United States Marines

"[Last night] the league-leading Pittsburgh Pirates defeated the Giants, 1-0, in one of the most spectacular games of baseball ever played. Vinegar Bend Mizell, whom the Giants usually wrap up and mail back to the clubhouse by mid-game, scattered five hits but darn near destroyed his defense. He sent Roberto Clemente to the hospital, and had Virdon hung up on the left field wall twice, looking like wash on an ivy clothesline. In the sixth, Alou ripped a 420-footer that Virdon plucked from the ivy, and in the seventh, right fielder Clemente crashed into the wall to glove a Willie Mays rocket but to play no more this night. Clemente smashed face-on into the concrete base of the right-centerfield stands, at the 395-foot mark, and collapsed in the dirt warning track he had ignored in his pursuit of the certain double. It required five stitches to close a laceration on his chin and his left knee was sorely damaged. The catch had to rank with the greatest of all time, as well as one of the most frightening to watch and painful to make."

"It wasn’t easy to do, but the Giants, inventive, imaginative and impotent when potential runs were straining at leashes all over windy Candlestick, yesterday crashed out 14 base hits and only scored one little old run as they bowed to Pittsburgh, 6-1. For seven innings, it was anybody’s ball game, on the strength of a two-out, three-run mighty mash into the left center field seats by Roberto Clemente in the first inning. In every round, from the first through the ninth, the Giants had runners on the paths, nine of them getting to second base or beyond only to drown with land in sight. Fifteen Giants were left stranded aboard the sinking ship. Maranda had two down when he ran into his first trouble. Bob Skinner singled, Rocky Nelson doubled and the powerful Clemente, who had homered over the right field fence Wednesday, cracked this one, his thirteenth, over and beyond the 420-mark."

"They say that if you don’t get to Veale early, you never will. The Giants almost did in the fourth and some say third base coach suffered from a flash of conservatism. Willie had singled into left and was wild-pitched to second. Hart struck out, looking. McCovey popped to second base. Two out. strung a line drive single into right field, a ball solidly hit. Fox stopped Mays after Willie had gone 15 feet down the third base line toward home. Willie went to his knees as he applied the brakes and had to scramble back on all fours to get back to the bag. Haller struck out. If Fox had opened the gates and let Mays go, and if Willie had made it, the Giants would have won in nine innings. But I think Clemente’s throw would have eaten him up."

"The Giants, up to the point where Haller decided it all, had their best shot when Schroder walked with one out in the fifth. With the Pirate infield tucked in rather closely, Cline rolled a single past at first base and Schroder was on his way to a certain death. He challenged the best arm in the National League, the rifle that hangs from the shoulder of Roberto Clemente, and Roberto threw out Schroder into the glove of Maury Wills. The throw was so low in its flight from bare hand to glove, Cline could not risk an advance to second. Mays followed with a single that would have scored Bob had he not given Clemente the challenge."

"The Pittsburgh Pirates defeated the Giants yesterday, 10-5, mostly on the strength of three consecutive home runs by Roberto Clemente. Clemente was incredible. Besides getting home runs number 17, 18 and 19, he added a single, scored four times and drove in four. A resume of the way he hit the homers proves how difficult it is to pitch to this man. He hit one high and away off McCormick over the right field screen in the first, he hit one low and inside over the right field screen in the third, also off McCormick, and then when Bolin challenged him with a high hard pitch down the middle, Roberto crashed it off the flagpole beyond the center field screen to come within one of tying the all-time record of home runs in a single game."

"The superb athlete, with one of the best physiques of any human being, looked like an old man when he walked, hunched over."

"He is a right handed batter but his power is to right field. Of his 21 home runs this year, 14 have been in that general direction. When he smacks the ball it takes off the with the velocity and trajectory of a golfer's No. 2 iron unless the pitch is high and outside, in which case he is likely to punch it into the stands, as he did Monday night with one of 's sidearm curves. He is likely to pull the inside low pitch to left and has the kind of wrist action that enables him to back away from a pitch and still decapitate an infielder with a line drive. Even the man on the mound experiences something of the feeling of a man peering into an overdue volcano or a loaded when Clemente is at bat."

