United States Marines

"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."

"I was checking out all the bats he had and kind of rubbing a couple of them on me to get a little bit of luck. It’s pretty impressive what he swung, for someone his size, too. You see the pictures of him, I’m thinking this guys’ 6-5, 6-6 but you hear he was maybe 5-11, 5-10. It’s pretty impressive he was able to swing something like this and produce the numbers he did."

"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."

"[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."

"Memories rise up and lap and overlap – the matador stance at the plate and in the field, the special hauteur that only the Latin Americans can muster, the public face and demeanor that (for me) seemed reminiscent of a similar decorum in Joe DiMaggio both on and off the field, the constant concern, as was the case with DiMaggio, to be sartorially flawless. [...] As a fielder, Clemente did not merely play right field; he owned, he diagrammed, he wrote the book on right field. Whether he was playing the bounces when the ball ricocheted off the treacherous angles of the right field corner of ( of the old once knocked himself out by slamming into one of the abutments there) or, on occasion, when he actually threw out from the deepest part of right-center field a runner attempting to score from third after the catch, Clemente fielded and threw like a master. His unorthodoxy frequently included throwing behind the runner as he rounded first or second (a no-no for most other fielders), but many was the baserunner who saw that Clemente’s throw actually beat him to the base that he had rashly passed and tried too late to retouch."

"They are honoring a great one in Clemente. I have been watching his career ever since he joined the Pittsburgh club. Roberto should wind up as one of the all-time stars before he is through."

"I told him: "Estudie Espanol en la escuela para dos anos. Para afuera. (I studied Spanish in school for two years. Take a hike.)" The next time Clemente saw me, he said: "Hey, Pablito, buena gente. (Little Paul, you’re good people.)" And he warned all the other Latin players that I could speak Spanish."

"He and Roberto Clemente were the ones I paid attention to as a boy. I loved it that both of them could really drive the ball. I guess that’s what I saw myself doing some day. I loved how they’d thump the ball, how far they could hit it."

"Momen, as we childhood friends called him, had the combative fury of very few athletes. I recall very well the day that his older brothers took him to play in the kids’ league at the Barrio San Antón School. He couldn’t have been older than ten and was probably younger. Some of us were much older. For example there was his brother Matino, whose catches at first base were the sensation of the barrio. And Lorenzo, another brother, who gripped the bat cross-handed and whose line drives shook the zinc roof of the schoolhouse. And Andres, who threw underhand style. They were the Clemente brothers: Matino, Lorenzo, Andres, and Momen. All you had to do was look at Momen to know that he had been born to play baseball."

"Roberto Clemente never argued. He didn’t need umpires. He just needed one pitch – the best right field hitter I ever saw. Robby was strong all over. He hit so many line drives in the infield he’s lucky he didn’t kill anybody."

"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.”"

"There aren’t many guys like him anymore: five-tool guys who use all their tools. I don’t know if there’s anybody quite in his class. He’s a Roberto Clemente-type player – no batting gloves and I’m going to stand up here and you throw it and I’m going to hit it like hell and after I hit it, I’m going to run like hell until somebody tags me out."

"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."

"The bigger the guy, the less he argues. You never heard a word out of Stan Musial, Willie Mays or Roberto Clemente. They never tried to make you look bad."

"Hank Aaron is making himself look foolish by going around in a pout every time some white athlete wins an award. His latest tantrum involves Babe Ruth being named No. 1 athlete of all time, over Muhammad Ali. A man's mind has to be pretty mixed up to believe Babe Ruth is overrated because he was white ... If Hank really wants to be upset, let him protest the fact that, in the same poll, Jackie Robinson finished 50th to Henry Aaron's 15th, Jack Dempsey finished in a 34th-place tie with , Roberto Clemente was 111th to 's 21st, and Jack Johnson was shut out completely on the 150-name list."

"Today, at Leone's Restaurant, Roberto Clemente was handed the keys to the Sport Mag car, for having won the World Series for Pittsburgh. At age 37, he can hit the ball back to the box and beat the car to first base."

"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."

"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."

"Refusal of the Bucs to trade Roberto Clemente probably was a wise policy but it is a distinct disappointment to Clemente, who would like especially to land in New York, where his popularity among the Puerto Rican populace could double his income in testimonials alone."

"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."

"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."

