Clemente: The Passion And Grace Of Baseball's Last Hero Part 6

"I'm two or three days away, I think I can come Friday," Clemente responded. "How is Din doing?"

"She's right here, would you like to talk to her?"

"Yes."

"How are you, Roberto?" Din said softly.

"Din, so sorry you had this accident," he said.

"I'm doing better, how are you?" she answered, turning the attention away from her own battered body.

"Well," said Clemente, "I got this touch of diarrhea."

Din laughed when she recounted the conversation to her husband. Cla.s.sic Clemente, Joe Brown thought.

A few days later, Clemente was ready to return to Florida for his twelfth baseball spring. Andres and Matino drove him to the airport, as usual. Florida was still not the most inviting place for Clemente and his new bride, so Vera would join him later in Pittsburgh. As the boys walked toward the gate, Andres said that his little brother would be too puny to bring home another Silver Bat that year.

Momen stopped, grabbed the back pockets of his pants, and squeezed them together, laughing at the sign of death.

9.

Pa.s.sion

EVERY MOVE CLEMENTE MADE WAS STUDIED BY HIS admiring fans at Forbes Field. Bruce Laurie, who landed in Pittsburgh in 1965 as a graduate student in history, might show up at the stadium in the fifth inning and take a freebie seat in the right-field stands, sharing his beers with the usher. For his baseball satisfaction, all Laurie needed was to observe Clemente up close, all "bone and sinew with long arms that looked longer still because of the Pirates' sleeveless s.h.i.+rts." And then, at some point, the thrill of the throw-with a motion faster than any Laurie had ever seen "and overhand, with an exaggerated follow-through, so that when he wound up . . . he looked like a dervish expelling a cannonball." Many players have one memorable trait; Clemente's every action on the diamond had its own singular style. The writer Michael Chabon, who grew up in Pittsburgh, said it was hard not to look at Clemente; he attracted one's attention like a glint on a telephone wire. Howard Fineman, another denizen of the right-field stands, memorized his hero's intricate routine at the plate until it was etched into his teenage brain as surely as the capitals of the fifty states or the chronological order of the Presidents. In retrospect, Fineman would think of Clemente taking a turn at-bat as "positively Iberian, a bullfighter, the great test of wills," so serious in every detail that it was thrilling yet almost comic. And here it was: Clemente would never smile preparing for a plate appearance. When he approached the rack inside the dugout, his att.i.tude was that of a surgeon toward his instruments or a toreador toward his swords. He knew these bats, these Frenchy Uhalt models. He had studied them from the moment a new s.h.i.+pment came in during spring training. He was as tuned to them as he was to his body, and his choice might depend on his mood, or the fitness of his lower back, or the pitcher on the mound, or something he saw in the grain of wood. Not ready yet to decide, he would haul two or three bats out to the on-deck circle, carrying them all in one hand. Then he would kneel, left knee bent at ninety degrees, right knee touching the ground, posture erect, the bats draped elegantly against his thigh. One by one, he would pick them up, heft them, as he stared at the pitcher, and wipe them with his rag. Here was the serenity of Clemente, before the storm. From his right-field perch, Fineman relished this moment, knowing what was to follow. At last it was Clemente's turn to hit, and he would now make his final selection ceremoniously, this piece of wood, of the three, had made the cut; the others, unlucky, left behind as orphan sc.r.a.ps to be retrieved by the batboy. Then the famed dead man's walk to the batter's box.

On the way, as he approached the plate, he would rotate his neck from side to side, then twist it back, so many kinks to unloosen. Of all the sequences in the ritual, the neck move was the most regal. The poet Tom Clark would draw upon this memory above all others: won't forget his nervous habit of rearing his head back on his neck like a proud horse And now the care of his habitat. Like an animal preparing his ground. Or maybe fortifications, that is the metaphor that popped into one observer's head-a French general preparing his fort. He would hold his bat with his left hand and raise the other toward the ump-moment.i.to, moment.i.to for Momen-as he rearranged dirt and dust with his polished leather shoes, spikes gleaming, until it was just right. By now the pitcher was ticked. But there was little in the way of filibustering from then on, no constant stepping out of the box and repeating a superst.i.tious ritual after every pitch, aside from the occasional revolving of the neck. When his workplace was ready, he would take his stance, left leg coiled, hands back, stance way off the plate, back near the line, beseeching the ball, bring it on. He would take the first pitch, almost always, in order to calculate the timing and motion, but then let it rip. And for someone not known as a slugger, what a rip it was. Jim Murray, the Los Angeles Times sports columnist who made his living off metaphors, wrote that Clemente "had a batting style like a man falling down a fire escape." His swing, Bruce Laurie thought, was the mirror image of the throw-"a great swirling motion in blinding speed that routinely dislodged his batting helmet." Both Laurie and Fineman felt this odd sensation, a ripple of joy even in a Clemente swing and miss. There was such pent-up intensity in the moment that it seemed to Fineman that Clemente's "entire being was at stake with every pitch." One image that stuck was of him flinging himself and the bat toward a high-outside pitch and literally leaving his feet altogether to make contact, stroking a shot down the right-field line.

Donn Clendenon and other teammates would joke that there were three great left-handed pull hitters in the National League who scared the h.e.l.l out of every first baseman: Willie McCovey, Billy Williams, and Roberto Clemente, who, of course, was no lefty at all.

In repose, there was a grace and beauty to Clemente. "Compact, flawlessly sculpted, with chiseled ebony features and an air of unshakable dignity," Roy McHugh reflected later. "He carried himself-everybody noticed this-like royalty." At times, as Clemente posed on second after a double, McHugh thought of "Michelangelo's statue of David-David wearing a baseball uniform." But in action everything changed; Clemente was all fury and agitation. A writer once described Willie Mays as liquid smooth. With Clemente, there was a liquid nature to his eyes and body, but only until he ran; then it was gone. Steve Bla.s.s and his Pirates teammates took goofy joy in watching Clemente run. He ran everything out, first of all, full speed, head down, every feeble tap back to the pitcher, and he worked so hard at running. They would tell him he looked like a broken windmill, every limb rotating a different direction. Clemente didn't actually run, they would say, he galloped. To Richard Santry, another teenager who sat in the right-field stands at Forbes Field during those years and spent the entire game watching Clemente, he ran "like he was running away from the bulls in Spain, like a crazy man." Fineman also was struck by Clemente's urgency. He seemed to run as though "his pants had been set on fire by the flames of h.e.l.l itself"-and that is the point. He was not running, he was fleeing. When Clemente was on the go, it seemed not so much that he was trying to get to a base as to escape from some unspeakable phantasmal terror.

