Clemente: The Passion And Grace Of Baseball's Last Hero Part 3

As it turned out, it did not take long for the Pirates to make their presence felt. They won the opening game against the Cincinnati Reds 130 with Vernon Law pitching a complete game shutout, giving up seven hits and no walks. Second baseman Bill Mazeroski, lean and mean after a pudgy and disappointing 1959 season, hit a home run and drove in four runs, but the star of the game was Clemente, who went three for three and drove in five, smacking two doubles, a single, and a long sacrifice fly that would have been a home run in any other park but was hauled in by Vada Pinson near where the batting cage was stored at the 457-foot sign in deepest left center. Hal Smith, Pittsburgh's backup catcher, who had been acquired from Kansas City during the off-season, had by then become one of the right fielder's biggest fans. "If you play in 140 games," Smith told Clemente, "we'll win the pennant." Arriba! Clemente was on his way.

During an Easter Sunday doubleheader against the Reds a few days later, a season-long pattern first became apparent. "It was magical," Bob Friend recalled years later. "You could sense it even then." Friend pitched the first game and won 50, another complete game shutout, with Clemente belting a two-run home run to clinch it. In the second game, the Reds were leading 50 going into the bottom of the ninth. The game seemed over. Reds manager Fred Hutchinson brought in a second-line reliever to finish it off. Then the Pirates scored a run, and got two more runners on, and Hal Smith smacked a three-run homer to draw them within one. Another Pirate reached base, and Bob Skinner stepped to the plate, shrouded by early evening shadows. In the gloaming, Skinner said he couldn't see the ball, but his swing was smooth and level and he caught a pitch in his bat's sweet spot and it clanked off a pipe on top of the right-field screen for a game-winning two-run shot. Minutes later, in the visiting dressing room, chairs and food trays started flying as manager Fred Hutchinson pitched a fit. In the locker room next door, Skinner was surrounded by well-wishers. Reflecting the journalistic mores of that era, a Post-Gazette writer had no qualm reporting that Skinner "took a congratulatory pounding from players, newspapermen, club officials and others . . ." The story also quoted Clemente going on excitedly about his teammate's game-winning clout. "I bet you that Doggie's ball, she bent iron bar over the right-field fence. That's how hard he hit son-mo-gun."

Within a week, in the midst of a nine-game winning streak, the Pirates had claimed first place, a lofty position they would hold most of the season, dropping to second for a few days in May and only once after that, for a single day in July. It was the quintessential team effort, with strong pitching, led by Law, Friend, and Face, and supplemented by Haddix and Vinegar Bend Mizell, obtained from the Cardinals in a crucial trade in late May. There was timely hitting up and down the lineup, including a career year from shortstop d.i.c.k Groat and clutch performances from Hoak, first baseman d.i.c.k Stuart, Skinner, Maz, and catchers Smith and Burgess, but Clemente was the driving force behind the team's rise. From that first game, when he knocked home five runs, he was the team's top run producer all season. He drove in half as many runs in the first thirty games as he had in all of 1959. He was hot all of May, when he was named the National League's player of the month for batting .336 and driving in twenty-five runs in twenty-seven games. Throughout the long season what stood out most was Clemente's consistency. From the opening game to the final out, his batting average never dropped below .300. His final average was .314. He had no long hitless slumps, his worst lasted only four days, and no long hitting streaks, either, but a succession of short ones-nine games once, eight games three times, six games once, five games twice. And with that steady hitting he more than doubled his power totals, finis.h.i.+ng with sixteen home runs and ninety-four runs batted in, the team high.

His fielding was as daring as ever, but far more consistent than 1959, when his ten a.s.sists and thirteen errors were cited negatively by general manager Brown during contract talks. This time Clemente had nineteen a.s.sists and only eight errors, and he won as many games with his glove as with his bat. It was not just all natural talent with Clemente; he worked diligently at the craft of fielding. He spent countless hours before games studying how b.a.l.l.s caromed off the right field fence at Forbes Field and other National League stadiums. And he combined that studiousness with fearlessness. Danny Murtaugh would say for the rest of his career that the best catch he ever saw was made by Clemente on August 5 that year in a home game against the San Francisco Giants. In the seventh inning, Willie Mays. .h.i.t a line shot to the right-field corner that Clemente, running full speed, caught just as he was cras.h.i.+ng into a brick abutment on the unpadded wall. He bruised his knee and cut his chin, needing six st.i.tches, but held on to the ball and saved the game for Mizell, who won 10.

Clemente and Murtaugh had an uneasy relations.h.i.+p over the years, but during 1960 the manager found little to criticize in his right fielder. If there were years when Murtaugh thought Clemente should play more even if he was hurt, this was not one of those years. Clemente played 144 games, 4 more than Hal Smith said they would need to win the pennant.

The Pirates were as consistent as Clemente. They had winning records against the Reds, Cubs, Phillies, Giants, and Braves and were all even, eleven and eleven, with the Dodgers and Cardinals. They had winning records at home and on the road, in day games and night games, against righties and lefties, in nine-inning games and extra-inning contests. They won a majority of the games played every day of the week except Monday, when they went six and six. Their longest losing streaks were four games (twice), while they rolled off winning streaks of nine straight in April, six straight and five straight in May, five straight in June, seven straight in August, and six straight in September. And they also had some magic. Starting with that incredible opening-week comeback against the Reds, they won twenty-eight games that they were trailing in the sixth inning, and twenty-one of those times they staged their winning rallies in the last inning. Clemente was second on the club, behind slugger Stuart, in last-inning game-winning hits.