"Junior: I started out as a pitcher and first baseman. I went to the outfield when I was 14 and I had to learn to play center. Dad didn’t help me. He just told me ‘Go, get ’em.’ Willie [Stargell, then a coach with Atlanta] taught me footwork, positioning, how to get a jump, how to read a ball. Senior: And I learned right along with Junior. I could never tell Junior anything because we didn’t know exactly what to do. Coming up with Cinci, they did not coach us, they just told us, "Go catch it; if you can’t catch it, pick it up and hit the cutoff man with your throw." And Stargell knew his stuff. He had learned outfield from Roberto Clemente. Junior was 17 and I was 36, and there we were taking instruction together."

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

"It has just impressed me so much that I'll never forget Clemente. He can do everything so well. He runs well, he's got a magnificent arm, defensively; he does it all! And what a hitter! And that's not to say that Mays and Aaron are any less than a Clemente. But certainly, how could they be any better?"

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

"Roberto Clemente recently added up his dependents and found them to be 13. It was at that point that the great Pirate right fielder decided that he could not afford to retire from baseball, even if his right shoulder gives him pain. Therefore, Clemente will continue to earn his $100,000 during the summer for having occasional evenings like last night when he hit two home runs to help Bob Veale and Pittsburgh beat the New York Mets, 6-0. [...] The most valuable player in the National League in 1966 was batting only .276 going into last night’s game. But he drilled a homer deep into the right field bullpen off Tom Seaver to break a scoreless tie in the fourth inning and give him 1,000 runs batted in during his major league career. (This homer was also the 1,000th off Met pitching in almost seven seasons.) Two more runs batted in for Clemente came two innings later after ’s single had made the score 3-0 in the fifth. led off the sixth with a double and Clemente whacked a homer over the center-field fence."

"The key play was one that might have been forgotten in the frenetic scrambling of runs. With men on second and third in the sixth and the score 5-5, Willie Mays smashed a searing low line drive into right field that seemed destined to leave the park. But the amazing Roberto Clemente leaped, glove above the railing, crashed into the wire fence and came down with the ball, as 6,028 fans first groaned in anger, then stood to applaud as fine and brave a catch as an outfielder can make."

"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."

"Ballplayers say he bats with his rear end in the dugout. He is just as likely to back away from a pitch as to step into it, and now that Henry Aaron has learned to pay more attention to the strike zone, Clemente is probably the best bad ball hitter in baseball."

"Roberto Clemente, a villainous Pirate from Puerto Rico, smashed a two-out, bases-loaded home run off rookie in the eighth inning last night to give Pittsburgh a 6-4 victory over San Francisco, and prevent the Giants from regaining third place after they had appeared a “cinch” with only four outs to go. Clemente’s slammer, the first hit by a Pirate this year, will be remembered long by the competing varsities. Going into the eighth, the Giants had what appeared to be a reasonably secure lead at 4-1, and was working on a four-hitter. But pinch-hitter {w|Dick Schofield}} doubled into the left field corner and Sanford, reaching back for just about everything he had left, struck out . When the now arm-weary Giant walked , manager came out and got him. Alvin signaled for LeMay. The first thing Dick did was hit Bob Skinner on the seat of the pants, and the bases were loaded, and 23,177 fans accepted this in mute silence that indicated they sensed impending disaster. LeMay got dangerous to pop out and had a two-two count on Clemente, the National League’s leading hitter, when it happened. Roberto smacked the next cast high and far into the black night, over the 410-foot sign in center-field. Willie Mays scratched his way up the screen in a vain attempt to grab the disappearing pellet that was a couple of feet too high."

"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."

"Ironically, the Pirates’ only run was driven in by Clemente when Marichal tried to quick-pitch him with the bases loaded in the fifth. With the count three and two, Clemente was standing in the box, but not looking at Marichal, who threw swiftly. “I was trying to smooth out the dirt around the plate,” Clemente said, “not looking, when I hear someone on the bench yell at me. I look up and see the ball, and I try to just punch at it with one hand.” He got just enough of it to drive it into the ground in front of the plate and bounce it so high that Orlando Cepeda had to wait helplessly for it to come down as the run scored and Clemente fled across the base. Clemente laughed in reminiscence. “I don’t remember anybody try to quick-pitch me since do it with Brooklyn. I punch it for double.""