During the first two months of the 1965 season, Clemente's first notion was to escape Pittsburgh itself. He was still weakened from his bout with malaria, and the team seemed even punier, with Willie Stargell, the only legitimate long-ball threat in the lineup, also somehow sapped of strength. After opening the season with five wins in their first seven games, the team struck out on a brutal road trip that took them to five cities, covering 7,585 miles in planes that were in the air for a total of twenty-one and a half hours, including one particularly long and dis...o...b..bulating haul on a chartered prop that took six hours and twenty-five minutes to get from Los Angeles to St. Louis. Clemente was exhausted by the trip, and needed a rest. After two losses to open the series, with the team now dropping ten of its last eleven games, the new manager, Harry Walker, went on a postgame rampage in the visiting clubhouse, flinging cups, papers, and trays around his cubicle and denouncing his players with what one writer described as "the most earthy and sulphuric language at his command." The pitching was okay, Walker said, but the hitting was horses.h.i.+t, and he was especially concerned about what he feared was a "defeatist att.i.tude." The whole team was playing like c.r.a.p, he said, from the lowest scrub to the top star. He thought Clemente's hands were slow, and that he needed some rest and maybe lighter bats. For the Sunday doubleheader, Walker sat Clemente on the bench and sent left-handed hitting Jerry Lynch out to right. Lynch got hot immediately, banging out four hits in seven at-bats that day, though the Pirates lost both games. Before leaving town, Walker had an interview with a St. Louis radio station during which Clemente's benching was mentioned. Yes, Roberto had malarial fatigue, Walker said, but great players-he said Stan Musial and Ted Williams came to mind-played even when they were ailing.

Lynch stayed hot as the team reached Chicago, smas.h.i.+ng two home runs in the first game and going two for three in the second. Now it was Clemente's turn to erupt. His irritation at Walker's comments, his persistent psychological soreness over being underappreciated, his pa.s.sion to be the best, and perhaps some hurt pride in seeing Lynch excel in his place-all combined to send him into a sudden fit. "I want to be traded from this club and I don't want to play for this manager anymore," Clemente said in the visitors' locker room on May 5. He appeared to be talking to Les Biederman of the Pittsburgh Press, who had asked him how he was feeling. But this was not a muttered aside. It was a shout that any writer or player within earshot heard. And to emphasize the point, he walked up to Al Abrams of the Post-Gazette and said, "Put what I said in your G.o.dd.a.m.ned newspaper!" Abrams not only obliged, his story ran on the top of the front page under the blaring headline: CLEMENTE IRKED,.

SAYS, "TRADE ME"

In what Abrams described as a "fit of temperament," Clemente had popped off in the clubhouse in front of newspapermen and teammates, demanding a trade. The star right fielder had "appeared moody and sullen," the story noted, and "hadn't been very chummy with his teammates, either, the past few days." Walker was not around to hear the tirade, and expressed surprise when reporters asked him about it. "If Clemente wants to be traded, he hasn't said a word to me about it," he said. "I don't know what he has in mind." The manager said he talked to Clemente before the St. Louis doubleheader and explained that he was resting him because he appeared tired and the team needed another lefty bat in the lineup. When Joe L. Brown was reached by telephone that night back at his home in Pittsburgh, the general manager said he knew nothing; Walker had not bothered to call him about it, so he thought it must be unimportant. Brown, after dealing with Clemente for a decade, had by then developed a deep respect for him. He considered Clemente p.r.i.c.kly and "very, very sensitive," Brown would say later, yet Clemente's sensitivity was not selfish egotism, it was a "huge sense of self-worth, of social self-worth. That he was as good as anyone who ever lived. That people should recognize that he was a special person. He didn't lord it over anybody, he just believed it."

The next morning, still in Chicago, Walker summoned Clemente to his room at the Knickerbocker Hotel, and they emerged with the cla.s.sic sporting-tiff resolution. It had all been a misunderstanding. "We had breakfast together and we understand each other," Walker told the press. The great right fielder would be welcomed back in the lineup whenever he was ready. Walker even posited that the air clearing could do everyone some good. "This might be the thing we just need to snap out of this d.a.m.n slump," he said. "I know Roberto will be all the better for it." Later that day, when Clemente reached the stadium, a swarm of reporters encircled him. He was reluctant to talk at first, still in a gnarly mood, but eventually could not keep quiet. "You just blow off steam when you can't play," he told a reporter for the a.s.sociated Press. "I don't want to be traded. I want to play-but not bad ball." Then he blew off more steam. There was always steam inside him, the heat of years of feeling misunderstood. "The newsmen blow up everything bad about me and when I am good, they give me like this," he said, pressing his hands to within an inch of each other. "I lose twenty-five pounds from malaria in Puerto Rico and maybe even should not play any spring training. I am now a hundred and seventy-eight pounds-seven pounds under my playing weight last season. I feel okay, but not up to par."

The notion that Clemente had been misunderstood did not sit well with Abrams, who was among those who heard him. "Denials to the contrary, Roberto Clemente did pop off Wednesday afternoon here and say that he would like the Pirates to trade him to another club. There are at least twenty-five witnesses, most of them his teammates, who heard the outburst in the visitors' dressing room at Wrigley Field," Abrams wrote. There was a notable ambivalence in Abrams's response, common among the Pittsburgh writers who dealt with Clemente on a regular basis. None of the reporters hated Clemente; they didn't launch public vendettas against him, they just lived with his unpredictable temperament, at times trying to soften it, at times irritating it. Abrams again called Clemente "moody and sullen," but also took up part of his defense. He noted that he had publicly hailed Clemente as "the best player in the major leagues" for leading the majors in hitting over five seasons. But, he concluded, "if Clemente continues to feel that everyone is against him, myself included, for writing a story that should be printed, there's nothing I can do about it. And I can't care less."

Walker had it just about right, as it turned out. The controversy lifted the club out of its malaise. With Clemente restored in the lineup, batting third, along with a hot Maz at second and big Stargell finally clouting the ball again, the Pirates soared in late May and ran off twenty wins in twenty-four games. Day after day, Clemente strolled slowly to the plate, prepared his ground, stood deep in the box and away from the plate, and attacked the ball. Thirty-nine base hits in ninety-three times at-bat during the winning streak, a .419 pace. Johnny Pesky, one of Walker's coaches, told Biederman of the Press that the only hitter he had ever seen get solid wood on the ball time after time as much as Clemente was his friend Ted Williams.

The malarial funk was long forgotten and Clemente was back in the batting race. He kept hitting through July and August, distracted only by the birth of his first son, Robert.i.to. Vera had been in Pittsburgh with him for part of the season, making their first Stateside home on the roomy second floor of Mrs. Harris's house on Apple Street. It was a vastly different culture for her, but she started to learn the language and adjust to her husband's idiosyncrasies. "He would have a late breakfast and stay in the room and sleep" on game mornings when the team was home, she recalled. "He closed the shades, the drapes, and put plastic over the drapes to make them darker. He tried to sleep. He would stay there until he was ready to go to the game. I used to take him, and on the way from the apartment to the stadium he didn't talk much. I believe he was thinking, tonight so-and-so will be the pitcher, and how Pittsburgh could win. He was always thinking. Then I would go back to the apartment and get ready to go back when the game started." In that lonesome world, it made sense for Vera to return to San Juan late in her pregnancy, and to have the baby born there, where mother and infant could be attended to by friends and family. But even beyond the practical, the place of birth was a matter of pride and emotion. Roberto Clemente wanted all of his children born in Puerto Rico. Land, blood, name, and race.