Throughout the season, the Pittsburgh Courier kept close watch on all forty-eight black players in the National League and fifteen in the American League. One of the paper's weekly features was a guest column by a major leaguer, usually cobbled together by Bill Nunn Jr. after an interview. Gene Baker, the veteran utility infielder for the Pirates, who had missed all of the 1959 season with an injury, wrote about how the Pittsburgh front office put him to work as a scout when he was out of action. It was Baker who spent several weeks tailing the Kansas City Athletics and made the key recommendation that the Pirates pick up reserve catcher Hal Smith. "I'm one of those optimists who like to think that the day will come when Negroes are accepted in front-office jobs the same as they are on the playing field," Baker wrote. Al Smith, the White Sox star outfielder, wrote about how much things had improved for black players since the days of Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby. Bill White of the Cardinals wrote that if he had to do it over again he would complete his college education before going into baseball. Willie Kirkland of the Giants wrote about how he was signed off the sandlots of Detroit for $2,500. Don Newcombe, in Cleveland after an ill.u.s.trious career pitching for the Dodgers, compared the two leagues and said the American League had nothing to match the power of Ernie Banks, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Frank Robinson, Orlando Cepeda, old Stan Musial, and Frank Howard. In June it was Roberto Clemente's turn for the guest column.

Nunn published the verbatim transcript of Clemente's tape-recorded comments, using the phonetic spellings that so irritated Clemente when they were done by the mainstream white press. A few weeks earlier, a society note in the paper had taken a jab at Clemente, questioning whether he preferred whites to people of his own race. Clemente lived in Schenley Heights and spent most of his off-hours in the Hill District, but was never fully at home, and occasionally had been the subject of unkind whispers. Coming from Puerto Rico, where segregation was not an overt matter, he had been quoted as saying that he did not want to be treated as a Negro, but by that he meant that he was not accustomed to being discriminated against, not that he disliked blacks. With the column, Nunn gave his friend the opportunity to respond.

"Som' Co-lored people I understand saying 'Clemente, he do not like co-lored people,'" the column began. "This is not the truth at all. Look at me. Look at my skin. I am not of the white people. I hav' color the skin.

"That is the first theeing I straighten out. I like all the people, both co-lored and the white; and since I am co-lored myself, in the skin, I would be seely hate myself.

"Thees' people tell me I don't like colored people. Well, I use this time to tell deeferant. I like myself, so I also like the people who are like me."

Clemente turned to the baseball season. "I hit real good," he noted.

I hit many what you call the "bad bol" pitches, and get good wood. The bol' travel like bullet. That remind me, I hit 565 foote hum-rum in Chicaga, last year; the bol' disappear from centerfield, and Raj Hornsby tell me it longest drive he ever saw hit out of Wrigley Field.

The bol' feel good on the bat but I feel bad at heart, when no writer with our team play up the big drive. I feel effort not appreciated.

Next came a discussion of ball parks, with Clemente saying he liked Forbes Field best for both batting and fielding. His least favorite was Sportsman's Park in St. Louis, and next worst was Candlestick in San Francisco. "Pretty seats and gra.s.s but poor playing in tricky wind," he wrote. As for his play this year, he attributed it to his better health. He felt better, he said, than any time since his rookie year. And he saw the team coming together at last.

We have the best . . . hitter in the clutch; none better than Bob Skeener. I tell him they bring in southpaw lefty, and that they lefty mean him trouble. Skeener merely wave hand, then step in and hit line drive for the extra bases.

Don Hoak he player we hav' to hav' in line-up. He solid everywhere. If he out of line-up, Pirates hurt plenty. Everybody got specialty, Groat best hit-run men in baseball.

We have good speerit on Pirates thees' year. Ev'rybody hungry for winning, to get more money. Everybody try little harder and make it harder for the other team.

Ev'rybody work with Manager Murtaugh and the coaches because we hungry to win ball games and fly pennant flag in Forbes Field. If n.o.body get sick, we make it a race all the time. Thank The Courier very much.

As the season neared its final month and the Pirates looked like pennant winners, talk inevitably intensified on the question of who was the most valuable player. The Pirates had several candidates, including Groat, the quiet captain who led the league in hitting; Tiger Hoak, their gutsy clubhouse leader, the player Clemente himself cited as being indispensable; Deacon Law, on his way to winning twenty games, and Clemente, excelling at the plate and in the field. Les Biederman, the beat reporter for the Pittsburgh Press, made it known that he favored Groat, even though Groat had only two homers and barely half as many runs batted in as Clemente. In talking to sportswriters in Los Angeles, Biederman took his campaign a step further, not only pus.h.i.+ng Groat but telling his colleagues that Clemente and Hoak, but especially Clemente, did not deserve consideration. By the time the club arrived in San Francisco, word of the sportswriter's actions reached Clemente, leaving him distraught. He had been on another tear, knocking out twenty-two hits in fifty-eight at-bats during the fourteen-game road trip, including five home runs and fifteen runs batted in. He had been lighting the way for his teammates all season, and still Biederman was down on him? On the plane from San Francisco to Chicago, the first leg of a long red-eye flight home, Clemente shared his feelings with Rocky Nelson, the old first baseman, a friend since Clemente had played with him on the Montreal Royals. Nelson had heard about Biederman's anti-Clemente whisperings, and had read other stories in the papers that seemed to ignore Clemente's role on the team, and he thought it was all unfair.

