Clemente: The Passion And Grace Of Baseball's Last Hero Part 5

The Pirates were a mess the second half of the season. After a disastrous stretch in July when they lost eleven of thirteen games, they fell below .500 and never recovered, eventually finis.h.i.+ng the season with a 7579 record-eighteen games behind the Cincinnati Reds of Frank Robinson and Vada Pinson. Things got so bad during the second-half slide that Jack Hernon wrote a game story with the most honest and reader-defying lead of all time-"Philadelphia, August 7-It was a dull game." Period, paragraph. And that was a rare game that the Pirates actually won. Not that the sporting world was paying much attention to Pittsburgh-or any team in the National League, including the Reds. The media focus every day that August and September was on Maris and Mantle and their relentless pursuit of Ruth's magic sixty.

The virtuosity of Roberto Clemente went virtually unnoticed outside Pittsburgh, but those scorching line drives he thwacked during the first day of spring training just kept flying off his Frenchy Uhalt bat month after month. After he won a game in San Francisco with a grand slam, Danny Murtaugh, for the first time, started comparing his right fielder with the best in the game. "Clemente's quite a player, isn't he?" Murtaugh told the press. "He's as good an outfielder in right field as . . . Willie Mays is in center. There isn't anything he can't do." With a month and a half to go, Clemente picked up the one-thousandth hit of his career. A few days later, Al Abrams was speculating that he might even challenge Arky Vaughan's record, set in 1935, for the best single season batting average for a Pirate, .385. The only thing holding Roberto back, Abrams wrote, was that he tended to tire out in the final month. The Pittsburgh writer attributed that late-season tendency to the fact that Clemente played winter ball every year and never got sufficient rest. "Why a brilliant performer such as Clemente is permitted to take part in outside baseball action is beyond our thinking."

One night that August on a road-game flight, Clemente sat on the armrest and talked for forty-five minutes with Hernon, the beat writer with whom he had an uneasy relations.h.i.+p. In his "Roamin' Around" column, Hernon quoted verbatim the right fielder's stream-of-consciousness monologue. Clemente told stories about how he almost quit in 1957 when he was hurting, and how his father, Don Melchor, lost thousands of dollars once when someone stole a money box from his house in Carolina, and how he had invested some of his own money in real estate back home. When Clemente was on a roll speaking in his second language, there was a bit of Casey Stengel to him, the poetry of run-on thoughts. "Sometimes I get mad at people," he said. "But only once here in Pittsburgh. That when I was hurt and everyone call me Jake [to Jake is a verb used by athletes to connote someone who is not trying and making excuses]. I don't like that. I want to play but my back hurt lots of times and I can't play. Then that year in St. Paul when I threw the ball in exhibition game the elbow started to puff up. That when some people write that I was in a fight with Face [the relief pitcher, who never got along with Clemente] in St. Louis. You know that not right. You can still feel the bone chip in my elbow," he continued . . .

That's why I throw the ball underhanded sometimes. That way it don't hurt my arm. If I throw real hard lots of times overhand in game, the elbow hurts and swells up.

The back is okay too. Sometime it hurt me when I run. But I find out it is bad disc. If it goes out on the right side I can push it back in easy. But if it hurts on the other side sometimes I have to work long time to get it back in place.

I have friend in Puerto Rica [the way Hernon spelled it, apparently implying that Clemente p.r.o.nounced it that way, or at least that Hernon thought he did] who studied to be a doctor but not finish. He has lots of money now and just likes to work as doctor sometimes. He has helped lots of fellows playing winter ball in my home. He fixed me up . . .

I think my friend in Puerto Rica can help Vernon [Law, out with the torn rotator cuff]. He can tell when it hurts without touching the spot. He do that with me just in exercise he asked me to do. I make face once and he said, "You have a bad disc." And he right. I think he can help Vernon, but no one listen to me and do anything.

The bone chip in his elbow finally did what National League pitchers could not, shutting Clemente down for the last five games of the season. By then, his statistics for the season included 201 hits and a league-leading .351 average. Along with the Silver Bat for being the league's best hitter, he also was voted a Gold Glove as the best right fielder.

This was not just Clemente's rise, but all of Puerto Rico's. It had been exactly twenty seasons since Hiram Bithorn took the mound for the Chicago Cubs and became the first Puerto Rican to play in the major leagues. Within two decades, the island had reached a point of baseball excellence. Not only had Clemente captured the batting t.i.tle but Orlando Cepeda ended the season as the National League leader in home runs, with forty-six, and runs batted in, with 142. Never before had a player from Puerto Rico led the league in any hitting category, and now they had won all three. Back home, people were calling it the Puerto Rican triple crown. And there was more-t.i.te Arroyo, the left-handed reliever on the unbeatable Yanks, had had the lowest earned-run average in the majors and led the American League in saves with twenty-nine, and Juan Pizarro was excelling, too, going 147 with the White Sox. San Juan was ready to celebrate. Even Cantalicio, the impish cartoon character for Corona Beer, got into the act, with Spanish-language ads that ran in El Imparcial and other newspapers: Corona Beer joins the joy of our island in the triumph of our Puerto Rican baseball stars, leaders in the recent big league season: ROBERTO CLEMENTE and ORLANDO CEPEDA, winners of the triple crown; t.i.tE ARROYO, leader in ERA in both leagues, and TERRIN PIZARRO, who had his best year in the big leagues. Congratulations from Corona . . . to our most outstanding ballplayers.