There were no hard feelings now with Harry the Hat. Player and manager talked hitting, something they both loved. The Pirates finished eighteen games above .500, a vast improvement from the previous year, but not enough to challenge for the pennant. What they had, most of all, was Clemente, and that was something special in itself.

During a home stand late in September, the team brought in a group of youngsters from the farm clubs. These were the best prospects, not ready for roster spots but talented enough that the club thought they should get a feel for what it looked like in the big leagues. They took part in practice before games, then dressed in street clothes and sat behind home plate. One of them was a pitcher named Henry (Gene) Garber, who later would pitch nineteen seasons in the majors. Garber, then only seventeen, had already been traumatized once in his young career, being forced to sit shotgun in the front seat of a beat-up old Cadillac as the brilliant madman scout, Howie Haak, drove him and two other prospects north from Salem, Virginia, to Rochester, New York, splas.h.i.+ng tobacco into a mildewed spittoon and swearing a blue streak the entire way. Now came something worse. The Pirates asked Garber to pitch batting practice, without a screen to s.h.i.+eld him. According to the pitching instructors, a screen would only encourage bad habits.

Garber had never worn a protective cup in his young life, and here came Roberto Clemente. As part of his routine, Clemente started batting practice the same way every day-trying to line every ball back through the box. "He's. .h.i.tting shots right past me, line drives and hard ground b.a.l.l.s right up the middle," Garber recalled decades later, the terror of that first moment on a big league mound carved permanently into memory. He went downtown the next morning and bought two cups, one plastic, one metal, and wore the metal cup that afternoon when he threw to Clemente again and for the rest of his long career.

When the season ended a few days later, big brother Andres was proven wrong. Momen finished with a league-leading .329 average and returned home to Puerto Rico with his third Silver Bat. He joined four all-time greats, Honus Wagner, Rogers Hornsby, Paul Waner, and Stan Musial, as the only National Leaguers with three or more batting t.i.tles. His back pockets, he would joke, were wide apart, and bulging.

Home now was a funky modernist house nestled into the top of a hill in Ro Piedras. Vera had found it the previous spring when she and her father-in-law, Don Melchor, had been driving around the hills scouting lots. When pictures of the already-built house, designed by the engineer Libertario Aviles, were sent north to Roberto, he immediately agreed to buy it for $65,000, falling in love with its openness and curiosities-the Aztec symbols on the bricks, the bridged front walkway leading from the street over shallow moatlike ponds to the front door, wide s.p.a.ces for plants everywhere, the panoramic view down the hill and off toward San Juan and the Atlantic. It had only three bedrooms, and the Clementes had plans for a large family (a second child was already on the way), but the rooms were s.p.a.cious and could be subdivided if necessary. The neighbors were doctors and engineers. It was an easy ten-minute drive to see the rest of the Clementes and Zabalas in Carolina.

Once again that winter, Momen played almost no winter league baseball. The Pirates begged him not to sap his strength, and paid him extra to serve as their scout. He was in no mood to travel anyway, and preferred fiddling around the house with his pregnant wife and baby son to riding the bus to Ponce, Arecibo, or Mayagez. He bought a Hammond organ and taught himself how to play it; he did not read music, but could listen to a tune on the radio and hammer out the melody within five minutes. His nights were filled with banquets and appearances, and during the day he spent more time thinking about his dream of building a sports city for poor Puerto Rican kids. He started looking for land and talking to businessmen and politicians about how to make it happen. The house was always open, a steady stream of relatives and visitors from the mainland coming in and out. One visitor that winter was Myron Cope, a gifted writer who had worked for the Post-Gazette in the fifties before moving on to freelance for the Sat.u.r.day Evening Post and Sports Ill.u.s.trated. Clemente long had felt that he did not receive the national recognition he deserved-now here came Cope to tell his story to a vast sporting audience.

The visit was later described in Cope's delicious lead paragraph. "The batting champion of the major leagues lowered himself to the pea-green carpet of his forty-eight-foot living room and sprawled on his right side, flinging his left leg over his right leg," the story began . . .

He wore gold Oriental pajama tops, tan slacks, battered bedroom slippers-and, for purposes of the demonstration he was conducting-a tortured grimace. "Like dis!" he cried, and then dug his fingers into his flesh, just above the upraised left hip. Roberto Clemente, the Pittsburgh Pirates marvelous right fielder and their steadiest customer of the medical profession, was showing how he must greet each new day in his life. He has a disk in his back that insists on wandering, so when he awakens he must cross those legs, dig at that flesh and listen for the sound of the disk popping back where it belongs.

The story line followed from there, forty-four evocative paragraphs, most of them devoted to some peculiar aspect of Clemente's health. Interpretations of the article were in the eye of the reader; to many he came across as somewhere between lovable and a nutcase, which to Cope amounted to one and the same. Cope had dropped his contract with the Sat.u.r.day Evening Post precisely because he was tired of writing stories about boring superstars. His preference for colorful subjects was so strong that Ray Cave, who started editing him at Sports Ill.u.s.trated, took to calling him "The Nut Specialist." In Clemente, Cope believed, he had the best of all writing possibilities-"a superstar and a nut." Cope never doubted Clemente's sincerity, yet the player's phobias were such easy targets. "Opera companies have performed Parsifal in scarcely more time than it takes Roberto to get ready for bed," he wrote, going on to describe how Clemente memorized everything in his hotel room to make sure where things were in case he walked in his sleep or needed to escape. All in good fun, but in the end none of Cope's thousands of words left an impression stronger than a single ill.u.s.tration that accompanied the article, a graphic that Cope himself did not see until he got his own copy of the magazine at the newsstand. It was a picture of No. 21 standing in his Pirates uniform, with an anatomical map of his ailments, real and imagined, from head to toe. It started with tension headaches, then: wayward disk in neck, six st.i.tches in chin, tonsillectomy, pulled muscle in shoulder, serious chest cold, stomach disorders, bone chips in elbow, curved spine, wayward disk in lower back, meatoma in thigh, legs that don't weigh the same, and pulled muscle in calf. In the caption below, it noted "Unchartable part of Clemente medical history includes tired blood, malaria, insomnia and fear of nightmares [which he does not have but is afraid he might have]." In fact, Clemente did have nightmares, but he didn't tell Cope about them.