As the team waited for a change of planes in Chicago at five in the morning of September 1, Nelson sought out Post-Gazette beat writer Jack Hernon to make Clemente's case. Hernon was no real fan of Clemente's either, but listened and took notes. "There's one thing I can't understand," Nelson said as he approached Hernon. "I've read many stories about who is the most valuable player on the Pirates. But never see the name of Roberto mentioned. I don't know how he can be overlooked when you talk about players on the club. Actually, there is no one player that can be cla.s.sed as the most valuable, in my opinion. There are about five fellows on this team we couldn't get along without. I mean individually, there's d.i.c.k Groat and Don Hoak and the Deacon and Elroy and Clemente. But he doesn't get a call. He's been consistently around .320 all season. He has. .h.i.t more home runs than ever. He just might be the only player here to drive in over a hundred runs. And certainly he is the best right fielder in the league. Sure, those others are valuable to the team, but no more valuable than Clemente. He's won more games for us with his bat, with his arm, and with his speed on the bases. What more can you ask a player to do to be recognized? If Roberto beefs about not being mentioned, I wouldn't blame him. He's done as much as any other player on this team to keep us in first place."

Hernon acknowledged that Clemente was "Mr. Clutch" on the ball club during the first two months of the season. He remembered Groat telling him once in the locker room how Roberto's eyes "lit up" when he came to the plate with men on base. The other teams seemed to recognize this, Hernon added, by making him the target of brush-back pitches later in the season. But as for himself, Hernon preferred Don Hoak.

The following week, sensing the press box preference for the other players, the Courier's Nunn took up Clemente's cause. "To me, just based on what was right, it was Clemente," Nunn said decades later. "And most guys that really knew baseball felt the same way." In his column, Nunn noted that Clemente had far more home runs and runs batted in than Groat and that he was the best right fielder in the league whereas Groat was in the middle rank of National League glove men at shortstop. "Groat supporters will loudly proclaim that there are intangibles going for their guy which don't show up in the records," Nunn observed. "Having watched both players over the season I would have to say, and very definitely, that this is a two-way street, on which Clemente can walk with pride."

There was nothing easy about winning a pennant that year in the eight-team National League. Series after series, the heavy hitters came at you: Mays and Cepeda and Alou; Musial and Boyer and White; Aaron and Mathews and Adc.o.c.k. The Pirates had been lucky all year, but in the season's final two months they began to hurt. The first injury was hidden from the public and press for six weeks. On August 13, after defeating the charging Cardinals, Hoak, Friend, Virdon, and Gino Cimoli, (the fourth outfielder, and another former teammate of Clemente's in Montreal back in 1954), went to relax at a friend's back-yard swimming pool in the Pittsburgh suburbs. As Hoak was pulling himself from the pool, he ripped his right foot on the ladder. A large gash opened between his second and third toes, and the bleeding would not stop until a doctor arrived and sewed it up on the spot, without anesthesia. Not for nothing was he called Tiger. The players vowed not to tell anyone about the incident, and Hoak played the next day in a doubleheader, but was hobbling slightly for the rest of the year.

Less than a month later, as the Pirates were playing the Braves in a crucial series at Forbes Field, d.i.c.k Groat froze on a high, hard, inside fastball from Lew Burdette in the first inning. At the last nanosecond, Groat raised his left hand to protect his head, and the ball struck him an inch above the wrist. Groat insisted on staying in the game, but the intense pain forced him into the dugout in the third inning, when he was replaced by Ducky Schofield. Officials urged Groat to leave immediately so that he could have his wrist examined, but he wanted to wait until the end of the game. He watched both Clemente and Schofield rap out three hits as the Pirates came from behind to win, 53. The X rays showed a fracture that doctors said might keep him out for four weeks, possibly even forcing him to miss the World Series. Groat's prognosis brought a telegram from Vice President Nixon, whose presidential campaign against John F. Kennedy had just been stalled by a ten-day hospitalization for an infected knee. "I was very sorry to hear of your accident," Nixon wrote. "While I will be able to campaign with a b.u.m knee you can't play with a broken wrist." Of more importance to the Pirates, the season's magic dust settled on Schofield, the light-hitting utility man, who suddenly perfected a stunning impersonation of Groat, coming up with key defensive plays and timely hitting game after game.

The same day's paper that carried the grim news of Groat's injury also had front-page stories on Hurricane Donna, which was bearing down on Florida and the East Coast. Donna had already ripped through Puerto Rico, killing more than a hundred people in flash floods, but reports of when and where were sketchy. When a concerned Clemente finally reached his family, he learned that everyone was okay. His brother Matino was more worried about whether Momen was growing tired at the end of a long season and starting to pull off the ball. His batting average had slipped below .320 and his run production had slowed as well. A week later, with the temperatures in Pittsburgh dropping into the fifties in the wake of the hurricane, Clemente came to life with a two-run homer against the Giants. That same day, the Pirates announced that World Series tickets would go on sale in a few days, and the Post-Gazette began running a Pennant Fever thermometer ill.u.s.tration on the front page that showed the magic number of games the Pirates needed to clinch the pennant.

Friend pitched a three-hitter against the Dodgers, the thermometer dropped to ten. A few days later, on September 18, Deacon Law won his twentieth, and Clemente made a dazzling catch in the second inning of the second game of the doubleheader, diving to his left to snare a ball off the bat of rookie Bobby Wine with two men on, helping Vinegar Bend Mizell roll to a three-hit shutout-and the Braves and Cards lost and the number dropped to five. They started resodding Forbes Field for the World Series, painted the left-field wall, and constructed new digs for the national press and photographers. The Bucs swept a pair from the Cubs and the magic number was now two. Clemente was superst.i.tious. He thought that Benny Benack and his Iron City Six had become a jinx; when he saw them play the Pirates lost. He didn't want them to go to Milwaukee for the three-game series. Hal Smith kept the team loose, playing his harmonica on the bus to the ballpark. The Pirates lost the first game, and then the second, but the Cardinals also lost and the magic number was one. The good news was that Groat had taken the cast off his wrist and said that he was ready to make a comeback.

