Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero (54 page)

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) Wedding Day, November 14, 1964. All through the slow, sweet Saturday afternoon, the people of Carolina, Puerto Rico, celebrated as if it were the festival for a local saint. Clemente looked as princely in his black tuxedo as he did in the cool white and black of his Pittsburgh uniform.

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) Roberto and Vera on their honeymoon in Curaçao. “I can walk down to the corner and probably get ten girls,” Clemente had told Vera’s father, Flor Zabala, while he was courting her. “But I don’t care. The one I love is here.”

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) Clemente spent his career alternately worrying about his health and complaining about being called a hypochondriac. Before leaving home for spring training in 1965, he was hospitalized with malaria and lost nearly twenty-five pounds. Here he is visited by his mother, Luisa.

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) Vera visited Roberto at spring training, but never spent an entire preseason with him. Nothing in Puerto Rico was as overtly racist as the Jim Crow segregation Clemente experienced during his early years with the Pirates in Fort Myers.

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) Clemente in the living room of his modernist home atop the hill in Río Piedras. He had just won his third batting title, but still felt overlooked, misunderstood, and underappreciated. Any conversation with a sports reporter was likely to open with a loud complaint.

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) Roberto and Vera cross the sidewalk bridge out the front door of their house with Robertito and Luisito. Clemente insisted that Vera come home to Puerto Rico for the births of their sons.

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) Clemente ran out every ground ball, hustled on the bases, and thought he could catch any ball hit to the outfield and throw out any runner on the bases. His batting prowess, with 3,000 hits and four batting titles, was equaled by his skill in the field. He had one of the most fearsome throwing arms in baseball history and won twelve Gold Gloves. Critics noticed his less than sterling on-base percentage and home run totals; his fans said his game could not be reduced to statistics.

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) Victor Pellot (left), known in the majors as Vic Power, came up before Clemente and helped pave the way for him as one of the Three Kings, along with Hiram Bithorn and Luis Olmo. Power and Clemente were close friends off the field and were together in Nicaragua coaching an amateur baseball team shortly before Clemente’s death.

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) In the late 1960s, Clemente wore the uniform of the San Juan Senadores, the favorite team of his childhood. Writers in Pittsburgh often questioned why Clemente would tire himself by playing winter ball, but he felt an obligation to his homeland and connected his personal history to the struggle of his people.

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) Clemente was like a big brother to dozens of Latino players who followed him to the majors, including Orlando Cepeda (left), the slugging first baseman from Puerto Rico. Here they pose with fans during the 1967 season, when Cepeda was the National League MVP. Clemente had won the honor a year earlier.

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) Planeloads of Puerto Ricans flew to Pittsburgh for Roberto Clemente night on July 24, 1970. Clemente choked with emotion as he began to speak. At a moment like that, he said afterward, “You can see a lot of years in a few minutes. You can see everything firm and you can see everything clear.”