"Roberto Clemente got less than four hours sleep Saturday night but when he left for San Diego late Sunday afternoon it was the Dodgers who were tired – tired of seeing Roberto Clemente. The man whose career batting average of .316 is unexcelled by any active major leaguer completed the most productive two-game batting splurge in the history of modern baseball, getting five hits for the second time in 24 hours [20 hours, actually] and leading the Pirates to an 11-0 rout of the suddenly inoffensive Dodgers. In the Saturday marathon – the 16 inning struggle that lasted nearly 4 1/2 hours – Clemente singled in his first three at-bats (driving in the Pirates’ first run), lined out in his next two chances, then finished with two more singles (scoring the second and winning run). Sunday afternoon, the 36-year-old native of Puerto Rico had three singles, a double and a home run. He scored four runs and drove in three. , the manager of the Pirates, whistled and said: "Ten hits in two games! When I was playing, that was my quota for a month." It was, sadly, close to the Dodger quota too, and the team that hit .360 in the 11 games before the return to Dodger Stadium Friday night has 11 hits in two games."

"The second Buc run, just before the burst of five, was set up by Roberto Clemente’s blast high off the [right] center wall, above the 436-foot marker. The ball got there so fast, and bounced back to Murphy so hard, that the speedy Roberto got only two bases."

"The best damn ballplayer in the World Series – maybe in the whole world – is Roberto Clemente and, as far as I’m concerned, they can give him the automobile right now. Maybe some guys hit the ball farther, and some throw it harder, and one or two run faster, although I doubt that, but nobody puts it all together like Roberto. [...] In Game 3, Clemente hit a ground ball to the right side first time up. It was stamped DP. The Orioles got one. In the seventh, Clemente led off with a bouncer back to the box. knocked it down, picked it up, was aghast to see the batter streaking down the line, hurried his throw, high, and Clemente was safe. The next batter walked on four pitches, the next batter hit the ball out of the park. Mike Cuellar’s composure was shattered. The game was over. [...] Roberto Clemente is a 37-year-old roadrunner. He has spent 18 summers of those years playing baseball for the Pittsburgh Pirates. He has batted over .300 thirteen times, and for the last three seasons, in his decrepitude, he has hit .345, .352, .341. But everybody has numbers. Don’t mind the numbers. Just watch how Roberto Clemente runs 90 feet the next time he hits the ball back to the pitcher and ask yourself if you work at your job that way. Every time I see Roberto Clemente play ball, I think of the times I’ve heard about how ‘they’ dog it, and I want to vomit."

"I saw him hit that darned thing with his back foot off the ground. He one-footed that thing. I thought I was watching Roberto Clemente in his heyday."

"When I’m done, I want people to say, "He’s the best." Right field belongs to Roberto Clemente, center field belongs to Willie Mays. I want left field to belong to me."

"It was a bang-bang play at first base and I called Clemente out. And he called me a "blind son-of-a-beeeech." And I said, "You can go, Mr. Clemente." And out came Mr. Murtaugh and he said to me, "Why did you run him?" And I told him what Clemente had said. And Murtaugh said, "He couldn't have said that. He doesn’t speak any English." And I said, "Well you guys taught him some English.”"

"My two sons, Harry and Nathaniel, my father and my father-in-law and many of my friends idolized Roberto Clemente and so did I. I called him a double superstar."

"[One of my] favorite players to watch was Roberto Clemente. It was like watching a wild bull turned loose. He was the only player who ever galloped."

"Roberto Clemente was very quiet. He never said much, but when he was at bat—if he didn't like a call—he could turn and give you a look, and everybody in the crowd immediately knew that Roberto was accusing you of kicking the call. Though he was the quietest of players, Roberto could get you in the outhouse just by looking at you."