The final game in Milwaukee was Sunday, September 25. The Pirates were winning 10 late in the game. Clemente was at the plate. Paul Long was announcing with Bob Prince in the broadcast booth. "One to nothing, the Pirates lead on the strength of a home run by Bill Mazeroski. Back in the fifth inning. Otherwise, it's been a real pitching duel between the great lefthander Warren Spahn and the great lefthander Harvey Haddix. Right now it's one to nothing, the Pirates lead . . ."

Bob Prince interrupted. "They've just won it! It's all over! The Pirates win it!"

Just as Prince makes the announcement, Clemente slaps a hard single to center. He began the season hitting and kept hitting to the end. Arriba! Arriba! In Pittsburgh, thirty-three years of frustration are over. The Pirates have arisen. Families celebrate and head for the airport to await the arrival of their heroes. City officials make plans for a torchlight parade down Fifth Avenue and Grant Street and prepare for a welcome-home crowd of a hundred thousand that will celebrate long into the night. "The Pirates have won the National League pennant on the basis of the Cardinals losing to the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field. It's all over," Long continues. "And the crowd here knows it. A lot of transistor radios here. And the applause has gone up . . . And somehow this crowd . . . now they're making the announcement on the loudspeakers. The Cubs have beaten the Cardinals, and the Pirates have won the National League pennant!"

6.

Alone at the Miracle

THE LAST TIME THE PIRATES PLAYED IN A WORLD SERIES, in 1927, the opponents were the same New York Yankees. Then the American League champions terrorized opposing pitchers with a lineup of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, Bob Meusel and Tony Lazzeri, now it was Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris, Yogi Berra and Moose Skowron. Murderers' Row old and new, one baseball legend long established, another in the making. The formula was identical in either case: audacious power, solid pitching, pinstripes, intimidation, all rendered glorious by the self-centered hyperbole of New York and its sporting press.

Part of the lore of the 1927 Yankees was a boast that the Pirates, after watching the famed sluggers take batting practice before the series opener, felt so overmatched they folded and lost four straight. Harold (Pie) Traynor, Pittsburgh's Hall of Fame third baseman, had bristled at that story for decades, insisting that it was apocryphal. By Traynor's account, the Pirates were in the clubhouse poring over a scouting report when the Yankees took their pregame cuts. Whatever prodigious shots Ruth and Gehrig stroked during batting practice, the Pirates saw none of them. But the debunking of this myth did not sit well with baseball's commissioner, Ford Frick, for the particular reason that it was Frick himself, as a young sportswriter for the New York Journal, who had spread the story in the first place.

The 1960 Pirates were rated 1310 underdogs by the bookies, but seemed even less likely than their predecessors to be awed by New York, even though these Yankees had won their last fifteen games of the season heading into the World Series. "We'll fight 'em until our teeth fall out and then we'll grab 'em with our gums," snarled Don Hoak, sounding like the former boxer and inveterate sc.r.a.pper that he was. It was the nature of this team, Hoak said, that they would always rise to the challenge of the better opponents. Virgil Trucks, the batting practice pitcher, told anyone who approached him in the days before the series opener that Pittsburgh was the most relaxed team he had ever seen. Relaxed and gabby. When it came to quotable quotes, Pittsburgh was a gold mine for visiting sportswriters. Hoak, shortstop Groat (recovered from his wrist injury and ready to play), outfielder Gino Cimoli, trainer Danny Whelan, ace Deacon Law, pudgy old Smoky Burgess (who talked so much behind the plate Richie Ashburn once beseeched the ump to shut him up before Ashburn bopped him over the head with his bat), Vinegar Bend Mizell, the big galoots at first, d.i.c.k Stuart and Rocky Nelson, and the story-spinning dark Irishman, manager Danny Murtaugh (p.r.o.ne to blabbing about anything but the game itself)-they all were go-to guys on deadline. The Post-Gazette, further short-cutting the process, enlisted Hoak, Groat, and Law to write stories during the series, or at least columns published under their by-lines.

Everyone was in on the action, it seemed, except the Pirate in the middle of the lineup who roamed right field. Roberto Clemente was indisputably an important member of the team, yet also in many ways alone. At the end of his sixth and finest season, he was still separated by culture, race, language, and group dynamics. He was the lone black player in the starting lineup and a Spanish-speaking Puerto Rican, while none of the sportswriters for the major dailies in New York or Pittsburgh were black or spoke Spanish. Life is defined by images, especially public life, and the Pirates image was that of a band of sc.r.a.ppy, happy-go-lucky, fearless, gin-playing, hard-drinking, crewcut, tobacco-chewing white guys. Where was the place in that picture for the proud, regal, seemingly diffident Roberto Clemente? He had led the team in runs batted in and total bases, finished second in batting average, hits, game-winning hits, runs scored, home runs, and triples, had the best arm on the team, played with style and every bit as much grit as Hoak or Groat, yet now was the invisible man. In the runup to the World Series, the writers of Pittsburgh and New York, for all their overwrought coverage of the spectacle, gave Clemente barely a pa.s.sing glance.