Before submitting the article to his editors in New York, Cope showed it to Roy McHugh of the Pittsburgh Press, his close friend. "This is Clemente to the life, but he's going to hate it," McHugh said. "I know it," Cope agreed. As it turned out, they were right; Clemente did not speak to Cope for a year afterward. The Sports Ill.u.s.trated spread certainly gave him the wider exposure he had been seeking, though not in the way he wanted. Now not only Pittsburgh and San Juan but the entire sporting nation could consider his physiology and psyche and join the debate over whether he was a hypochondriac. But the final words in Cope's story, overwhelmed by the pained-man motif, had nothing to do with Clemente's body or mind, but were about his heart and pa.s.sion. Clemente had driven Cope out into the countryside and showed him a piece of land where he hoped to start his sports city for Puerto Rican children. "I like to work with kids," he said, in words that took on more resonance in retrospect. "I'd like to work with kids all the time. If I live long enough."

Cope did not get out of Puerto Rico without one touch of poetic justice. Lounging at his hotel pool one hot afternoon, he took a misstep on the deck and cut his toes so badly that a rich matron, tanning herself nearby, snapped at him, "Do something about that foot, it's attracting flies!" The chronicler of the chronic complainer took home a souvenir pain of his own, and it felt authentic enough to him.

A few days after Cope left, Clemente received a letter from Joe L. Brown on Pittsburgh Athletic Company, Inc., stationery, copies of which were also sent to the other Latin players on the Pirates-Matty Alou, Al McBean, Manny Mota, Jose Pagn, Andre Rodgers, and Manny Sanguillen. Five seasons after the glory of the World Series, Brown was desperately trying to turn things around, and his effort now included this no-more-Mr.-Nice-guy edict to all his Caribbean players. "In the recent past, it was the practice of a number of our players from the Caribbean area who train with the Pittsburgh club to report to Fort Myers several days after the date set for their arrival," Brown wrote. "In the majority of cases, the lateness of their arrival was due either to carelessness or complete indifference. This will not be permitted in 1966 or in the future. If you are not in uniform in Fort Myers prepared to work out at the time and date on which you were requested to report, you will be fined One Hundred Dollars (100.00) for each day that you are late, and this money will not be given back to you at a later date." For pitchers and catchers, Brown repeated, the arrival date was February 23, for infielders and outfielders, February 27. "If you have not already done so, it is recommended that you make arrangements immediately for your plane reservations, visa or pa.s.sport (if required) and anything else that will require advance preparations . . . 1966 can be a wonderful year for everyone with the Pirates and it is important that all of our players report on time. Your attention to this letter is IMPERATIVE, both for you and the club."

It was a perennial lament, the late arrival of Latin players. What interested Clemente and the others most about Brown's latest missive was the line that said any fines will not be given back to you at a later date. Maybe, this time, he was serious. But the letter did not please the proud Clemente. He saw it as a reiteration of the stereotypes he was trying to overcome, that Latins were lazy and irresponsible. And as the letter related to his own situation, it was true that he was a few weeks late reporting to spring training the year before, but was Brown insinuating that his malaria was a matter of complete indifference?

Clemente reported on time, leaving Vera in Ro Piedras, where she not only took care of the infant Robert.i.to but also made all the other arrangements for Pittsburgh. A week after her husband left, she wrote a note to Phil Dorsey, their friend and aide in the States. 'I'm fine but the baby has a cold now," she began. After a few more pleasantries, she got down to business.

Phil, I sent the car this week by the Transamerican Steams.h.i.+p Corp. and will arrive in Newark, New Jersey on Tuesday or Wednesday [March 16]. I paid the expenses here. Enclosed are the key, the paper you have to present there and the car license. You can call the following person to ask if the car arrived. Mr. Ernie Caballero. Shed 152. Berth 20. Telephone BD 9-1700 (office). Newark, New Jersey. I sent some clothes and other things in the car, including one package of Mrs. Mota [wife of Clemente's teammate]. I hope you don't have trouble receiving the car. My best regards to Carole and kids and say them that I will see them on April. Please, excuse my bad English.

Sincerely, Vera.

Three years earlier, Clemente had begun s.h.i.+pping his car to the States for use during the season. Dorsey would pick it up at the port of Newark and drive it back to Pittsburgh. The bill of lading showed that it cost Clemente $203.76 to send his ton-and-a-half white Cadillac by freighter. It was part of the seasonal routine now, the Caddy following Momen on his migrations between island and mainland. In many ways, this new season marked a turning point for Clemente, a time when he was approaching the fullness of his life and career, but his days still were not without some rough spots.

The sixth of May rarely found Clemente at his best. In 1965, that was the day of reaction to his "trade me!" outburst. In 1966 his explosion was not verbal but physical. In the ledger of his life, here was a day for the case against sainthood. Not everything about him could be resolved with the explanation that he was misunderstood. The truth was he had a temper and occasionally did stupid things. This was one such time. The Pirates were on the road, playing the Phillies in Philadelphia. They had begun the season solidly, with thirteen wins in the first nineteen games, good enough for first place. But on this Friday night, after tying the game in the late innings and taking a four-run lead in the eleventh, the Pirates fell apart, their loose play allowing the Phils to come back with five in the bottom of the frame to win, eight to seven. A key error in the sloppy rally came when Clemente fired a strike toward home after a bloop single to right and the ball caromed off the leg of cut-off man Donn Clendenon, the first baseman. After the loss, the visitors' locker room at Connie Mack Stadium was a trough of grumpy, foul-mouthed men.

A half hour later, as the Pirates were boarding the team bus at Lehigh Avenue near Twenty-first Street to return to the Warwick Hotel, Clemente was surrounded by several young fans. Among them was Bernie h.e.l.ler, a nineteen-year-old from the village of Mary D, who was studying sheet metal work at Theodore Stevens Trade School in Lancaster. As h.e.l.ler later described the scene, he and two friends had been walking to their car when "we seen where the players were coming out, and they happened to be giving autographs." h.e.l.ler got in line and waited, holding a ball he wanted signed. Clemente was doing most of the signing, a task that he did day after day, often joyously, usually without complaint. Now there was some movement in the crowd, people pus.h.i.+ng for position, and Clemente, with one foot on the pavement and another on the bottom step of the bus, ready to board, suddenly wheeled around and clocked young h.e.l.ler with a swift fist. "All I seen is his right hand. He got me right in the mouth. All I seen is a big white star." h.e.l.ler recalled forty years later. In his memory, h.e.l.ler thinks he was knocked unconscious. According to police reports at the time, he told authorities that the blow buckled his knees and he fell to the cement, but got up and walked away, only then realizing that three of his teeth had been jarred loose. His friends escorted him to the stadium first-aid room, and from there he was taken to Women's Medical College Hospital, where he was kept overnight for observation and X rays.