On his way out of Pittsburgh, Clemente paid special tribute to George Sisler and another Pirates instructor, Bill Burwell, for their encouragement. "They helped me all season by giving me confidence," he said. "They kept telling me I could hit for high average-even .400-and that made me feel good." He also talked again about how his hurt feelings had motivated him. "I was mad [from] last year. I played as well as anyone on our team and I didn't receive one MVP vote. Don't get me wrong, I didn't say I was the best last year or that I should have won the MVP award. But n.o.body seemed to care about me. But you win the batting t.i.tle yourself. They can't take that away from you."

The Sportswriters Fraternity of Puerto Rico cared enough about Clemente to send a delegation of scribes, Juan Maldonado, t.i.to Morales, and Martinez Rousset, to New York to meet him and Orlando Cepeda and escort them back to the island for a festive homecoming. The triple crown kings arrived in San Juan on Pan Am Flight 211 at 2:35 on the afternoon of Monday, October 9 and looked out at a swarming sea of fans. Packs of schoolchildren were there, along with businessmen, families, airport employees. People sat on every available ledge, legs dangling, and stood shoulder to shoulder on the roof of the terminal. It took nearly an hour for Clemente and Cepeda to make their way from the plane through the joyous crowd. Clemente, who had undergone minor surgery on his elbow, kept his right arm at his side and waved with his left. He seemed "almost puzzled by the hugeness of the thing," reported the San Juan Star. "But even this shy young man loosened up after being kissed by three pretty young things representing a beer company." The streets of Santurce and San Juan resounded with cheers as Roberto and Orlando, Momen and Pedruchin, rode in open convertibles along a circuitous route to Sixto Escobar stadium, where they were met by a roster of public officials and another boisterous crowd of several thousand fans. The mayor declared the ballplayers honored citizens, and Martiniano Garcia, owner of the Ponce baseball team, made the formal introductions, calling it "a day of glory for Puerto Rico." Cepeda spoke first, and was brief. He said that he loved Puerto Rico now more than ever.

Then Clemente took the microphone. If it was beyond the thinking of Pittsburgh sportswriters why the great Pirates right fielder would play winter baseball in Puerto Rico, here was the answer. He was home again. His parents and brothers were standing nearby, and off to the side were Pedrin Zorrilla, the Big Crab, who had signed him to his first contract, and Roberto Marn, the first coach to believe in him, and Pancho Coimbre, one of his heroes, a great black Puerto Rican hitter who had played too soon, before major league baseball integrated. Clemente often connected his own history to the struggle of his people, and here was a moment of triumph for them all. He was speaking in his own language, and his words were eloquent. "In the name of my family, in the name of Puerto Rico, in the name of all the players who didn't have a chance to play for Puerto Rico in the big leagues, I thank you," he said. "You can be sure that all the Puerto Rican players who go to the States do their best."

8.

Fever

ON A DECEMBER DAY IN 1963, TWO CARS CROSSED PATHS on the streets of San Juan. In one, Orlando Zabala, on leave from the U.S. Army, was driving his younger sister Vera back to their parents' house in Carolina. In the other, Roberto Clemente was cruising into town in his big white Cadillac. As the cars pa.s.sed, Vera caught a brief glimpse of the great baseball star and felt a nervous flutter in her chest. She said nothing, and tried to remain expressionless, knowing that her protective brother would not approve.

A month later, after the New Year and Three Kings Day, Vera Zabala left the house to go to Landau's drugstore on the far end of the central plaza in Carolina. She was twenty-two, a business administration graduate of the University of Puerto Rico, and an administrative a.s.sistant at GDV, the government bank. Her appearance was entrancing: statuesque, with radiant black hair, smooth coffee skin, high cheekbones, and dark, dancing eyes. On her way to the pharmacy, she noticed a car slowing and the driver looking at her. It was Clemente. Always careful to convey an all-business demeanor as she walked, Vera tried to appear even more serious, aware that she was being observed. To her surprise, when she entered the drugstore, Clemente was already there. How he had parked his car so fast and slipped inside, she would never know, but he was sitting near the counter, reading the paper with his legs crossed, a study in nonchalance. For some reason, no one seemed to be working at the pharmacy, and Vera, feeling a bit afraid, wanted to leave.

"No, no, don't leave," Clemente said. "The owner will be back in a few minutes."

Vera kept silent, pretending she was searching for something on the shelves.

"Are you from Carolina?" Clemente asked. "Because I never saw you before. Never!"

"Yes, sir," Vera answered.

Clemente pressed forward with his interrogation. "I cannot believe you are from Carolina because I never saw you before. What is your last name?"

"Zabala," she said.

"Zabala." Clemente paused. "Are you related to Rafael Zabala?" Rafael Zabala was a baseball player for the Caguas Criollos. He was Vera's distant cousin.

"Yes, we're related, but we don't know each other," she said.