A notable exception, as usual, was the Pittsburgh Courier, the black weekly that had been paying close attention to Clemente all season. On the weekend before the series opener, sports editor Bill Nunn Jr. saw Clemente on the street in Schenley Heights, the middle-cla.s.s black neighborhood where they both lived, and asked him how he felt about facing the mighty Yankees. The Pirates would win, Clemente a.s.sured him, his words echoing Hoak and Trucks. Although the Yankees had more power, he believed Pittsburgh was the better team, stocked with hard-nosed players who could not be intimidated. "We've been a relaxed team all season and I expect us to be the same in the Series," he said. "Pressure didn't get us down during the National League race. We fought off Milwaukee, St. Louis, and Los Angeles without cracking. Now that we've come this far, we aren't going to look back now." In Clemente's estimation, the Braves, not the Yankees, were the second-best team in baseball. "If the Braves had won the pennant, they would have been good enough to beat the Yankees, too." As for playing in Yankee Stadium, Clemente said he would not be haunted by the outfield ghosts of Ruth and DiMaggio, but he was concerned about the late-afternoon shadows. He had played there in the second 1960 All-Star game and found the ball hard to follow.

Aside from Nunn's interview, the other notice Clemente received before the series was negative. Someone had leaked a scouting report from the Yankees suggesting that the most effective way to pitch him was inside. "Knock him down the first time up and forget him," was the dismissive summary. Clemente laughed when asked about it, but the report bothered him. Like many black stars of that era, in a tradition that went back to Jackie Robinson, he got brushed back nearly every series, and he suspected that opposing pitchers chose him for retaliation in part because of the color of his skin. They'd been knocking him down all season in the National League, Clemente observed, and he'd still gotten his share of base hits. During one sequence that season, so memorable that pitcher Bob Friend could recall it forty-five years later, Clemente was. .h.i.t in the stomach by Dodgers fireballer Don Drysdale but came back the next at-bat and cracked a home run over the right-field fence.

Another scouting report got in more digs. It was by Jim Brosnan, a pitcher who had gained renown for The Long Season, a pathbreaking journal-style sports book that provided a revealing glimpse inside his 1959 season with St. Louis and Cincinnati. In the wake of that successful book, Brosnan had been commissioned by Life magazine to a.n.a.lyze the series lineup of the Pirates, a team he had faced many times. (Ted Williams, just retired from the Red Sox, wrote Life's scouting report on the Yankees.) After stating that Clemente "dislikes knockdown by close pitch" and that the best way to pitch him is to "jam him good," Brosnan added a caustic and contradictory conclusion. "Clemente features a Latin-American variety of s...o...b..ating: 'Look at nmero uno,' he seems to be saying . . . He once ran right over his manager, who was coaching third base, to complete an inside-the-park grand-slam home run, hit off my best hanging slider. It excited fans, startled the manager, shocked me, and disgusted the club." Here was precisely the sort of characterization Clemente had battled since he arrived at Fort Myers for his 1955 rookie season. Then the phrase that bothered him was "Puerto Rican hot dog." Now came Brosnan, a respected opponent, far from a redneck, blithely referring to his Latin-American variety of s...o...b..ating. Clemente's mad dash around the bases, the anecdote Brosnan employed to make his point, might have inspired a different interpretation had it been Don Hoak or d.i.c.k Groat or years later Pete Rose. Rather than the s...o...b..ating of a flashy Latin, it would have been viewed as the indomitable spirit of a tough compet.i.tor.

This was nothing new for Clemente. It angered him but did not distract him. He still had the Pittsburgh fans on his side-they had voted him their favorite Pirate-and friends were coming from Puerto Rico to see the World Series. Among those making the trip was his mother, Doa Luisa, who had never flown before. She was weakened from the flu, but came anyway, willing herself to be healthy enough to watch Momen play. Don Melchor was equally proud of his son but deathly afraid to fly, so he would not budge from the house in Carolina. He could follow the series from there; all the games were to be broadcast in San Juan on radio and television with Spanish-language announcers. Accompanying Doa Luisa to Pittsburgh was Momen's older brother, Matino, a former ballplayer who had followed the rise of the Pirates on the radio all summer, keeping mental notes on Roberto's play and writing or calling him several times with batting tips. When Matino arrived in Schenley Heights, Clemente gave him some tips of his own on which streets and bars in Pittsburgh were friendly and which ones to avoid.

A fellow named Ralph Belcore was the first out-of-towner to make it to Pittsburgh for the World Series. He came by bus from Chicago toting a stool and a bag of sandwiches and camped outside Forbes Field five full days before standing-room-only tickets went on sale. Belcore was the definition of a baseball fanatic, but in Pittsburgh that week he was just one in the crowd. The city had lost itself with these Pirates. Bands of businessmen crowded the congested streets of the Golden Triangle wearing gold-banded black derbies, walking past block after block of gold-and-black-draped stores with BEAT 'EM, BUCS! signs in the windows. City Hall printed thousands of placards with the familiar slogan translated into seven languages. Carnegie Library came up with its own variation-BEAT 'EM, BOOKS! At the Central Blood Bank of Pittsburgh the sign read BLEED 'EM, BUCS!