By the accounts of other witnesses, Clemente seemed unperturbed by the incident, almost as though he didn't realize what had happened. After h.e.l.ler fell to the ground, Clemente continued signing a ball for a young girl, then boarded the bus, and signed more scorecards and papers that were handed to him through an open window. The next morning, accompanied by Harry Walker and the traveling secretary, Bob Rice, he went down to police headquarters to be interviewed by Detective James Coyle. According to Coyle, Clemente told him that he didn't know who he hit or where he hit him, but that there was a scuffle near the bus and that he "might have hit somebody as he was getting on." Later, Clemente admitted directly that he threw the punch. He said that someone grabbed him and spun him around as he was boarding the bus. He then saw h.e.l.ler with his hands up. "I took a punch at him," Clemente said. "Not a real punch, just more to stay away from him." What was Clemente's concept of a real punch? By any definition his was strong enough. According to Detective Coyle, h.e.l.ler's teeth "were so loose they practically were falling out of his mouth." John h.e.l.ler, Bernie's older brother, visited Bernie in the hospital in the middle of the night and said he looked "like a dog who had just had a fight with a skunk."

There was talk of a lawsuit, and the h.e.l.lers hired a lawyer, but before matters went further Clemente apologized. "I'm very sorry it happened," he said. "I hear [h.e.l.ler's] a nice fellow." Harry Walker paid a visit to the hospital and brought along one of Clemente's gloves and a bat, a 36-inch Frenchy Uhalt model Louisville Slugger that flared without a k.n.o.b at the end and had No. 21 etched into the bottom. An out-of-court settlement of a few thousand dollars paid for Bernie h.e.l.ler's hospital bill; there were also free tickets for the family whenever the Pirates were in Philadelphia. Forty years later, h.e.l.ler, who worked as the postmaster in St. Clair, Pennsylvania, still had the bat and glove, but not the ball that he brought to Connie Mack Stadium that long ago afternoon. "I took the ball with me from home to get autographs, but . . . I think the ball and everything went flying. I don't have the ball anymore. Like I said, when he hit me the only thing I seen, it looked like a big white meteor . . . n.o.body could understand why he did it."

Much later, when reports of the incident filtered back to Puerto Rico, an embarra.s.sed Clemente would concoct a version of the story that had centered on someone calling him names in the right-field bleachers during the game and then continuing the hara.s.sment afterward. But that story had nothing to do with the reality of his encounter with Bernie h.e.l.ler. The punch seemed more instinctive, and part of a pattern. Clemente had reacted similarly in 1964 outside Forbes Field, pus.h.i.+ng two fans who were jostling too close to him, though no one had his teeth knocked loose that time. And in May 1963 he had been suspended for five days and fined $250 for accosting umpire Bill Jackowski during a home game against the Phillies. After being called out at first on a double-play grounder, he flew into a five-minute rage, twice b.u.mping against Jackowski. In the clubhouse later, he defended his behavior by saying that he and the Pirates never got any breaks. "Other teams argue and get close decisions. Dodgers get every close play. Why? We don't argue and we don't get them." Bad calls, he added, were costing him fifteen to twenty points a year on his batting average. "I seldom argue unless I feel the umpire is wrong," he said. "I have a good record in the league office, but this is the worst year for umpiring I have ever seen." Warren Giles, the National League president, sent a telegram to Clemente announcing his suspension and calling his actions "the most serious reported to our office in several years."

The supposed inept.i.tude of major league umpires could not explain a winter league incident back home in Puerto Rico, when Clemente had been suspended for a playing field dispute during which he kicked an umpire and broke a rib. His pal Vic Power kept a photograph of that incident to remind himself and the world that not even the revered Roberto Clemente was beyond human lapses of self-control. "He fought, yeah, he got mad like every human being," Power recalled in his blunt yet good-natured fas.h.i.+on. "The Puerto Rican people, I think 99 percent have bad tempers. They get bad temper, ohhh, baby." It was not for nothing that Carolina became known as the town of those who cut off arms. Within the world of baseball, there was that glint of unpredictability to Clemente. If one examines videotapes of the most famous moment in Pirate history, Maz bounding toward the plate after clouting the homer that beat the mighty Yanks in the bottom of the ninth of the seventh game of the 1960 World Series, there is Clemente greeting him near the plate, and some fans rush close, and No. 21 jerks around-was he threatened by the approaching shadows?-and it seems as though he is about to deck a fan who is getting too close. He doesn't, the threat pa.s.ses in a split-second, and the celebration resumes all the way to the dugout, but in that moment there is a surprising intimation of unpremeditated violence.

Clemente's edginess seemed confined to his profession. He was gentle at home, no sudden explosions. In later years, when he had three sons, he never spanked them, but could quiet them with a solemn look. In his life away from the game, he did not appear driven to affirm his manhood through the social rituals of machismo.

Random physics, an unpremeditated moment, and for better or worse a life changes forever. Bernie h.e.l.ler never forgot Clemente's blow; Carol Brezovec would only see his kindness. The trajectory of their stories arced in opposite directions, yet both started in precisely the same spot-on the concourse outside old Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia.

Six weeks after the h.e.l.ler incident, the Pirates were back in Philadelphia for another series, and among the fans attending the Sunday afternoon game were Carol and her dad, John Brezovec. They both loved baseball, and the tickets to the game were a Father's Day present from Carol, who was then seventeen. Her parents were divorced. John, a barber and musician, lived in Bethlehem; Carol and her younger sister, Sharon, lived with their mother, Carolyn, in Allentown. They all were regulars at the stadium, known to ushers and many Phillies players. John was around so much he became virtually part of the team, able to come and go in the home clubhouse. Carol would draw sketches of her favorite players and gather with autograph hounds outside the players gate after games, but she was so shy that she often came home without any signatures. She was out there trying for autographs after the Sunday game on June 26, which the Pirates won, 20, when she noticed a crowd gathering around a Pittsburgh player. For some reason, the Brezovecs had never seen the Pirates before, so Carol was unfamiliar with the faces, if not the names. She stayed in the background until the circle around the player dissolved, then approached and asked quietly, "May I please have your autograph?" He signed his name, Roberto Clemente. Carol had just started studying Spanish in high school. She thanked him by saying, "Muchas gracias."

Clemente began talking to her in Spanish. Feeling embarra.s.sed, she had to confess that she didn't have a clue what he said. In English, Clemente asked her where she was from and why she was studying Spanish. His teammate Andre Rodgers, a shortstop from the Bahamas who had come over to the Pirates from the Cubs the previous year, was standing nearby, listening. There was something about Clemente's warmth and directness that helped Carol overcome her shyness, and they talked easily about language, home, and family. Why are you here alone? Clemente asked. Carol said she was with her father, who was over in the Phillies clubhouse. They talked on, losing track of time, until a security guard came by and announced that the Pirates' bus to the airport had departed, leaving Clemente and Rodgers behind. Carol was red-faced again. "Oh, my G.o.d. I'm so sorry!" she said. "Wait here and I'll go get my dad and we'll drive you to the airport." She ran to the Phillies clubhouse, found her father, and explained that they had to leave immediately for the airport because of an emergency.