"I used to go to Forbes Field as a kid and sit in right field, right behind him, just to watch him throw. He would handcuff the infielders on a throw from right field. – they called him ‘The Tiger’ – played third base for the Pirates, and you could almost see fear in his eyes on one of Clemente’s throws. Clemente had the greatest velocity, but he also had accuracy. Some of the guys coming up now are great throwers, but they have no clue as to where it’s going."

"He was the first right fielder that I remember that would literally take balls off the right field wall in Forbes Field – it was only three hundred feet down the line – and he’d take the ball off the wall and without even looking, just spin around and throw the ball in behind the runner coming around first base. He’d get the guy going back to first before he could even stop and turn around. Maybe only one time did a runner keep going to second off him, anticipating that he was going to throw behind him. He was just uncanny; those guys wouldn’t even make a turn at first base when they’d hit a ball off the screen in right or off the wall."

"Here you see him swinging against Jon Matlack on September 30, 1972. The swing resulted in his 3,000th hit, a double to [left] center and the last hit of his career. This is kind of unfortunate, since looking at it now, it’s obvious that it’s not going to be a good swing. I think he’s been fooled by the ball. I think he was probably looking inside and the ball turned out to be away. Consequently, he’s not well balanced and is squatting down a bit. I think he may have [tried to] check this swing but was unable to stop it. Nevertheless, it’s a tribute to his great body control that he still hit it the way he did. It’s the kind of control you often find with great athletes, men who combine strength with flexibility to create a smooth, graceful motion. I think you find that players of Clemente’s caliber also tend to use good mechanics almost naturally, without really having to think much about them. Clemente, for example, stood off the plate, yet he still coped effectively with the ball outside. He had excellent arm extension and, in fact, was one of the first players I noticed taking his top hand off the bat. Nor did Clemente try to pull the ball. In fact, I think he made a conscious effort to hit the ball the other way. He counted a double to right center the same as a double down the right field line, and I think he was proud of the fact that he could do both. All good hitters use the whole field."

"Hitters like Roberto Clemente and Yogi Berra were exceptions. They could get the fat part of the bat on the ball no matter where the ball was thrown. They created their own strike zone because pitchers could not come up with a strategy that would consistently get those batters out."

"A friend of mine used to call me Joey U for Unitas. I also admired Roberto Clemente. Those two were my heroes. I never watch a baseball game on TV unless Clemente or Rich Allen is playing. I always watch a game Bob Gibson is pitching."

"He had such a flair. He had such a grace. He was a gentleman. I remember a royal essence about him. He was just so graceful. I wouldn’t dare say that I had an arm like Clemente, [but] I used to catch like Roberto. I stepped into the box like Roberto. Tried to be like Roberto. He was my baseball hero. He was the first hero I had. Big time. I even have an autographed Roberto Clemente baseball at home."

"Well, I'm sort of glad to see Pittsburgh win because that Clemente is so great."

"What was incredible about Clemente was not only how skilled he was at each part of the game, but this kind of ferocity that he played with on each play of the game — even in years when they were pitiful and they had no chance to get into the pennant or anything like that. He would throw it in, he would pick guys off who got a single who took too much of a turn going around first; there was just something intense about this guy that was not necessarily what was going on in Baseball at that moment."

"On a single, Andruw rounded first base and put on the brakes to get back to the bag, but he never lost his balance. I hadn’t seen anybody do it that gracefully since I once saw Roberto Clemente do it against the Phillies in old [[w|Shibe Park}} years ago."

"I grew up in Butler, Pennsylvania, which is 30 miles north of Pittsburgh. I got to see Roberto Clemente in his prime. I tohught then and still think now that he was the greatest player I have ever seen. A throwing arm that no one, past or present, could rival. He played hard; played the right way. Power, speed ... he had it all."

"I've watched the boy in several games. He's got the stuff, all around stuff, to be a great one. He can hit, he can field, he can throw, he can run, he plays it to the hilt. How can he miss being a good one? As to comparing him with me, I don't know about that. All I can say is I wish him the best. I hope he makes a lot of money from this game and saves it."