Local radio stations incessantly blared out Benny Benack and the Iron City Six's throbbing theme song. The Bucs were going all the way, over and over again. A correspondent for the New York Times, filing the first dispatch from alien territory, haughtily described a "carnival atmosphere . . . that one would never experience in sophisticated New York." The Pittsburgh newspapers were all Pirates all the time, from the front page to editorials to society to sports, inspiring Red Smith of the New York Herald Tribune to praise the city for focusing on what truly mattered during a week when presidential candidates John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon were debating on television and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev was visiting the United Nations. "In New York," Smith wrote, "the cops picked up a diplomat wallowing hip-deep in smuggled heroin. At the United Nations, Nikita hollered at Dag and Hammarskjld yelled back and Nehru had a thing or so to say about the future of civilization. Rockets whirled through s.p.a.ce, snooping into affairs on the moon, Lyndon [Johnson] called Nixon a fool and Nixon said Kennedy was another. Only in Pittsburgh, it seemed, did they preserve a sense of proportion. Announced the eight-column banner on page one: YANKS, BUCS IN LAST WORKOUT. It was comforting to find a town that puts first things first."

So, first things first. The final workout before the opener was held on a bright October afternoon. Sunlight glanced off the bright white flannels of the Pirates as they took fielding practice. Danny Murtaugh, surrounded by a posse of national sportswriters, entertained them with stories about his Irish family. "When the kid brother gets a job, the brother-in-law quits his. That's the way it is in my family," Murtaugh said as a way of answering a question about how many ticket requests he was getting from relatives. Asked if he had any surprises planned for New York, he said, "Just to win." Soon the Yankees emerged in their gray flannels and Roger Maris muscled into the batting cage, s.h.i.+rtsleeves rolled up over bulging biceps, and began bombing one pitch after another into the right-field stands. The Pirates were in the clubhouse by then, just like their forebears thirty-three years earlier, going over a scouting report prepared by Howie Haak. The Yanks effin' feasted on high ball pitches, Haak said, so keep the d.a.m.n ball low and outside. A telegram had been taped to the clubhouse wall from the old man, Branch Rickey, gone from the Pirates but still their G.o.dfather. It read simply: I WOULD RATHER HAVE YOU.

BEAT THE YANKEES THAN.

ANY OTHER TEAM IN THE WORLD.

AND YOU CAN. AND YOU WILL.

The Pirates would need a healthy Vernon Law if they were to have any chance of that; accordingly much of the focus was on the Deacon's right ankle. He had pulled a tendon in a moment of joy, slipping on a wet dressing room floor as he celebrated with his teammates in Milwaukee after they had clinched the National League pennant. The club tried to hide the injury, but it became obvious a week later when the Braves came to Pittsburgh to finish the season and bombed Law for eight runs and ten hits before he could escape the third inning. There was a day or two when the Pirates were uncertain whether their twenty-game winner could start the series opener, but Law insisted that he was ready, and trainer Whelan said the ankle had not swelled and was bothersome only when twisted a certain way. It did not hinder Law's normal delivery.

Law had the stuff to baffle the Yankees, a sinking fastball and curves of various speeds, all delivered with pinpoint control. Early in his career, he had impressed old Branch Rickey with the "change of pace on his fastball with a wiggle-waggle, half fadeaway rotation." Law had walked only forty-one men in 272 innings all year. He also had the tenacity, despite his reputation as a clean-living elder in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who did not drink, smoke, or curse (once, at his most vituperative, he shouted "Judas Priest!" at an ump and almost got tossed). Nor did he throw at batters' heads, or so it was said. At a Bucs Fan Club luncheon before the series, Murtaugh jokingly dismissed that last claim. "So I'm talking to one of my pitchers and I says, 'Look, when the other pitcher comes up there I want you to knock him down.' And my pitcher [Law] was one of those fellows who is well versed in the Bible and he tells me, 'Skip, turn the other cheek.' So I looked at him and said, 'All right with me. I'll turn the other cheek. But if this guy don't go down it's gonna cost you a hundred bucks.' So he looked at me and said, 'They that live by the sword die by the sword.'" Even if that was no more than Murtaugh blarney, it captured Law's spirit; he was fire and brimstone on the mound and a fierce compet.i.tor. New York had a pitcher of equal big-game stature, Whitey Ford, but the Yankees manager, Casey Stengel, for reasons known only to him and those who could translate Stengelese, chose instead to go with right-hander Art Ditmar, who in fact had won more games that season but was not in Ford's cla.s.s.

Another perfect autumn day washed over Forbes Field for the opener. The upper deck was dressed in red, white, and blue bunting. In the box seats behind third, Joe Cronin, the American League president, pointed to a screen across the diamond behind first and said he was responsible for it; they installed it after he had made one too many wild heaves into the stands as a rookie shortstop for the Pirates in 1926. A communal gasp sounded from the capacity crowd as a parachutist soared down from the blue sky above, but Jack Heatherington of McKeesport, who had made the sky-jump after losing a bet that the Pirates would not win the pennant, was off-mark again, landing not on the field but on a nearby roof. This was no year to underestimate anything in Pittsburgh.

In the Pirates' dressing room before the game, Murtaugh adhered to his regular season routine, pulling out a scorecard and going over the Yankee lineup hitter by hitter. "Any questions?" he asked when he was done. His team had none. Then "go get 'em," he said. No need for a pep talk, Captain d.i.c.k Groat thought. Everyone understood what this series meant. Writing a column for the Post-Gazette under the impressive byline . . .

By d.i.c.k Groat PIRATE SHORTSTOP AND NL BATTING CHAMPION.

. . . Groat confessed that while he tried to tell himself it was just another game and that there was no reason to be nervous, he had "a peculiar feeling" in the pit of his stomach in his first at-bat and his nerves would not settle for the first few innings.