As the odd quartet-father and daughter Phillies fans in front, visiting team right fielder and shortstop in back-pulled out of stadium traffic, John Brezovec turned to Carol and asked, in his blunt way, "Can you tell me what the f.u.c.k is going on? Who are these people?" Carol had not bothered to tell him who the pa.s.sengers were. "Let me introduce you," she said. "This is Roberto Clemente and Andre Rodgers." He was stunned. How did this happen? She said she would explain it all on the way. Clemente appeared unfazed by his predicament and perfectly content in the backseat. From his traveling bag, he pulled out a battery-powered portable record player and a selection of alb.u.ms, and the sweet lyricism of Roberto Ledesma's island ballads started filling the car. John Brezovec, who wrote his own polkas and waltzes, loved the music, and he and Clemente struck up a conversation about their favorite songs as the music played in the background. They discovered that they had other things in common, and the foursome talked animatedly all the way to the airport. Instead of dropping Clemente and Rodgers off at the departure curb, Brezovec parked the car and he and his daughter escorted the ball players to the Pirates' airline gate. The plane, as it turned out, had not left yet.

Clemente was still in no hurry. He seemed less interested in the flight than in his newfound friends. "This is incredible," he told Carol. "It feels like I've known you my whole life." He said he wanted them to meet his wife, Vera, and his family back in Puerto Rico. The Pirates wouldn't return to Philadelphia until late September, but he hoped to see them again before then. Would they like to come to New York the following week and see the Pirates play at Shea Stadium? He asked for a telephone number and said that he would call and make arrangements. Then, before boarding the plane, he autographed his Roberto Ledesma alb.u.m and handed it to Carol.

All the way home, the Brezovecs kept saying to each other, no one will believe this. A half hour after Carol got back to her house in Allentown, the phone rang. Her mother answered. "Is this Carolina?" the voice on the other end asked, in a soft Spanish accent.

Close enough. Yes.

"This is Roberto Clemente. I met your daughter tonight and wanted to be sure she is home. Did she get home safely?" Carolyn said yes and asked whether he wanted to talk to her. No, he said, just wanted to make sure. Then he asked, "Do you like baseball?"

Love baseball, she said, adding that she usually went to the games with Carol, but her father took her tonight. Good, Clemente said. If they would come to New York next week, he would get tickets for them to see him play at Shea Stadium. That would be fun, Carolyn said. But where should they stay? Don't worry about any of that, Clemente said. Just come. His friend Phil Dorsey would take care of everything. The tickets would be waiting. And he had family in New York who would look after them, too. A day later, Dorsey called and said a room had been reserved for them at the Hotel Commodore at Forty-second and Lexington, where the Pirates stayed, and there would be tickets for the games on Sat.u.r.day July 2 and Sunday July 3 waiting for them at the players' window at the stadium.

As Carol and Carolyn took their seats behind the visitors' dugout at Shea for the Sat.u.r.day game, they looked out to right field. "Carol, there's Roberto," Carolyn said to her daughter. "I can't believe this . . . he's waving at us." Before the game, Clemente sent a note up with a batboy asking them to wait for him afterward. The Pirates were hot, having won six straight, with Clemente, Stargell, Clendenon, Manny Mota, and Matty Alou all hitting over .300. In the series opener on Friday night, a young lefthander named Woody Fryman had given up a leadoff hit to Mets second baseman Ron Hunt in the first inning and then retired the next twenty-seven Mets in order, a one-hitter and near perfect game. On Sat.u.r.day, Clemente's new friends from Allentown watched him stroke a home run, his twelfth of the year, but it was not his best game. Twice in the late innings he made an out with the bases loaded, and the Pirates lost 43. When the game ended, Clemente met his guests outside the visitors' clubhouse and announced that he was taking them out to eat at an elegant Spanish restaurant in midtown Manhattan. Clemente's friends Carlos and Carmen Llanos-he called them cousins, though they were not related-were there, along with Jose Pagn and Andre Rodgers and a few other Latin players. Carol ate paella for the first time, and was starstruck, and quickly agreed to come along after dinner when Clemente said they were heading up to a party at the Llanoses apartment. Her mother politely declined, saying she was tired. A half hour later, Clemente sent back an emissary to a.s.sure her that Carol was in safe company.

Later that night, back at the Commodore, Clemente was sleepless as usual, and called Carolyn's room and asked if she wanted to talk. She agreed, and they stayed up until three, sharing the stories of their lives. Clemente asked her whether she knew the name of the town where he was born. No, she said. "The name is Carolina," he said. "And that is what I'm going to call you. You are my Carolina. You're going to be my sister. You are going to be my family from now on." Clemente was warm but unthreatening; there were no s.e.xual overtones in his dealings with either the mother or daughter. He was a man of many sides, and he kept that side from them. Women were constantly flattering him, flirting with him, throwing themselves at him, calling his room at every road hotel. His friend Phil Dorsey, if he was around, screened the calls for Clemente. Other friends filled the same role when Dorsey was not there. For all his love of Vera, Roberto was not above temptation. But with Carolyn and Carol his pa.s.sion was about family. He had lost his only sister, Anairis, before he was old enough to know her, but had always felt her presence. Now he would have two American sisters, Carolina and Carolina. From now on, he would visit them whenever he came to Philadelphia, and they would come see him play in New York and make visits to Pittsburgh. And, he said again, they must come visit him in Puerto Rico.

When he first saw Forbes Field in 1955, Clemente told himself to forget about hitting home runs. The outfield was among the most s.p.a.cious in baseball: 365 feet to the left-field fence, 442 to dead center, 436 to right-center, and right field was topped by an eighteen-foot-high wire screen. "I was strong, but n.o.body was that strong," Clemente said. The implication was that he could hit home runs if he wanted to, but smartly adapted his game to the surroundings. There is undoubtedly some truth to that, but it is also true that the arc of his swing simply did not produce home runs in the way that those of Henry Aaron and Frank Robinson did, to name the two other great all-around right fielders of his era. The issue was not raw power-at times, Clemente could clout the ball monstrous distances, as far as Mickey Mantle, Frank Howard, Willie Stargell, or any of the prodigious sluggers, a fact that he constantly reiterated to sportswriters and teammates. But when he stepped to the plate, he thought about getting a base hit and keeping his average above .300 and helping his team win, but never visualized hitting one over the fence. Never, that is, except in 1966, after he and Harry Walker patched up their differences. It was then that Walker told Clemente that the Pirates needed more power from him if they were to contend for a pennant, and that providing more power was part of what he had to do as the team leader, and that if he hit more home runs and the team won he might finally get the prize that had eluded him and bothered him for so many years, the MVP award.