"I was at once shocked and satisfied when, in a game that August, he lined a drive back to the pitcher’s mound and broke the leg of the awesome Cardinal right-hander . (Through the rest of Gibson’s career, I felt toward him the solicitude we reserve for people whom we’ve injured without meaning to.) The game that has pleased me the most in my years of following baseball was one between the Pirates and Cincinnati, a game that the Reds won 8-7. Clemente batted in all seven Pittsburgh runs, going five-for-five, with a triple and two home runs. I thought that this effort was incredibly poignant in its doomed and solitary heroism."

"The strongest memories I have of that last summer in Columbus center on the passionate identification I developed with the Pirates’ great rightfielder, Roberto Clemente. Clemente was flirting with a .400 average through the first half of the 1967 season, and getting the kind of national attention that he always craved. I watched him on TV whenever I could, and he was the first performer from whom I derived a satisfaction I would call aesthetic. He was a compact, elegant, laconic presence on the diamond, spare and geometric, with a sprinter’s legs. His fielding and throwing were legendary – even then he was recognized as one of the very best ever at his position. Among his peers, only Willie Mays, from whom he had picked up the famous basket catch when the two of them played winter ball in 1954 for Puerto Rico’s Santurce club, possessed a comparable grace and aplomb in the field. He didn’t have the marvelous Mays liquidity – everything about Clemente was angular and emphatic – but as with Mays, his movements left you with the impression that he lived outside his body and commanded it effortlessly from a great distance. He was a bad-ball hitter – about as far as you could get, in the realms of greatness, from a student of the art like Ted Williams or a street-smart opportunist like – and a fierce, feral protector of the plate. With two strikes on him, he could foul off ball after ball, driving the pitcher crazy, until he got a pitch he could work with."

"[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."

"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."

"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."

"I say Roberto Clemente won that game for Pittsburgh. Simply by being Roberto Clemente and running out a ground ball the way he always has since the day he began playing ball 30 years ago. I had only one thought watching Clemente run down to first base. I wondered what Alex Johnson was thinking while watching the whole thing on TV."

"He soon perfected one technique that I’ve never seen another player do. A hard ground ball hit to the outfield on synthetic turf often gets through for extra bases. Roberto would run after the ball and, instead of trying to backhand it, and throw, Roberto would slide on his left side, his feet extended, just like he was sliding into a base. As soon as he’d intercepted the ball, he’d immediately pop back into a standing position and get rid of the ball. It was unbelievable! Oh, I’ve seen Roberto make so many plays I could talk about them forever. In old Forbes Field, the right-field line went down 300 feet and then angled out quickly. Billy White of the Cardinals once batted a ball over first base fair, it hit something, and skittered into the bullpen area behind the stands. White was already rounding second on his way to an easy triple. Roberto charged over from right field, slid into the gravel, grabbed the ball, kicked off the wall with his foot, and threw a perfect strike to third base. Roberto couldn’t even see third base when he threw – he was in behind the lower stands – but the ball zoomed over the pitcher’s mound and reached third on a fly. White was out by six or seven feet. Most remarkable throw I’ve ever seen him make."

"Roberto Clemente's intention to demand a $200,000 salary next season may be startling to the Pittsburgh Pirates' ownership, but in all candor they must admit one truth: of all the baseball athletes, Clemente is the closest to being worth $200,000 a year."

"Perhaps the greatest play I’ve ever seen Roberto make was in Nicaragua, in 1964 or 1965, after San Juan won the title in the Caribbean Series. They had Clemente, Cepeda, Pizarro, Conde, Pagán – it was like an all-star team! [...] But during that series, Roberto made such a fantastic play that they nearly raised a monument in his honor out in right field. Ossie Echevarria, a Panamanian, one of the fastest men in baseball, was the runner on first base. A ball was hit to right-center, nearly by the wall. Normally, any runner would make it from first to third on such a hit, especially a guy like Echevarria. Clemente cut the ball off and threw it right into Wito Conde’s glove at third – that ball looked like a jet! The runner was tagged out, and every fan in the ballpark just stood there – mouth open in amazement. They’d seen plenty of top players over the years, but never had they seen a throw like that! Three innings later, the same situation: Echevarria on first, another hit. Roberto cut it off and fired to third. Echevarria was between second and third base. When he slammed on the brakes, it looks so funny, like a character in a Walt Disney cartoon! He threw himself headlong back to second base. Incredible! It was impossible to run against Roberto’s arm."