Law and the Pirates had reason to be anxious in the top of the first when Maris, acting as though it were still batting practice, deposited a home run over the right-field fence, but they got out of the inning with no more damage and swiftly went at Ditmar. Bill Virdon walked and stole second. Groat, nerves and all, doubled him home. Bob Skinner singled in Groat and also stole second. d.i.c.k Stuart was retired for the first out, then up came Clemente, batting fifth instead of his usual third, because Murtaugh thought he might have trouble with the six-foot-two 195-pound right-hander. Here was Clemente's first appearance on the World Series stage, the first by a Puerto Rican hitter since Luis Olmo played left field for the Dodgers in 1949 against the Yankees. Doa Luisa and brother Matino were watching from seats behind the screen. The old man was listening on the radio back in Carolina. With the count at two b.a.l.l.s, two strikes, Ditmar came inside with a fastball and Clemente stroked it over second for a single, driving in Skinner with the third run. Ditmar was done for the day, yanked by Stengel after throwing only eighteen pitches and getting a lone out.

The first-inning rally showed the Pirates would not be intimidated. It was Stengel who looked anxious, with his quick hook. This was not what most experts expected. s.h.i.+rley Povich, the venerable sportswriter for the Was.h.i.+ngton Post, thought it was "like the patient examining the doctor for symptoms." By the top of the second, with New York still trailing 31 and third baseman Clete Boyer coming to the plate with runners at first and second, the impatience bordered on panic. Boyer was called back to the dugout, and at first he a.s.sumed that Stengel had a tip for him on how to bat against Law, but the manager's only instruction was for Clete to find a seat on the bench. Dale Long was sent up to pinch-hit. First game, second inning, Boyer pulled for a pinch hitter on his first at-bat-an uncommon baseball humiliation. Clemente, in right field, knew the feeling; long ago, he had been taken out for a pinch hitter in the first inning with the bases loaded, but that was during his first year in pro ball with the Montreal Royals, when the Dodgers were trying to hide him. As it turned out, Long hit a long fly to Clemente in right, who gathered it in and unloosed a bullet throw to second, nearly doubling Berra.

Stengel's desperation was for nothing. The game essentially was over after a brilliant defensive play by Virdon in the fourth inning. Law was struggling as he worked his way through the new Murderer's Row. Maris walked, Mantle singled, and Yogi Berra, playing in his record eleventh World Series and still feared by the Pirates as the Yankees' toughest clutch hitter, cracked a drive to the deepest expanse of right center. Clemente, racing over from right, and Virdon, at full sprint from center, simultaneously reached the spot where the drive was headed. Clemente, called for it, certain that he could make the catch, and so did Virdon, who "had a beam" on it all along. There was such a roar in the stadium that neither could hear. They brushed against each other, Virdon's spikes cutting the back of Clemente's right shoe, and just as Clemente pulled up, the No. 21 on his back facing the infield, Virdon leaped and snared the ball with his outstretched glove as he neared the light green wall. Writers who had not seen Virdon field were stunned. Murtaugh in the dugout, Law on the mound, and regular observers of the Pirates were elated but not the least surprised. They considered Virdon the nearest thing to Willie Mays in center, perhaps even his equal, and with Clemente patrolling beside him any ball hit to center or right might be caught if it stayed in the park. The Yankees were deflated, and even when Moose Skowron singled to drive in Maris, Murtaugh did not consider taking out Law, who got out of the inning maintaining the lead, which was soon extended in the bottom half when Bill Mazeroski hit a two-run homer for the Pirates.

During the early innings, Elroy Face and his teammates in the Pirates relief corps, unable to get a clear view of home from the bullpen, had raced into the clubhouse when the Yankees were up so they could scout the hitters on television. Everything about the five-foot-eight, 155-pound Face was compact and efficient, including his preparations. He needed only three to four throws to get loose, and rarely bothered to warm up until he saw his manager ambling toward the mound in a late inning. In the eighth, with Law holding a 62 lead but looking tired and feeling soreness in his right ankle, Murtaugh made his move. Two gestures signified that he wanted Face. One was simply to hold his hand up to his face; the other was to stick out his right hand, palm down, waist high. Face had a rubber arm and could relieve for two and occasionally three innings, day after day, relying on his specialty pitch, a forkball. Thrown with two fingers spread like fork p.r.o.ngs wide apart over the top of the ball, the forkball was an early variation of the split-fingered fastball that became popular four decades later. (When Steve Bla.s.s, a latter-day Pirate pitcher and announcer, asked him to describe the difference between the two pitches, Face replied, "Oh, about four million dollars.") When Face came in, it was a done deal. No trouble in the eighth. In the ninth, he gave up a two-run homer to Elston Howard, but got left-fielder Hector Lopez to ground into a game-ending double-play, Maz to Groat to Stuart, and the Pirates, 64 winners, hollered and whooped as they bounded up the underground ramp to their dusty old dressing room.

The Yankees were grouches after the game. They had banged out thirteen hits, more than they had in any game during their season-ending fifteen-game winning streak, yet lost. How could this happen? Boyer made no effort to hide his rage over being yanked before his first chance to bat. Ditmar was despairing over not finis.h.i.+ng the first. Mantle, called out on strikes twice, thought one of them was a bad call. Second baseman Bobby Richardson criticized the Pirates infield, notorious for its concrete-like hardness. And Stengel, in his inimitable way, lodged the same complaint. "If they want to I guess they could have the groundskeeper plow it up pretty good because he could get a plow here where they have all the steel to make one but they don't want it," he said. Stengel also took a shot at Clemente, who had grounded into a fielder's choice in the fifth but stayed on first while second baseman Bobby Richardson chased after Skinner on a rundown between second and third. Was this the lack of adventure that Branch Rickey had mentioned during his first scouting report on Clemente in San Juan in January 1955? "Where was the man who hit the ball?" Stengel asked. "He's the fastest man, ain't he? Now if that play had decided the game, they'd all be asking why he didn't go to second. And if I was the manager I wouldn't have an answer." No one asked Clemente about it. In the locker room, he sat alone while the writers gathered around Virdon, Maz, Law, Face, and Bob Friend, who would be starting the next day.