"So the story goes, Harry said, 'I need more power from you,' and so Clemente goes out and hits twenty-nine home runs and drives in 119 runs," said the pitcher Steve Bla.s.s. "Now that's scary." Those were Clemente's power numbers for 1966, the best of his career, and though he said he was afraid his batting average would fall dramatically if he went for home runs, the drop was minor, down to .317. The tradeoff seemed worth it. And there was no padding in Clemente's statistics. Day after day, his. .h.i.ts came when they were needed, not at the end of a lopsided game. His play in right field was as thrilling as ever. He led the league in outfield a.s.sists, with seventeen, and it was difficult to calculate all the ways that his arm made a difference. g.a.y.l.o.r.d Perry, the crafty spitballer who won twenty-one games for San Francisco that year, would never forget a game when the score was tied in the late innings and Willie Mays was on second and there was a hit to right-"and Mays rounds third and screeches to a halt" because Clemente was in right. "When you have the world's best base runner put on the brakes on a hit to right, you know it's because the world's best arm is in right," said Perry later, shaking his head. "And it was a close game. We needed that run."

As the year went on, his teammates noticed that Clemente's power, perfectly rounding out his game, was accompanied by a more a.s.sertive att.i.tude. He seemed less preoccupied with himself and more obsessed with winning. He had always played hard, every play of every game he was in, but now he talked about it more in the clubhouse, urging his fellow Pirates to put out more every day, saying they owed it to the city and its fans. Only four players remained from the World Series champions, Law and Face on the mound and Clemente and Mazeroski on the field, and this was now becoming Clemente's team. The twenty-five-man squad included nine blacks and Latins, often five in the starting lineup, with Bob Veale emerging as their best pitcher. And it was an increasingly loose bunch. "We haven't got a sane guy on this ball club," declared catcher Jim Pagliaroni, who could be seen wearing an old leather pilot's helmet and goggles. Clemente's countryman, Jose Pagn of Barceloneta, Puerto Rico, was now playing third base and he and his wife, Delia, lived in the other apartment on the second floor of Mrs. Harris's house, making it feel more like home for Roberto and Vera when she was in town. After a game, the smell of bacalaitos filled the house, as Vera fried his favorite cod-cake fritters. All of this made Clemente more comfortable, and the more at ease he was the more he a.s.serted his will on his teammates.

It was not a complete transformation; there were still times when he appeared agitated and oversensitive. In the heat of the pennant race, when the Pirates visited Los Angeles in mid-September to play the streaking Dodgers, he grew angry after a crucial loss in which he had gone hitless in four at-bats against Sandy Koufax. He had read and heard that Koufax was complaining about an arthritic elbow yet pitching one superb game after another. "Sore arm, my foot! He couldn't pitch like that if it hurt very bad," Clemente told the press afterward, straight-faced, failing to see the irony of that particular statement coming from a player known for playing his best when he had some physical complaint.

But was Clemente really angry about Koufax or once again expressing the hurt he felt over being misunderstood? As he continued talking in the clubhouse, the latter seemed to be the case. "When my back hurts they call me goldbrick," he said. "But when Koufax says his elbow hurts, they call him a hero." It was as though he were beseeching the world: When will people start calling Roberto Clemente a hero?

The Pirates finished twenty-two games over .500, at 9270, good but not quite good enough, three games behind the pennant-winning Dodgers. But for so many Pirates, led by Clemente, 1966 was a most productive year. The middle infield combination of young Gene Alley at shortstop and veteran Mazeroski was perhaps the best in the league in the field and at the plate. Stargell, the big lefty slugger, had the highest power numbers of his young career, hitting thirty-three home runs and driving in 102. Matty Alou, his. .h.i.tting style revamped, largely by Clemente in daily tutoring sessions, transformed himself from a weak lefty pull hitter into a dangerous all-fields slap hitter and led the league with a .342 average. The team as a whole had the highest c.u.mulative batting average in the league at .279. And all of this was accomplished during a season when National League pitching was dominant, led by the big three of Koufax, Marichal, and Gibson. Clemente was wrong about Koufax-the pain in his arm was not a ruse but enough to make him retire; 1966 would be the final brilliant season of his too-brief career. Juan Marichal of the Giants was still in the middle of his nearly decade-long string of great seasons. And Bob Gibson of the Cardinals had become virtually unhittable. Koufax, Marichal, Gibson-their numbers that year were golden. Gibson had twenty-one wins, twenty complete games, 225 strikeouts, and an earned-run average of 2.44. Not as good as Marichal, who won twenty-five games, had twenty-five complete games, 222 strikeouts, and an earned-run average of 2.23. Which was not as good as Koufax, who finished the season with twenty-seven wins, twenty-seven complete games, 317 strikeouts, and an earned-run average of 1.73.

Manager Harry Walker attended the World Series that year as a fan, watching the Dodgers lose to the young Baltimore Orioles. All he wanted to do was talk about his team, and especially about his team leader. In Walker's own peculiar way, knocking someone down and then building him up higher, he promoted Clemente as the most valuable player in the league. "Clemente has his critics," he said. "He's such a hypochondriac that some people also think he's a malingerer. But no man ever gave more of himself or worked more unselfishly for the good of the team than Roberto. I know the votes are already in for most valuable player. I'm convinced that Clemente deserves it. Whether he gets it or not, he's most valuable in my book."

When the MVP votes were counted, it turned out to be a two-man contest between Koufax and Clemente. In his darkest visions, Clemente thought there was no way he could win this contest-the darling of L.A. and New York versus the forgotten man of Pittsburgh and Carolina-the American hero, pitching through pain, versus the Puerto Rican hypochondriac and goldbricker. But now, six years after he had spiraled into bitterness over finis.h.i.+ng eighth in the 1960 balloting, a lingering hurt that was so deep he refused thereafter to wear his 1960 World Series ring, here was redemption. Koufax received 208 votes, Clemente 218. At last, he was recognized by the North American sportswriters as the Most Valuable Player in the National League.

You have to visit me in Puerto Rico after the season, Clemente had told his American sisters, Carolyn and Carol, or Carolina the mother and Carolina the daughter. The mother could not get free from her job with the regional office of HUD, the federal housing agency where she worked, and was spending time with her new boyfriend, Nevin Rauch, who would soon become her husband. They decided that the daughter should go. Carol, in her senior year of high school, arrived in San Juan in mid-December 1966, during the long and joyous Christmas season, and stayed with the Clementes in the guest room at their house on the hill. She was treated like part of the family. There were two little sons now, Robert.i.to and Luisito. The house was warm, always busy, with visitors popping in day and night. Roberto's status on the island was higher than ever now that the mainland had recognized him as the very best, and he was constantly in demand. "He explained to me that he would be very busy, he was into so many things in the community and business," Carol recalled. She spent most of her days with Vera, whose knowledge of English was about as limited as Carol's rudimentary Spanish. She carried a little dictionary at her side. They spent hours in the kitchen during the day. Vera was a superb cook, but had to limit some of her recipes for her husband, who was on a protein kick. That winter he was into liver and eggs. At night, Carol and Vera would sit on a big bed in the bedroom with the two little boys and play cards and sing songs in English and Spanish.