Oscar Landau, the pharmacist, finally returned, and Vera was able to buy what she needed and leave. As soon as she was gone, Clemente pumped Landau for more information. Who was this striking young woman? Could Landau help set up a date? That would be difficult, Landau said. Her father was very strict. You never see her around town. She is working at a bank, and when she comes home you don't see her at the movies, at the plaza, anywhere. If you want to see her, you have to go to her house.

That made Clemente more determined. He contacted a friend from Carolina, Natin Vizcarrando, son of the poet Fortunato Vizcarrando, who lived near the Zabalas. Any chance for an introduction? That would be difficult, Natin said. Her family protected her like a jewel. Clemente next called Mercedes Velasquez, who lived two houses from the Zabalas and taught at the high school. Everyone in town respected the Velasquez family. After work one evening, Mrs. Velasquez summoned Vera, her former student, to her house and said, "Vera, Roberto Clemente is driving me crazy. He is calling me twenty times a day. He wants to meet you."

"One of these days," Vera said. She had a sense already that Roberto Clemente would be the love of her life, but she was afraid to rush it. He was the famous one; better to see how much this mattered to him.

A week or so later, Mrs. Velasquez came to the Zabala house with an invitation. Some friends were going with Clemente to watch him play a baseball game for the San Juan Senadores at Hiram Bithorn Stadium, and they were wondering if Vera and her older sister, Ana Maria, would like to come. (The new Bithorn stadium, named in honor of the first Puerto Rican major leaguer, had opened in Hato Rey in 1962, replacing Sixto Escobar.) Ana Maria, who never married, was even stricter than their parents, and immediately suspicious. The teacher had never asked them to a baseball game before, why now? Ana Maria said she didn't want to go, but since it was with a group, and the outing seemed harmless, it was decided that Vera could attend. On the day of the game, Clemente came to pick her up in his white Cadillac. Vera wanted to sit in back, but Roberto insisted that she ride in front. She kept quiet as they drove toward the stadium.

"Don't you talk?" asked Clemente.

"No," she said. "I don't talk much."

The intricate courts.h.i.+p had only just begun.

At the stadium, Clemente excused himself and went to the locker room while Mrs. Velasquez led the group to reserved seats below the grandstands. Clemente's teenage nephew, Paco, was there, and it was obvious that Clemente had a.s.signed him to look after Vera. Every few minutes, he would ask, "Do you want something to eat or drink?" Once, Clemente emerged from the dugout with a teammate, looked into the stands, and pointed out Vera. That was all he did on the field; the game was rained out.

When Clemente and the others started making plans to go to a restaurant, Vera said she had to return home. It was three in the afternoon, Clemente argued. They could go and still get her home in plenty of time. "No, no, no," she said. "My parents will be listening on the radio and know that it was postponed." Her father, Flor Zabala, was a big Senadores fan, though the rest of the family rooted for the Santurce Cangrejeros. Vera herself knew little about baseball; she had not followed winter ball or Clemente's career in Pittsburgh. But she knew she had to go home. They drove back to Carolina, where she told her parents that the game was rained out and that the group was gathering at Mrs. Velasquez's house, where she would like to join them. When she got there, everyone was circled around Roberto Clemente in the living room, listening as he went on and on about his bad back and stiff neck.

Orlando Zabala, the Army sergeant, came home at about this time looking for his sister. "Where's Vern?" he asked, using her diminutive nickname. Sister Ana said she had gone to the Senadores game but it got rained out and now she was at her old teacher's house with the ballplayer Roberto Clemente. Orlando drove around the block and parked his car on the street outside Mrs. Velasquez's front window. Vera noticed him, excused herself, and quietly stepped outside. "I'll give you five minutes to get back home," he told her.

At the bank the next day, Vera picked up the ringing telephone and it was Clemente on the other end, asking whether she would like to go to lunch. The sound of his voice made her anxious. "Sorry," she said. "I'm busy. Maybe some other time." And she hung up on him.

A few days later, the persistent Clemente turned to his niece Rafaela to make the call. Fafa, as she was known, was so nice that Vera could not think up an excuse and accepted the invitation to lunch. Somehow, word spread through the bank about the date with the famous ballplayer and coworkers teased her all the next morning. Vera, it's ten-thirty! Vera, it's eleven! At noon, they left their desks to get a look. Vera persuaded one woman to stay back and walk to the lobby with her. "And there he was, all dressed up. A nice suit," she recalled. "And then he sent for his car. He had the white Cadillac. I was so nervous. He opened the car door for me. The Cadillacs in those days were very wide, and I pushed against the door to be as far away from him as possible."

Lunch was at the San Juan Hilton, on the terrace, and Clemente did most of the talking, spending an hour to say in various ways that he wanted to visit Vera at her home and meet her parents. She kept saying that she wasn't sure; they were very strict, very mean. When talking to him, she used the formal p.r.o.noun usted, rather than t.

A bouquet of flowers came for her at the bank the next day. They went to lunch again, and a third time, and then Clemente had to leave with the Senadores for the 1964 InterAmerican baseball winter league World Series, which was being played in Managua. This was Clemente's first visit to Nicaragua, the trip where a fan in the right-field stands threw a garrabo lizard onto the gra.s.s and made him jump in fright.

When he returned home to Puerto Rico, he took Vera to the Hilton terrace again, and this time brought out a surprise box.

"I don't even know you," Vera said when she opened the box and saw a ring.

