable, aggressive, intelligent, experienced, ambitious, comparatively young, and mindful of the necessity for continuing instruction.

You were nice to have us for breakfast at your lovely home during the Series. It was good to see you, Mrs. Rickey and Auntie looking so well and in good health.

Rickey was fired by the Cardinals soon after, and within a year he was dead. An irreplaceable if difficult baseball life extinguished at age eighty-three. As he would describe it, the laws of cause and effect worked this one last time with inexorable exactitude.

Roberto Clemente’s season ended with another win. He finished the year with 211 hits and a batting average of .339, high enough to bring home his second Silver Bat as the league’s leading hitter.

•   •   •

Here, in Carolina, was a day to honor the meaning of home. All morning and into the slow, sweet Saturday afternoon, townspeople had celebrated like it was the festival of a local saint, and as evening approached on November 14, 1964, they congregated in the central plaza outside the San Fernando Church for a final act of worship. Thousands of
carolinenses
jammed the streets of the quadrangle plaza and elbowed for viewing position under rows of neatly pruned laurel trees. The evening light glowed soothingly on the church’s soft pastels. Inside, three hundred guests sat on hard pews, under the high dome, flowers everywhere. At age thirty, after a decade as a rising star in the major leagues up North, Momen Clemente was getting married. The weight of his achievements in Puerto Rico and the states was evident in the invitation list. There sat Luis Muñoz Marín, the longtime progressive governor of the island. Nearby were general manager Brown and Howie Haak, the brilliantly profane scout, a tobacco plug removed from his jowl for this special occasion. The Clemente family came in, parents Melchor and Luisa and brothers Matino, Osvaldo, and Andres, and various cousins, nieces, and nephews, along with the adopted Pittsburgh parents, the Garlands, Phil Dorsey, and what amounted to a couple of pickup teams of fellow ballplayers.

Clemente looked as princely in his black tuxedo as he did in the cool white and black of his Pirates uniform. Before the service, as he stood in the sacristy fidgeting, someone approached and wondered whether he was nervous. That was never the right question to ask him. He might be quick to say what was nagging him, and something always was—lack of sleep, pain in the lower back, headache, sore leg—but very rarely would he confess to feeling nervous. “Never,” he said this time. “I feel great!”

A friend seized the chance to needle the proud Clemente. “Then why don’t you spit out the gum you’re chewing?” he asked.

Vera Christina Zabala, wearing a dress of Italian silk satin, the
sleeves embroidered in white porcelain beads and diminutive pearls, was escorted down the aisle by her father, Flor Manuel Zabala. The matron of honor was Mercedes Velasquez, the neighbor and teacher who a year earlier had complained that Roberto had been driving her crazy by relentlessly trying to press her into service as a matchmaker. Myrna Luz Hernández was the maid of honor, and another Velasquez, Clemente’s friend Victor, stood as best man. When it was time for vows, the audience strained to hear. Tito Paniagua, covering the ceremony for the
San Juan Star,
noted that Clemente, though his voice was soft, said
“acepto”
just loud enough for Father Salvador Planas “who called the play, to make it official.”