"As a college student, I went to an Astros game in 1970. The Pirates had clinched the division, so it was a meaningless game. I’m sitting down the right field line, and an Astro hits a line drive that’s slicing away from the Pirates right fielder, the great Roberto Clemente. The ball is slicing, slicing, slicing, and suddenly out of nowhere, like a missile tracking on radar, there’s Clemente, jumping and crashing against the fence to make the catch. It’s one of those moments like when a basketball gets wedged between the rim and the backboard: for an instant, time stands still. It’s like, “What did I just see?” I never thought about that moment again until years later. I was stuck in an airport, reading an article by a former Pirates beat writer about Clemente: his leadership, his great World Series, how he always delivered in big games. Then the writer starts describing the greatest catch he had ever seen Clemente make, and I realized he was talking about that game, that catch. Suddenly I was sharing a moment – almost a secret with someone I’d never met, someone I may have nothing in common with. I take that back: We’re both baseball fans."

"Frank Eck, Associated Press feature sports writer, arrived here this morning to report that he has completed an agreement with Clemente to write a book. "I haven't decided on a title," Eck said. "It could be 'Clemente Speaks Out' or 'Clemente, the Great.'" Whatever the title, the book should make good reading."

"Speaking of books, one news wire service will soon come out with four of them on Roberto Clemente ... Frank Eck, New York Associated Press sportswriter, says he has the only real book on Clemente ... composed of recorded interviews."

"How many people just shit on him because he was so nice? He couldn’t refuse anybody. He used to rub down some of the players. At first he thought I’d mind, but I’d say, "No, you know more about it than I do!" Which he did. He studied about the spine, the muscles in the back. He was gonna open a clinic, and he told me, "I want you to come down and work for me in the winter time." I’d say, "Bobby, please be careful. There's a lot of people who’ll come to you; you’ll work on ‘em and they’ll claim that you hurt ‘em. There’s a lot of bad people in the world." He would never believe that! He couldn’t believe that anyone would try to deliberately hurt him. He’d kid me, "Aw, don’t worry – you dagos, you’re always suspicious.""

"I remember once Clemente called a meeting in the clubhouse. Back then, only the top three or four players on the team were ever offered any money – $300 or $400 – to make any appearances or do any promotions. Now they all participate. Clemente proposed that everybody on the team would share – that all the money would be put in a pot to be divided at the end of the season. All the players and coaches would participate, and so would the trainer and the clubhouse man. Clemente said it wasn’t fair that only a few got the extra money. But we had one player on that team who’d been an All-Star with another team. He said everyone should keep his own money – that it should be every man for himself. And that was the end of that idea. But Clemente always wanted to share. He was always thinking about his teammates."

"We became quite friendly, and he even began to ask my advice, informally, on legal matters. The next year, a man Roberto loved very much died in an auto accident and left a large family. Their family lawyer had to leave the case because he was appointed to a government job. He asked me to take over the case. The family was offered $30,000 to settle, which was about the maximum ever paid before in Puerto Rico. Roberto had been financing the family for quite some time, with considerable amounts of money, and if they won the case they could pay him back; if not, he said forget it. I explained to Roberto that $30,000 wasn’t really equal to the economic loss of the person, and in the course of the conversation he displayed such a degree of logic that he even gave me a few pointers that I used in arguing the case! Finally, we settled for $348,000, although the Supreme Court later lowered it to $95,000."

"I saw him on the field and I said, "Tommy, why did you tell that story?" He said, "What do you mean?" I said, "One: Clemente didn’t hang out with you. Second: Clemente speaks English. There’s some Puerto Ricans who speak English." No, Clemente did speak English. Cepeda speaks English. Puerto Rico, you know, is part of the United States. So, over there, youngsters do have the privilege of taking English in classrooms. He wouldn’t give a speech like Shakespeare, but he knew how to order breakfast and eggs. He knew how to say, "It’s a good day," "Let’s play," or "Why I don’t play?" He could say, "Let’s go to the movies." I played with guys – like when Sandy got on the Dodgers, he knew maybe twenty words of English. That’s why they roomed with me, because I spoke a little Spanish from playing in Cuba. But that wasn’t the case with Clemente. Clemente was able to communicate with those he wanted to communicate with."