He just wanted to make certain that the ring fit, Clemente said. And now he had to meet her parents. She relented, and the meeting was arranged.

As it turned out, the fathers knew each other, Flor Zabala and Melchor Clemente. They had both worked in the sugarcane industry, and it had been Flor, long ago, who had been sent from the hospital in Carolina to Central Victoria to tell Melchor that his daughter Anairis had died of burns. Melchor was known as something of a character in Carolina, and Roberto tried to break the tension with Vera's father by telling a few jokes at his old man's expense. There was a joke about Don Melchor in the bathtub, and another about him watching a ball game. Vera eavesdropped nervously from the next room. Roberto had stationed his niece Fafa in a car down the street in case he had to run. Finally, after Clemente had exhausted his routine of lame father jokes, Mr. Zabala reproached him.

"I don't know what you're doing here," he said. "You are a famous person, a famous baseball player. And I'm sure you know girls more beautiful than Vera and with more money. We are a very humble family."

"You are right," Clemente answered. "I can walk down to the corner and probably get ten girls. But I don't care. The one I love is here."

The conversation then turned to practical negotiation, with the strict father and earnest suitor now bargaining over visiting arrangements like two owners trying to work out a season's schedule. Mr. Zabala set precise times when Clemente could visit his daughter. Twice a week, before sundown. Clemente pleaded for more, noting that he had to leave to play ball in the States in a few weeks. No way, said the old man. Clemente brought up the wedding and all the plans that had to be made. No reason to rush, said Vera's father. No hurry for weddings here.

There were more lunches and visits twice a week, and once Clemente overstayed his allotted time on a Sunday morning and Mr. Zabala expressed his displeasure by loudly thumping his Bible down on a table when he got back from church. Soon enough, the ballplayer was gone, off to Fort Myers and spring training. He wrote Vera every night from his room at Pirate City, the dormitory the team bought so that all the players, black and white, could stay together. There was so much work to do to plan a wedding, Clemente wrote. Come to the States so that we can talk more about it.

Time was of the essence to Roberto Clemente. In those first months of courts.h.i.+p, when Vera thought she hardly knew him, he told her that he felt an internal clock for everything in his life-playing baseball, starting a family, fulfilling his nascent dream of a sports city for poor Puerto Rican children. Life was a fever; no time to waste.

Ten years had pa.s.sed since he had autographed his first Louisville Slugger at the 1954 training camp with the Montreal Royals. Where was he now in his baseball rise? Further along as a player than leader. He was only twenty-nine, yet a nine-year veteran of the major leagues, and though it had been slow in coming his status as a first-cla.s.s talent was now firmly established. He was the right fielder with the golden arm, and the only question about his batting was how many points over .300 he would finish each season. He fell to .312 in 1962, then went up to .320 in 1963. The Pirates were still in transition from the team that had won the World Series only four seasons earlier. Groat and Hoak were gone, and Law, Friend, and Face were pitching in the late shadows of their careers. Maz was an anchor at second, and young Wilver Stargell, playing left field, was about to blossom, but Clemente was the undisputed star of the team. His influence in the clubhouse was still evolving.

To Steve Bla.s.s, a rookie pitcher from the hamlet of Falls Village, Connecticut, the 1964 Pirates were like "a wonderful baseball school-if you wanted to learn something, keep your mouth shut." Law, Friend, Face, Maz, Stargell, Clemente-but Clemente stood apart from the rest. Even more than Danny Murtaugh, the manager, he was the person to whom you had to prove yourself, but he also seemed more intimidating. "I didn't dare go near Clemente," Bla.s.s recalled. "He was this rather stern, imposing, all-work, very professional figure. I said to myself, 'If I'm going to validate myself here I better make sure he knows I'm capable and not just some a.s.shole kid coming up.'"

Bla.s.s knew about Clemente's skills, especially his fearsome throwing arm, long before he ever saw him play. As pitchers moved up the Pirates' minor league system on their way to the majors, they were given special tutoring on what to do if there was a base hit to right field with n.o.body out. In that situation, they were instructed to run toward the first-base dugout and plant themselves about twenty-five feet behind the first baseman on a line with the right fielder. Why back up first on a single to the outfield? The coaches pounded in the answer: Because when you get to the big leagues, Clemente's out there in right. With that gun of his, he's likely to throw behind the runner.

First base that year was manned mostly by another young Pirate, Donn Clendenon, a lanky athlete who played basketball at Morehouse College and considered baseball his third best sport, even behind football. Clendenon's father had helped teach Roy Campanella how to catch and had "pushed baseball down the throat" of his son so much that he played the game more out of obligation than love. In the field for the Pirates, Clendenon had to remain constantly on guard for those rifle throws behind the runner, and he was both awed and annoyed by Clemente's tremendous arm. The ball would come in low and screaming, and if it took a short hop, Clendenon said, "it would just eat me alive." In a different way from Bla.s.s, he also felt that Clemente in the early years was somewhat apart from the team. The six-foot-four first sacker had been reporting to spring training with the Pirates since 1960, though he didn't make the final roster that year and only began getting significant playing time in 1962 before becoming a starter in 1963. But during that period he thought that Clemente, as the team's black star, could have been more nurturing of him and other young black players. "When I got there, initially, he didn't come to my a.s.sistance," Clendenon said in retrospect. "I just thought he could have done more. He kept kind of a low profile."

