Saluting Pittsburgh's finest

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), July, 2008 by Richard E. Vatz, Lee S. Weinberg

IN THE PAST FEW YEARS, there has been a renewal of attention to one who some believe to be the best all-round player ever to have played the game of baseball: Roberto Clemente, the right fielder for the Pittsburgh Pirates from 1955-72. Let us, in the interest of full disclosure, say up front that the authors of this piece are born and raised Pittsburghers; so, we admittedly are partial to the growing recognition of this remarkable man and player. In fact, one of us currently occupies an office overlooking a preserved piece of Forbes Field--the outfield wall at the 436-foot mark--reminding him every day of Clemente's many heroics.

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Yet, there also is considerable empirical evidence to support our point of view. Clemente was the classic five-tool player, one who could "hit, hit for power, ran, throw, and field." The only dimension for which there is any question was his ability to hit for power. His 240 career round-trippers (certainly a more-than-respectable total), still is nowhere near the power numbers put up by some of the game's all-time great slugging outfielders--Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Frank Robinson, and Mickey Mantle are Clemente contemporaries that immediately come to mind. Roberto reached the 20-homer plateau four times, topping out at 29 in his MVP season of 1966, and he did reach the double digit mark in home runs the last 13 years of his career. However, all Pirates players in the "Forbes Field" era should earn a pass in the power department because the erstwhile home ballpark of the Bucs had dimensions of 462 feet to center and 360 and 376 down the lines in left and right, respectively. (Yes, the old Yankee Stadium had its renowned Death Valley, but it was a mere 301 feet down the line in left and 296 to the foul pole in fight. Moreover, the outfield wall at those junctures was less than four feet high.) Forbes' dimensions militated against being a home run hitter, Ralph Kiner and Willie Stargell notwithstanding. Stargell, incidentally, had his home run numbers catapult upon moving to the Pirates' more reasonably proportioned Three Rivers Stadium (since replaced by PNC Park).

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Clemente's statistics, the home run numbers aside, may not have earned him the title of "best player ever," but Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post writer David Maraniss (one should say here, parenthetically, that you may infer the greatness of an athlete roughly by who is his main biographer), in his extraordinary Clemente, the Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero, made the point that all Clementephiles know, but may not have articulated: Understanding the magnitude of Clemente requires an appreciation of the gestalt of his presence, which was greater than the sum of his statistics: "There was something about Clemente that surpassed statistics, then and always. Some baseball mavens love the sport precisely because of its numbers. They can take the mathematics of the box score and of a year's worth of statistics and calculate the case for players they consider underrated or overrated and declare who has the most real value to a team. To some skilled practitioners of this science, Clemente comes out very good but not the greatest; he walks too seldom, has too few home runs, steals too few bases ... but to people who appreciate Clemente, this is like chemists trying to explain Van Gogh by analyzing the ingredients of his paint. Clemente was art, not science."

This book by Maraniss is as comprehensive and accurate a work on a major sports icon as we have read. If there is a weakness (and there is not much of one), it is that no one--even after reading this moving, informative work--will know the truth concerning the much rumored (and possibly apocryphal) knife fight that was said to have occurred between Clemente and teammate Elroy Face.

This is not to say that "The Great Roberto," as legendary Pittsburgh Pirates broadcaster Bob Prince called him, lacked impressive statistics. Beginning in 1960, he hit over .300 for 12 out of the next 13 seasons (slipping to .291 in 1968, a season hailed as "The Year of the Pitcher"; in fact, the major league mounds were lowered following that campaign), winning the National League batting title four times. He made 14 All-Star appearances, and he won 12 consecutive Gold Glove awards. His arm was without equal.

Clemente was not a saint. Maraniss cites weaknesses of which even baseball aficionados may be unaware. Periodically, Clemente showed a terrible temper. He would judge people negatively too quickly but, in his defense, he did not delay in righting a misperceived wrong. On the other hand, there were moments of inexplicable outrage, such as the time he belted a 19-year-old waiting for an autograph, which Clemente generally signed frequently and patiently. There was a contretemps in the signing line, and the young man was hit by Clemente, a likely case of mistaken identity. This rare and unexplainable, hostile physical act was in direct contrast to his generally soft-spoken demeanor in public, as well as his gentility with his family.