It rained all that night in Pittsburgh and into the next day. By 12:26 P.M., only thirty-four minutes before Game 2 was to begin, the skies were dark, a tarp covered the infield, the players were lounging and playing quick rounds of gin in the clubhouse, and fans were taking shelter under the overhang. But Commissioner Frick, protected by raincoat and hat and working a walkie-talkie with his staff, said the weathermen promised him that suns.h.i.+ne was coming, and within twenty minutes his confidence was rewarded. Stengel presented a starting lineup with veteran catcher Berra playing left field for the first time in his World Series career. His pal Joe Garagiola, who grew up with Berra in St. Louis and had dinner with him in Pittsburgh the night before, thought the talkative Yogi, so accustomed to conducting a running commentary with the home plate umpire and opposing batters, would be "lonely out there with no one to talk to."

Bob Friend, the eighteen-game winner, who threw what was known as a heavy ball, with a fastball reaching ninety-two miles an hour, took the mound for the Pirates, and the home crowd settled in feeling optimistic. Warming up, Friend realized that he had "tremendous stuff," and he felt powerful and in the groove through the opening innings. "The ball was moving all over the place." He had six strikeouts in four innings and it seemed only accidental that he was trailing 30. One Yankee run was unearned and another came on a bounding double by Gil McDougald that third baseman Hoak insisted was foul. Fans and writers second-guessed Murtaugh after he removed Friend in the bottom of the fourth for pinch hitter Gene Baker, who rapped into a sharp double play, and at the time Friend himself was distraught. The Yankees weren't really hitting anything, he thought, and he was just getting warmed up. But decades later, the event distanced by time, Friend gave his manager a reprieve. "I don't blame Danny for taking me out," he said. "Danny did the right thing."

There could be no right thing for the Pirates in this game. The Yankees went on a tear after that, pounding out nineteen hits, one short of the World Series record of twenty by the 1921 Yankees and 1946 Cardinals; and sixteen runs, only two less than the record set by the Yankees against the Giants in 1936. They turned the game into a romp in the sixth, sending twelve batters to the plate and scoring seven runs on the way to a 163 victory.

In the mess of this slaughter, one sportswriter shouted from the press box, "Bring in Yellowhorse!"-a lament so evocative that several colleagues stole the quote and attributed it to an anonymous fan. Mose J. Yellowhorse, a full-blooded American Indian from p.a.w.nee, Oklahoma, known affectionately as Chief, possessed the most felicitous name in Pittsburgh Pirate history, if not the best record. He pitched two seasons, 1921 and 1922, and won a total of eight games. Perhaps his best move in the majors, according to baseball historian Ralph Berger, came when he and shortstop Rabbit Maranville made some barehanded grabs of pigeons fluttering outside the sixteenth-story window of their road-trip hotel. Bring in Yellowhorse! The Chief was sixty-two years old in 1960 and fis.h.i.+ng in retirement back in p.a.w.nee, but certainly could have fared no worse that day than the relief quintet of Green, Labine, Witt, Gibbon, and Cheney. Once his sluggers gave him an edge, Stengel became a relentless bench jockey from the shadows of the visitors' dugout, directing a nasal torrent of sarcastic jibes at Smoky Burgess and the procession of hapless Pittsburgh firemen. When Hoak, from his position at third, would shoot a stern look at him, Stengel would "just look at me," Hoak recalled, "throw his hands in the air, and shrug, as if to say, 'What's going on? Why the dirty look, Hoak?'"

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 c.o.c.kpit. 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 b.u.mp. 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 (t.i.te) 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 att.i.tudes 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 p.r.o.nunciation 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 p.r.o.nunciation 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 60 at the end of one, and 100 by the end of four. Pirates pitchers consistently fell behind in the count and ended up grooving fastb.a.l.l.s 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 b.a.l.l.s 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 s.h.i.+be 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. .h.i.tting 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 10 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 32. 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 cla.s.sic 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 G.o.d d.a.m.n h.e.l.l are you talking about?" responded Tiger Hoak, never at a loss for words, or expletives. "It's no G.o.d d.a.m.n gamble. That G.o.d d.a.m.n little s.h.i.+t has a heart as big as a G.o.d d.a.m.n 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 gra.s.s. 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 52, Ted Meir of the a.s.sociated 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 52 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 Champions.h.i.+p by beating Was.h.i.+ngton and Hall of Fame pitcher Walter Johnson.

"Sure," Roberto grinned happily. "n.o.body 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.

"We discovered then," Yankee manager Casey Stengel said later, "that they have a good right fielder."

Meir wrote that Clemente had made the last putout in the fifth game and had given the ball to the Pirates owner, John Galbreath. "My son's wife is expecting a baby any day in Columbus, Ohio," Galbreath said. "If it's a boy, that ball will be his first present." (The ball remained with the Galbreaths and forty-five years later Squire Galbreath, the grandson born just after the World Series, kept it in a display case at the family estate, Darby Dan, near Columbus, Ohio.) The focus of the world seemed to s.h.i.+ft back to Pittsburgh that night. The Yankees, Pirates, and John F. Kennedy all were coming to town. Kennedy arrived first for an appearance at Gateway Ce