Clendenon was only a year younger than Clemente, born in the summer of 1935, yet if baseball lifetimes are measured in seven-year cycles, it had taken him a full baseball lifetime longer than Clemente to make the majors. He got a late start for the best of reasons, he was a college graduate, but after signing with Pittsburgh in 1958, he felt that his rise was slowed for the worst reason-a racial quota. "After two or three years, I found that the Pirates had a two-person quota [of minority players]-Roberto Clemente and a Spanish-speaking roommate. It was evident," Clendenon insisted later. The second black Pirate would be either Roman Mejias, a Cuban, or Joe Christopher, from the Virgin Islands, Clendenon said. If this was not precisely true, the statistics were close enough to explain why Clendenon could have felt that way. At various times during the seasons, the Pirates had five black players in 1958, six in 1959, six in 1960, and eight in 1961-but in each of those years only Clemente and one other position player, either Mejias or Christopher, were on the squad all season or played in sixty or more games. The others, for the most part, were up for little more than baseball's proverbial cup of coffee in September.

At the same time, Pittsburgh's minor league clubs during the late 1950s and early sixties were "jam-packed" with black players, as Clendenon put it. The minor league bundling was a reality hard to ignore, whether it was the result of a racial quota at the top, which Joe L. Brown, the general manager, denied, or simply because the Pirates were signing increasing numbers of black players at a time when the major league squad already was stocked with World Seriesquality talent. Another black Pirate who came into his own in 1964, Bob Veale, the big left-handed pitcher, recalled playing for the Wilson Tobs (Tobacconists), the Pirates farm club in the Carolina League, in 1959. By Veale's account, the team had so many black players that many Southerners a.s.sumed it was a Negro League outfit. The Tobs had a rivalry that year with the Raleigh Capitals, who were led by a future Hall of Fame outfielder named Carl Yastrzemski. "There used to be an old white gentleman waiting in the stands in Raleigh before we got there," Veale remembered. "We would come riding in on the bus, and he would shout out, 'Here comes Wilson and all that black magic!'"

In any case, by the time Clendenon, Veale, Stargell, and other black Pirates finally started making the Pittsburgh club in the early 1960s, in the postWorld Series years, they brought with them varying degrees of pent-up frustration. Clendenon, for one, was hoping that Clemente would protect him and counsel him on how to survive and thrive in the majors. When that didn't happen immediately, he instead turned to veterans on other teams like Willie Mays and retired trailblazers like Jackie Robinson and Joe Black. Clendenon shared a house with Stargell and Veale at 428 Dakota Street in Schenley Heights that year, not far from Clemente, but did not hang out with him.

By 1964 Clemente was in the early stages of his emergence as a leader. He had become a big brother of sorts to other Caribbean players, not just on the Pirates but throughout the league. Tony Taylor, a Cuban who played second base for the Philadelphia Phillies, said that he and other Latin players would go out to eat with Clemente whenever they were in the same city, and that he revered Clemente, as much for the way he behaved as the way he played. "He'd try to help you and talk to you about the way to play baseball and the way to handle yourself in society and to represent your country," Taylor recalled. "He was the type of guy who would just sit with you and talk, do this, do that. In my life, besides my mom and father, I'd met no person who meant so much to me. People say he was moody, he was this and that. But he would say the truth. He told you the truth. He never tried to hide anything from anybody."

On the Pirates, Clemente took Manny Mota under his wing that year. Mota was a Dominican outfielder who was starting to get some playing time in his third major league season. He was far slighter than Clemente, only 5' 9'' and 160 pounds, and displayed little power, but shared that rare skill of being able to get wood on almost any ball. Like Clemente, who excelled in the Puerto Rican winter league before s.h.i.+ning in the majors, Mota had led his Dominican league in hitting two winters in a row before gaining notice up North. He had been traded from the Giants to Houston to Pittsburgh within two seasons, devalued because it was thought he lacked power. Clemente identified with the struggle and became Mota's closest friend and adviser on the Pirates. At the stadium every day before games, they could be seen working on hitting, bunting, fielding, and throwing. "He's always been a good hitter," Clemente said of Mota at midseason, pus.h.i.+ng his cause to skeptical Pirate beat writers. "He can hit big league pitching if he's given the chance." Mota eventually proved his friend and mentor right, playing fourteen seasons with a career average over .300. And Clemente would do it again a few years later, working to transform another Dominican Pirate, Mateo Alou, from a mediocre pull hitter into a first-rate spray hitter.

Clemente would always have some sharp angles to him, not the easy, steady-as-you-go personality of the traditional clubhouse captain. He was shy, yet bursting with pride. He was profoundly humble, yet felt misunderstood and undervalued. Even when he wasn't angry at a sports writer or feeling some perceived slight, it could be hard to tell by looking at him in the clubhouse. Television sportscaster Sam Nover, during an interview, told Clemente that some members of the press "come away from seeing you for the first time in the locker room and say, 'Clemente's a mean man. He frowns. The man never smiles'"-and then posed the question: "Is the shape of your face such that you never smile too often?" Clemente took the query seriously, and noted that some teammates had a physiognomy that made them look like they were laughing even when they were mad, whereas his was the opposite. "Now you might think I am serious when I am not serious," he said. "This is the way that I am. And I like to be that way because sometimes you are smiling and then the next time you don't see me smiling and say, 'Hey, what's wrong with you?' So now, I am natural. That is the way I am. n.o.body can say Roberto is mean. I might look mean but I really respect people."