"Robby was one of the most decent men I ever met, yet somehow no one seemed to understand him. Maybe there was a language barrier. I don’t know. I do know he was absolutely selfless, not a distant person. When he talked about his physical problems, the writers made jokes, but what he was trying to say was that blacks and Latins play hurt, too. The writers didn’t get that. They said he was a hypochondriac. But I never knew a Pirate player who felt Clemente wouldn’t play with an injury unless it was so severe he simply couldn’t play. It was horrible when writers started coming in the clubhouse saying, "I wonder what’s going to be wrong with him today?" That was unfair – totally unfair. They always seemed to react to his words instead of the thought he was trying to convey – I guess it was easier than getting to know him."

"He reacted more to rookies than to guys who had been around for awhile, maybe because he would’ve liked someone to have helped him when he was a rookie. Clemente had known the same problems – the new language, getting acclimated to the big league atmosphere, how to deal with the media, where to eat on the road, how to dress. Sangy got picked off twice in one game. Robby came into the clubhouse, got a big piece of cardboard and put two sticks through it. He told Sangy to pretend it was a machine that he would use to take control of Sangy when he got on base. We laughed for 20 minutes, but it made Sangy realize he didn’t have to stick his head in his locker if he made a costly mistake in a game, that we were all in this thing together. That’s a valuable lesson and it could’ve saved Sangy a couple of years anxiety because he learned right away that no teammate holds a player completely responsible for losing a game."

"Clemente truly loved Tony and ‘Hully’ [John Hallahan, Pirate clubhouse attendant]. Hully was part Russian, I think, and he’d run off all these Russian phrases to stir up things. Whatever he was saying, it seemed to get a good rise out of Roberto on a regular basis. Tony was always giving Roberto a rubdown before every game. It was a pre-game ritual. He’d work out all the kinks in Clemente’s neck and shoulders. Sometimes I’d crawl under the training table and do a bit like I was a voice in the distance giving them instructions. There was a popular TV show at the time called ‘Mission Impossible.’ I took my cue from that show. I’d say, ‘Good morning, Mr. Clemente; this is your neck. Your assignment today is to get three doubles off . As usual, we will disavow any knowledge of this conversation. And Tony, get thees son-of-a-beetch outta here!’ And Clemente would go crazy."

"I have it arranged so that Curt and Roberto and our other colored boys play in our 'home' games. The white boys competing with them for positions play our 'away' games. That way our guys are protected against the little unpleasant things like waiting in the bus while we bring sandwiches out of lunchrooms to them, and like having having to go 'across the railroad tracks' to find places to stay overnight or relax until park time. With this system, everybody gets to play about the same number of games, and it's a happier outfit all around."

"This was a man who looked at the television pictures coming back from the moon and saw the world. Clemente thought of all the people who came together to put that guy there. He conceived of them as a brotherhood."

"I learned a lot about Clemente from Rod Carew, who was my hitting instructor in Milwaukee. Carew told me that when he came up to the big leagues (in 1967), Roberto had made it very clear to the Latin guys (throughout baseball), "We’re a minority here in the States. Take pride in what you do, and take care of each other and the young (Latins) coming up.""

"One of the things that he really liked to do was go to Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh and visit kids. That’s something that many people don’t write about. That’s where his real passion was – making other people feel important."

"Roberto was a very mature boy, even when he was ten or so. Basically, he was a good kid. He did two things, played ball and stayed home. He never got into trouble. We called him "Momen" from the time he was little. When he had grown up and become a star, no one could remember what the name meant. He was always quiet, never got whipped. We used to kid him about that."

