"It was ‘shot night’ at Candlestick last night, and the popular theory that the Giants’ new park is a home run cemetery was thoroughly shaken up – if only for one game. Four hitters, three of them Giants, slugged baseballs over the distant fences, and every one of them was smashed with velocity comparable to the winds which whipped through the park all night. Easily the most satisfying homer was hit by the ‘birthday boy,’ Willie Mays, who reached the age of 29 with an off-field shot in the sixth inning off shell-shocked Pirate pitching ace, Vernon Law. The line drive just eluded the acrobatic leap of Roberto Clemente, hit the top of the right field barrier and bounced high over the fence. “That was the first (censored) hit I ever got on my birthday. But that second one I hit (which Clemente caught) was the hardest one I hit. I’m a better hitter when I go to right, but I haven’t hit a good one to left center, where my real power is, since I played in this park.” The lost balls were belted, in order, by Willie McCovey (a 410-foot liner to right center), Willie Kirkland (a 430-foot job that bounced into the right field parking lot), Mays’ birthday hit, and then the biggest shot of them all, and that one belonged to Roberto Clemente. Roberto’s blow traveled 410 feet, but it was hit into the treacherous cross-wind in left center. Pittsburgh manager Danny Murtaugh said afterward that he’d ‘like to see Clemente’s hit on a clear day with no wind and see how far it really would go.’”"
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Baptists from the United StatesPresidential Medal of Freedom recipientsUnited States MarinesPeople from San Juan
Original Language: English
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Sources
Mike Berger: “Shots Are Heard at Candlestick,” The San Francisco Chronicle (Saturday, May 7, 1960), p. 27. Also see freelance writer Arnold Hano's account in this section.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Roberto_Clemente
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Roberto Clemente
baseball player
1934 – 1972 · United States
Roberto Enrique Clemente Walker (August 18, 1934 – December 31, 1972) was a Puerto Rican Major League baseball player from 1955 through 1972, exclusively with the Pittsburgh Pirates. A posthumous inductee to the National Baseball Hall of Fame (following his fatal plane crash on December 31, 1972, en route to deliver aid to earthquake victims in Nicaragua), Clemente became both the first Latin American and the first C
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