That Clemente defined himself as Puerto Rican, rather than by the color of his skin, also might have shaped Clendenon's perceptions. "He kept saying, 'I no black,'" Clendenon recalled. In fact, Clemente was proud to be a black Puerto Rican, yet never wanted to be categorized or limited by race. When he talked about the issue, especially in English, his comments occasionally were seen as rebukes of blackness, which they were not. The Pittsburgh Courier made that mistake in 1960, but later realized that it had misinterpreted Clemente's intent and his remarks. The clearest account of his perspective on being both Puerto Rican and black came in the wide-ranging interview with sportscaster Nover. "I am between the worlds," he said. "So anything I do will reflect on me because I am black and . . . will reflect on me because I am Puerto Rican. To me, I always respect everybody. And thanks to G.o.d, when I grew up, I was raised . . . my mother and father never told me to hate anyone, or they never told me to dislike anyone because of racial color. We never talked about that. As a matter of fact, I started listening to this talk when I came to the States."

That leads to another way of looking at Clemente and his slow evolution as a leader in the States: language. After a decade in North America, Clemente knew English and the idioms of baseball, including the lexicon of profanity. He knew how to use variations of the all-purpose word f.u.c.k as a noun, verb, and adverb in any sentence. ("You pitch me the f.u.c.k inside and I hit the f.u.c.king ball to McKeesport.") Clendenon suspected there were times when Clemente pretended that he couldn't understand something in English "because he didn't want to deal with something." That is certainly probable, but more often Clemente wanted to speak English and insisted on doing so. It was his fear of being misinterpreted that could make him seem reserved and defensive, especially when writers lurked in the clubhouse. "I always had a theory that here was a very bright man who had taken verbal risks with English before and had been burned and didn't care for that to happen again," Bla.s.s recalled. "I think the writers relating what he said in pigeon English was actually secondary to the fact that he had concepts that he was trying to convey and wouldn't be understood because his English wouldn't convey it as well as his Spanish. And I think that frustrated him."

Don Leppert, a backup catcher who arrived in Pittsburgh in 1961, the season after the World Series victory, said later that he was amazed by the gap between Clemente's talent and his public recognition, and attributed that to the language barrier. Leppert placed the blame largely on the baseball writers who covered the Pirates. His locker was near Clemente's and Leppert felt frustrated by the way some writers portrayed his teammate. "They tried to make a buffoon out of him," Leppert recalled. "I was sitting there one night when Biederman [Les Biederman of the Pittsburgh Press] was asking Clemente something, and Biederman had a little smirk on his face. I went off on Biederman: 'Why the h.e.l.l don't you ask him questions in Spanish?' I didn't endear myself to Biederman, but didn't give a rat's a.s.s, either. They tried to take advantage of every malaprop." Clemente said as much himself once to Pittsburgh writer Myron Cope. "I know I don't speak as bad as they say I speak," Clemente told Cope. "I know that I don't have the good English p.r.o.nunciation because my tongue belong to the Spanish. But I know where the verb, the article, the p.r.o.noun, whatever it is, go. I never in my life start a sentence with 'me.' I start with 'I.' The sportswriters [make it] 'me.' 'Me Tarzan, you Jane.'"

And finally there were lingering questions about Clemente's aches and pains and his constant physical laments. Since his third season, 1957, when he had suffered through a year-long slump that he attributed to an undiagnosed malaise (eventually, it was determined to be a lower-back condition), he had been unable to shake the reputation of being an oversensitive hypochondriac. In the long run, this perception was utterly contradicted by his enduring statistics; he would break Honus Wagner's cherished record and play more games in a Pirates uniform than any player in Pittsburgh history. In the medium term, the perception would be contradicted by his determined clutch play, month after month, year after year. As Clemente himself put it one day, "Hypochondriacs cannot produce. I f.u.c.king produce!" But in the short run, whenever he took two or three days off to rest his troubled body, his behavior was deemed by some to be too sensitive and unbefitting a team leader. He probably didn't help his own cause by talking so much about his ailments, but that reflected his desire to be perfect more than a need for excuses. His physician in San Juan, Dr. Roberto Buso, said that Clemente's sensitive personality included a low threshold for pain. "If his back hurts he worries and then it becomes a vicious circle leading to more things," Buso once explained. "If he has a little diarrhea he worries that he has a little stomach difficulty." Pittsburgh, with its blue collar ethos, a milltown whose mythic figure was a giant named Joe Magarac, who by legend made steel with his bare hands, was a particularly difficult atmosphere for someone as sensitive to all things and especially pain as Clemente.