"After Roberto passed, I was looking at some documents about Roberto, and I saw him registered as Roberto Enrique Clemente Walker. He never used the name Enrique. I didn't know that was his name. My baby has the same name – Roberto Enrique – as his dad."

"Clemente was an emotional man, and that was his beauty. It drove him not only to physical anguish, but also to nearly incredible performances on the field as well as to the good work he was engaged in at his death. Often, although not so much in his maturing years, he seemed almost paranoid in his complaints against this or that, but when he said he loved mankind you had to believe him, because even the heat of his most bitter outburst almost always blew over, and where he had been loud, he would suddenly become reasonable and even eloquent. A man to confuse you? Yes, absolutely, but only because man’s full range of passions ran strong in him. Cunning he was not. Honest he was. And the proof is that he was no honorary chairman of that relief committee for Nicaragua -- he was no figurehead chairman in name only; he was not merely a celebrity lending his prestige but not his heart or his labor to a cause. Honorary chairmen do not disappear into the Atlantic in the performance of duty."

"As we were talking, I was moving my neck around so he asked me what was the matter. I told him that my neck hurt because of an old baseball injury. In a 1958 spring training intrasquad game, I had cracked the third cervical vertebra in my neck when I had a collision with another player trying to catch a popup. Bobby told me to go take a shower with the water as hot as I could stand it. I did that and when I came out of the shower beet red all over, he had me lie on the trainer’s table for a massage. With his very strong hands, he kneaded the muscles in my neck and back and it felt wonderful. Afterwards, he told me to stand up with my back to him. He took two towels, wrapped them together into a cylindrical shape, placed them along my spine, and grabbed me in a bear hug. Then – in something similar to the Heimlich maneuver – he bent backward, pulled me toward him, lifted me off the ground, and sort of bounced me up and down for a moment. As he did, I heard a sound like a xylophone and felt my spine go into perfect alignment. He put me down and said, ‘You’ll feel better tomorrow.’ Heck, I felt better already. But the thing that really impressed me was that the next night I got a call from the visitors’ clubhouse in St. Louis. It was Bobby, and he wanted to know if my back was better. That was the act of a compassionate man, and I didn’t need the crash that ended his life to know that about Bobby."

"Well, somebody asked me if it was true that I scuffled with Roberto Clemente and he pulled a knife and cut me on the hand. Then they said and came in to break it up and Stuart threw Clemente against the wall and that's how he hurt his arm. I never had an argument with anyone, Clemente doesn't own a knife, and I doubt if Stuart, strong as he is, could pick up Clemente—an ex-Marine—and throw him against a wall."

"Clemente has impressed the scouts who have looked at the Royals. They regard him as an exceptionally promising young player. At the start of the season Macon said he didn’t expect Clemente to help very much. “He’s too inexperienced but we’ve got to keep him,” the manager said. Not long ago Clemente won an extra-inning contest for the Royals here with a home run over the left field fence. Few players have achieved that feat at ."

"You know, I’ve never met Mrs. Clemente, but I thought of her often ... very often."

"He came over to me and talked to me for about ten or fifteen minutes. He talked about life in general, about family, and he tried to bring out the belief that baseball wasn’t the end all in our lives – that we had to make sure we kept things in balance. He wanted to make sure you kept them in the right order; like family and your wife. He wanted us to remember that these were the most important things. He didn't have to come over and talk to me, but he did."

"I cannot accept the theory that a hard punch couldn't be delivered from Clay's stance, though it is obviously better to have a solid base, but there are athletes in every sport who do things they aren't supposed to. You can only judge them on results. One classic example is Roberto Clemente of the Pirates. Professionals don't understand how he can hit with his rear end flying into the third base dugout. Yet he has been the most consistent hitter in baseball over a period of five years, and no one hits the ball as hard as often ... Orthodox or unorthodox, an athlete's power generally is generated by timing and strength, and the strength being in the forearms and hands, not the legs and feet, unless he's a punter or a high jumper."