"From a personal standpoint, I have known Clemente since he came up to the Pirates 17 years ago and the thing he did that impressed me most in the Series against the Orioles wasn't that he hit .414 or got off those excellent throws, but that he got up and chased the ball when he kicked it into distant left centerfield after falling down trying for a backhanded shoestringer on 's triple in the first game. "Swoboda would've had it!" said a newspaperman I know. Seriously, though, what impressed me so much about Clemente's get-up-and-go-after- it sequence is this was so typical of his performance. He'd do the same thing in the second game of a series with San Diego as he was doing now in the second game of a series with Baltimore."

"At , the fine new training headquarters of the Pittsburgh club, one may see [, among others,] Roberto Walker Clemente, a teammate of Willie Mays in the Puerto Rican League, who has copied Mays' method of catching the ball against his navel but, alackaday, not his batting."

"They seem to have a new star coming up in Roberto Clemente, the Puerto Rican fielder. He had three singles, bunted in smart style, caught on with the fans, and was complimented by Macon at the end of the game. Which was an illustrious introduction for the colored boy."

"One more Puerto Rican, who happened to be the four-time National League batting champion, arrived in New York this weekend and today he left 41,323 Mets fans in anguish in Shea Stadium. Roberto Clemente also left the Mets to wonder if they had a future in the National League pennant race. Just before game time, Clemente reinstated himself in the Pittsburgh lineup after missing their last 11 games with a lame back and in the third inning he struck. He whacked a long and loud two-bagger off the left-center-field wall. That did it, for the Pirates, and to the Mets, in a 2-to-1 ball game. Both Pittsburgh runs were wrapped around Clemente's swat off Gary Gentry. It drove in Matty Alou, who was on second base after a single, and Clemente himself scored when Willie Stargell elected to get the 1,000th hit of his career in that spot, a single."

"He was a perfectionist, like a great artist in any field. When he got to a new park, he inspected every inch of right field to see if the ground was hard or soft, how high the grass was. He was a fanatic about his waistline. Once he told me, "I have a 32-inch waist always; when I’m a bit more, I’m no good." In the off-season, I’ve seen him go to a field in Carolina with a sack full of beer bottle caps. He’d get some kids to throw him the tiny caps and he’d spend hours – hours! – batting. Then, for exercise, he’d bend down and pick them all up. He said that when he was done hitting those tiny caps, a real ball looked as big as a coconut!"

"He happens to be nursing a troublesome left shoulder at the moment and this circumstance is sure to provoke some of his critics into saying there goes Clemente with another one of his imaginary ailments again. Clemente has no guilt complex or anything like that but he knows there are same people who are going to say that about him now because these same people have said the same thing before. They don't know his left shoulder hasn't been right since he ran into a wall in Florida chasing after a foul smash in a game against the Red Sox. Nine of 10 other outfielders wouldn't even try for it in a spring training contest. They also don't know Clemente took a cortisone shot in his shoulder Tuesday after rapping two hits against the Phillies, and that he has a huge lump atop his shoulder nearly the size of a baseball. But that's nothing new because there are some things most people don't even want to know."

"Clemente could field the ball in New York and throw out a guy in Pennsylvania."

"The case of Clemente and the city of Pittsburgh has indeed been strange. A favorite with Bucco fans, the fiery outfielder from Puerto Rico has, on numerous occasions, been described as the “forgotten man” of the city’s daily press. This characterization has indeed been odd since the records so clearly reveal that Clemente was one of the most respected members of the Pirates in ability ... at least as far as the rest of the players in the league were concerned. During the summer the pattern of the “let’s forget Clemente” movement seemed to gain momentum as it became apparent to the baseball world that the Pirates would probably win their first National League championship in 35 years. Suddenly, almost as an afterthought, the Pirates became a club that could never have made it to the hill without Captain Dick Groat, shortstop. The pattern continued through the World Series. The propaganda became so obvious that more than one major league ball player told this writer: “Clemente doesn’t stand a chance of winning the ‘Most Valuable Player Award’ with all the press agents Groat has going for him in Pittsburgh." As things turned out those words of prophecy proved accurate. Dick Groat was voted the National League’s “Most Valuable Player” and has been basking in baseball’s limelight since."