His relations.h.i.+p with Danny Murtaugh had been uneven precisely because of this sensitivity. Since taking over the Pirates in mid-season 1957, Murtaugh had occasionally criticized Clemente for not playing. The manager's admiration for Clemente as a magnificent player had grown year by year, yet he never stopped sticking in the needle. It was nothing personal; that happened to be Murtaugh's personality. The "whistling Irishman" would say what was on his mind and then forget it. Clemente's personality was altogether different. Whatever was said about him hurt, and kept hurting. Mazeroski, who enjoyed a smoother relations.h.i.+p with Murtaugh, thought their manager didn't think twice about how to handle Clemente or would have done it better. "Roberto just wasn't the type of guy you just took off and embarra.s.sed in front of the team," Maz said later. "He'd crawl in a sh.e.l.l and the more Murtaugh hollered at him, the more moody he got." Their periodic difficulties had busted into the open during a road trip in May 1963. Clemente had been groaning about his physical ills during a three-day series in Los Angeles, when he had played poorly and asked for a day off as the Dodgers had swept the Pirates, and Murtaugh, feeling grumpy about the losses, confronted Clemente when they reached Houston. "You let me know when you're ready to play again," Murtaugh said. "You're making too much money to sit on the bench. The next time you feel like playing you'll play and you'll play every day until I say you won't play."

Clemente, acutely conscious of his dignity, felt insulted by the reproach. "You talk like I don't want to play baseball," he told Murtaugh.

He ended up playing 152 games that season, but the story of the encounter seeped into the press and became part of the mythology of Clemente's fragility. Mazeroski, for one, thought the undeserved reputation was linked to the language problem. "When he was hurt he had trouble explaining himself because of the language problem and everyone thought he was jakin'," Mazeroski later wrote about Clemente in Sport magazine. "I don't think he's ever jaked. He just could do things when he was hurt as well as the rest of us could when we were healthy and people would see this and decide that he was d.o.g.g.i.ng it."

All of this-pride, shyness, culture, language, preoccupation with his physical condition, anger over being underappreciated, even the shape of his face-could make Clemente seem guarded and at times unapproachable. Roy McHugh, a talented columnist for the Pittsburgh Press, had decided to write his first piece about Roberto early in the 1964 season after Clemente had blasted a tape-measure home run over the left-field wall at Forbes Field. In the clubhouse after the game, McHugh asked Clemente if it was the longest ball he had ever hit. Clemente took offense at the innocent question. It reminded him of all the other long b.a.l.l.s he had hit that got no notice, going back to a home run at Wrigley Field in 1959. "It was like throwing a lighted match into a can of gasoline," McHugh said later. "He blew up, shouting, a torrent of words. He went on for five minutes before I could get in another word." Clemente had nothing against McHugh, but the question unwittingly hit a sensitive spot. McHugh, who was predisposed to like Clemente, or at least to present him accurately, decided to choose another subject for his column, and for several years thereafter tended to stay away from the Pirates right fielder, thinking he was too difficult.

Yet Clemente could be thoroughly engaging when he was around people who made him feel comfortable, including not only friends, family, and fellow Latin ballplayers, but also children, taxi drivers, old people, clubhouse attendants-anyone who seemed to have the soul of an underdog. "He would extend himself more to somebody who seemed unsure than to a c.o.c.ky writer or player," pitcher Bla.s.s noticed. In the same locker room where his vibes held sportswriters at bay, he was a magnet for the children of other players. He kept a jar of honey in his locker-he took a spoonful before games to relax-and shared it with the kids. Jim Marshall, a utility infielder for a few seasons in the early sixties, remembered that whenever he brought his young son Blake into the locker room, "he always ran for Roberto, sitting on his knee, the two of them eating honey." Tony Bartirome, the pint-sized former first baseman who began working in the Pirates' training room in 1964, recalled that reputations did not always reflect reality. Some established older white stars who were portrayed as "great guys" by the press virtually ignored the clubhouse staff, but not Clemente. In the daily give and take, he would tease them, ask about their families, offer his folklore medical advice, tip them generously. "Everybody in that clubhouse, we loved him," Bartirome said.

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

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

Clemente started the All-Star game in right field and batted leadoff for the National League. This was the summer of the World's Fair in New York, and the area around the new ballpark in Flus.h.i.+ng Meadows was awash with foreign tourists, Midwestern family vacationers, and hard-core metropolitan baseball fans. Al Abrams rode the subway out to Shea, and noted in his Post-Gazette column that "judging by the aroma in the crowded trains, some of the great 'unwashables' in history were among the pa.s.sengers today." It was a hometown crowd, with a smattering of LET'S GO, METS! signs, and the largest pregame ovations went, in order, to Ron Hunt, sc.r.a.ppy second baseman for the Amazin' Mets; Casey Stengel, the comic-foil old manager of the inept new club; and Sandy Koufax, the favorite son who had come home from the golden West. As Vera, Ana, and his mother watched from the stands, Roberto got one hit in three at-bats, singling in the fifth inning and racing around to score on a double by his former teammate, d.i.c.k Groat, who was now playing shortstop for the St. Louis Cardinals. As it turned out, Clemente's late-inning replacement in right, Johnny Callison of the front-running Phillies, cracked a three-run home run with two out in the bottom of the ninth to give the National League a 74 win, a victory that at long last evened the all-time match between the two leagues at seventeen wins apiece. Here, it seemed, was the culmination of a sociological as well as sporting trend. At the close of the 1940s, the American League had to that point dominated the mid-season exhibition, winning twelve of the first sixteen contests. Since then, the National stars shone brighter, in large part because of the league's tradition of aggressively recruiting black and Latin players.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Vera Christina Zabala, wearing a dress of Italian silk satin, the sleeves embroidered in white porcelain beads and diminutive pearls, was escorted down the aisle by her father, Flor Manuel Zabala. The matron of honor was Mercedes Velasquez, the neighbor and teacher who a year earlier had complained that Roberto had been driving her crazy by relentlessly trying to press her into service as a matchmaker. Myrna Luz Hernndez was the maid of honor, and another Velasquez, Clemente's friend Victor, stood as best man. When it was time for vows, the audience strained to hear. t.i.to Paniagua, covering the ceremony for the San Juan Star, noted that Clemente, though his voice was soft, said "acepto" just loud enough for Father Salvador Planas "who called the play, to make it official."