Carol felt as though she had been reincarnated with a Spanish soul. Clemente was always talking about how much his back hurt. He would try to teach her new words in Spanish, and learn English from her, and she would want to laugh at his English because his p.r.o.nunciation was awful. "But I had to be real careful because he was real sensitive to criticism. I would say, 'Well, you're getting there.'" He was always getting somewhere, she thought. When he had free time, Roberto piled the family and Carol into his Cadillac and drove around the island, treating it like a Jeep. They went to the beach near the bay of crabs, where he loved to collect driftwood. Then they drove to la finca-the farm he owned outside the village of El Verde near the exotic rainforest, El Yunque. Clemente seemed like a different person at la finca, totally at ease among his pigs, horses, and goats, and walking through his fields of plantain and coffee. He proudly showed Carol how he had built the farmhouse himself and had decorated the interior with bamboo. Wherever they went, Roberto had a presence about him that amazed her, but she could see it most strongly out here in the countryside hills, the heart of his homeland. "I came back being in awe of what a humble man he was. What a regular man he was. But just so connected to the people. If children recognized him, or the most humble-looking person somewhere on a mountain hill where we were driving approached him, wherever we were, it ended in a long conversation. I never remember a moment when Roberto didn't take the time to talk to somebody who came up to him. There never was a time when he didn't stop. I never remember him walking away or cutting someone off. And especially if it was someone young." Clemente among the people was an image that burned into her mind. In that setting, far from the major league stadiums, she said, "you could see him like a prophet."

10.

A Circular Stage

THE PIRATES TRAINER, TONY BARTIROME, THOUGHT Roberto Clemente was a lot like his wife. Ask him how he felt and he would tell you. Well, I've got this thing with my neck. Clemente would not dismiss the question with an evasive fine. He took his body seriously, and regarded questions about it with earnestness. A pregame stop at the training table was a daily appointment, another of his rituals, like not sleeping at night and complaining about sportswriters. It was his way to relax, or to avoid people he didn't want to see, but there was always fine-tuning to be done. This mostly involved rubbing. Bartirome would ma.s.sage his neck for five or six minutes, kneading out the kinks. X rays showed that some stiffness in his neck was arthritis, brought on by the injuries from the auto accident in Caguas when he was driving home to see his dying brother in 1954. After the neck work, Clemente would flip onto his stomach and have his right Achilles tendon pulled for a few minutes, then attention turned to his lower back. Often he would relax to the point of almost falling asleep on the table, then emerge from semiconsciousness calling out, "Where's Bob? Bob?"

That would be Bob Veale, the colossal six-foot-six left-handed pitcher. Veale made the mistake of rubbing Clemente's shoulder one afternoon, a friendly act that was followed by a good day at the plate. "From then on I had a lifetime job," Veale remembered. "Every game I had to touch him. I had to rub his shoulder for good-luck purposes. He felt he could only have a great day if I rubbed him, and he had quite a few of those. If he said, 'Rub hard,' I would rub hard." Like many ball players, Clemente had his superst.i.tions. Some actions or totems brought good luck, some bad. He might have been wrong in the end, but during the magical 1960 season he had insisted that the team's Dixieland band was a jinx, especially when it followed the Pirates on the road, and he didn't want it anywhere near him. He had lucky s.h.i.+rts that he would wear until the Pirates lost. And now the big hands of Bob Veale were a force for the good.

The training room was an inner sanctum for the players, but mostly it was Clemente's lair. As much as he loved baseball, he was obsessed with the healing arts. He thought of himself as an adjunct trainer, and knew more about ma.s.sage than Bartirome, a former first baseman who learned how to be a proficient trainer so that he could stay around a major league club. Whenever a teammate, coach, or friend complained of a bad back or sore joint, Clemente offered his services. In many ways, he was ahead of his time, a New Age experimentalist searching for noninvasive methods to ease pain. With his long, sensitive hands, he was especially adept at deep ma.s.sages. "It was something . . . supernatural," said his wife, Vera. "He would put pressure and say you have this or that and find the problems. He could see with his fingertips." When Harding Peterson, a former catcher who became director of scouting, complained of a sore lower back one night at training camp, Clemente, though nattily dressed for dinner, retrieved oils from his room, took off his suit coat, rolled up his sleeves, and went to work, rubbing Peterson down for twenty minutes. He often carried liniments in his duffel bag for just such emergencies.

Another tool of his trade seemed straight out of science fiction, an ultrashock device that reportedly went haywire and burned a red welt into coach Clyde King's rear end. "It looked like some kind of cross between a cattle prod and flyswatter with G.o.dd.a.m.n sparks flying all over the place," recalled pitcher Steve Bla.s.s. But Clemente could also use something as simple as his bat, which he employed to beneficial effect on Les Banos, the team photographer. Banos once complained of a stiff lower back before a game in Montreal after he had endured two cross-country flights within twenty-four hours, and Clemente eased the pain by adeptly manipulating his Frenchy Uhalt model Louisville Slugger into the little Hungarian photographer's pressure points, lending new meaning to the description of him as a magician with a bat in his hands.

Over the years, as Clemente sought help for chronic pain in his back and spine, he became a devotee of chiropractics. His interest in the practice went back to 1957, his third season in the majors, when his pain was so bad that he considered retiring. During a road trip to St. Louis, he visited the Logan College of Chiropractics, where the founder Vinton Logan took X rays showing the arthritic condition in Clemente's neck and relieved the pain. From then on, Clemente stopped in for treatment whenever the Pirates were in St. Louis, and began looking for chiropractors in San Juan and Pittsburgh as well. He learned their techniques so thoroughly that he started to think of himself as a member of their profession. Vera recalled that he had shelves of books on chiropractics. "He was a chiropractor without a license," she said. "He worked on many patients who would have gone to surgeons." As he began to consider his future after baseball, he often talked of two parallel dreams: One was to run a free sports city for the children of Puerto Rico; the other was to set up a lucrative chiropractic vacation spa on the ocean outside San Juan.

When he thought sportswriters mistook his health obsession for hypochondria, Clemente would explode. But inside the clubhouse, he learned to go with it. Early in the 1967 season, his teammates noticed a subtle change; he could rib and be ribbed with no hard feelings. Year by year after that, he eased more to the center of the locker room fun. His nickname for Bartirome was Dago. "I'm a dago, too," he would insist, pointing out that Clemente was also an Italian surname. "I don't know whether it was the personalities on the team or that he had matured and felt it was all right to put his guard down and enjoy it and be silly with us, but he seemed to loosen up," Bla.s.s observe