Joyous organ music filled the church as the wedding party spilled out to the plaza, where the outdoor crowd, still in the thousands, broke their silence with a thunderous roar as though El Magnfico's magic arm had nailed another runner at third. The caravan of sedans, led by police escort, weaved through the streets of Carolina toward the reception at the clubhouse of the Phi Eta Mu fraternity in Cupey Bajo, which overflowed with more than eight hundred guests.

A year earlier, when Vera's father first met the famous ballplayer, he had wondered why someone who could choose from scores of women had settled on his daughter. The same question seemed to be on the minds of several women Clemente had befriended in Pittsburgh and other National League cities. One woman in New York, not realizing that the marriage had already taken place, sent Clemente a letter that he kept and later showed to Vera. "Dear Roberto," it began. "What do I have to do to get you to write? I waited for you to come to New York and you didn't even try to call me. I'm going mad not knowing what you're doing or when you're getting married. If there's something I could do to stop you I would. But you haven't even given me the chance . . . You don't understand what the whole thing is doing to me. I've never needed anything as much as I need you . . . Roberto, I love you as always. You know I'll be yours no matter what happens."

The Puerto Rican winter league had begun, but Clemente was in no rush to get back to baseball. He and Vera took a honeymoon in the Virgin Islands, then spent the Christmas season between their parents' houses and a three-acre farm he was renting in the countryside southwest of Carolina. Vera quickly discovered that Clemente was a home-body who was happiest when he was fiddling around the house. He liked to repair equipment, clear brush, and mow the lawn. In his role as a country squire, he proved both skilled and accident p.r.o.ne. One day that December while he was cutting gra.s.s, a rock flew up from his mower and struck him in his right thigh, causing a bruise so deep and persistent that by mid-January he was put in the hospital and Dr. Buso performed a minor operation to drain blood from the leg.

As he was recovering from the operation in February, Clemente organized a group of Puerto Rican and Cuban all-stars to play a series against the best Dominicans. If nothing else, the three-game series played in Santo Domingo, the Dominican capital, gave an indication of the progression of baseball hotspots in the Caribbean. First Cuba dominated, then Puerto Rico, and now the DR. Clemente put himself in center, and his team also included major leaguers Juan Pizarro, Jose Pagn, Cookie Rojas, and Sandy Alomar, but they were outmatched by a Dominican squad that had Juan Marichal on the mound and the three Alou brothers, Felipe, Mateo, and Jesus, in the field. For the third game, Clemente yanked himself from the starting lineup. He said that he felt tired. He entered the game in the seventh inning, only because the fans expected to see him play, and of course, as he usually did when he was feeling poorly, rapped out a hard single. That was the lone game the Puerto Ricans won. By the time they returned to San Juan, he was feeling even weaker.

In sickness and in health; during her first three months as a bride, Vera saw the strength and vulnerability of her husband. He went to bed and stayed there, his fever rising every day. At times he appeared to be in a stupor, unable to talk. At other times he seemed on the verge of delirium. The nurses gave him sleeping pills, but no medicine short of general anesthesia seemed capable of getting him to sleep.

What was wrong? At first the doctors suspected he might have picked up a paratyphoid infection from some hogs at his country farm. They put him in the hospital again. He became morbid. He would die young, he told Vera. She should remarry. G.o.d forbid, don't talk about that. Don't talk about sad things, she answered. His brothers Andres and Matino came to visit and tried to lighten his mood, mocking his fatalism. When your a.s.s becomes so skinny that the back pockets of your pants come together, then you're dead, Andres joked. The diagnosis remained uncertain, but now it was thought he had contacted malaria during his barnstorming tour in the Dominican Republic. This was not hypochondria, or Clemente just being sensitive. He lost five, ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-three pounds, until finally the fever broke. By the second week in March, he was out of the hospital. He changed his diet and started drinking fruit c.o.c.ktail milkshakes made with egg yolks, banana ice cream, orange juice, a peach or pear, and crumbled ice.

With the Pirates already training in Fort Myers, general manager Brown began calling Clemente every day to check on his condition and find out when he might report. Then, one evening, Brown and his wife, Virginia, who went by the nickname Din, were injured in a traffic accident as they were returning to Fort Myers from dinner in a nearby town. Din was badly hurt, with several broken bones. The next time Brown called Clemente it was from his wife's bedside at the hospital. Din was crazy about Roberto, who always treated her with warmth and kindness.

"Din is hurt but is anxious to know how you are doing and when you'll be able to come," Brown told Clemente.