Clemente

by The Clemente Family

  Yet some were indeed enthralled, like Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, who called Clemente baseball royalty.

  Few understood just how impactful Clemente would become, or that he was far more multidimensional as a person than anyone outside of his family or close friends fully understood. He followed national politics intently and spoke openly about his disgust that hunger and want still existed in such a wealthy nation. He committed acts of kindness with no public relations officials present, and outside of precharity press conferences.

  When Clemente would film commercials and endorsements in Puerto Rico, he’d take the money, sometimes tens of thousands of dollars, and donate it to various charities in cities across the area. On “Roberto Clemente Night” in 1970, a day dedicated to honoring Clemente, he was given $6,000 by the team, the equivalent of about $33,000 today. He gave that money to a children’s hospital in Pittsburgh. At the time, few knew. Clemente would take bags full of coins and hand them to poor people he’d seek out in the street. He provided most of the $700 needed to provide the prosthetic legs for a wheelchair-bound twelve-year-old boy. Hospital visits were numerous and almost never publicized. “Days before doctors would operate, they’d ask my dad to speak to the patients,” Luis said. A year before the plane crash Clemente was planning to open a modest chiropractic center in Puerto Rico.

  Clemente went into hospital rooms unannounced, the patients suddenly smiling as if a deity had entered.

  Clemente was one of the first professional athletes to fully understand that power and wealth didn’t have to transform just a single individual. They could act as engines to alter the lives of many. Once Clemente fully embraced this belief, the course of his life would change forever, and so would that of his family. “Eventually what my father saw was that he could use baseball, and the fame generated by baseball, to help people in big ways,” says Roberto Jr.

  One year before the plane crash Clemente planned to open a modest medical facility in Puerto Rico not far from their home. Vera was going to assist him. There would be a few more years of baseball, and then family and a career of healing others. Clemente’s life was becoming firmly settled.

  * * *

  CLEMENTE SPENT THREE weeks in Nicaragua earlier in 1972, and as he had done in many places, he met a number of people he came to like. Three days before Christmas, Clemente and Vera awoke in Puerto Rico to news of a series of earthquakes that had flattened the city of Managua, leaving it in ruins.

  “I remember my father being extremely sad,” Roberto says, “and then there was a lot of activity around the house. You knew something big was about to happen.”

  “Dad was communicating with a ham radio operator in Managua,” says Luis, “and he was asking, ‘What do you need?’ The city was destroyed. They needed everything.”

  Many parts of the world started organizing huge relief efforts to Managua, and the idea of a similar effort from Puerto Rico was born, led by one of the island’s most famous sons. Soon Clemente would be on a propeller-driven DC-7 stuffed with aid for the devastated country.

  | CHAPTER TWO |

  SACRIFICE

  LUIS CLEMENTE: Sometimes, I just miss Dad being around. Not long ago, I was watching 61*, a film about New York Yankees players Roger Maris’s and Mickey Mantle’s attempts to break the single-season record of sixty home runs in a single season. Suddenly I broke into tears. I started crying with a lot of emotion. I went into the bathroom, washed my face, and looked into the mirror. I realized that’s how I cried when I was a little kid. The feeling was for the first time in so many years, I was missing my dad so bad. I feel like every now and then my dad reaches out to me.

  There was something else for me about that emotional day when I looked into the mirror. I realized that feeling of being a kid was never coming back. The truth is, I never got to be a kid. Roberto never got to be a kid. From the time our father died, we worked to continue his legacy. It’s an honor to do that and something we cherish, but that’s a true fact. We were never kids. We’ve never had our own lives. Ricky and I have stayed in Puerto Rico, while Roberto has spent most of his time in the States. Ricky has been afraid to fly after what happened to our dad.

  The Clemente name in Puerto Rico is one of its greatest currencies, and the family protects it at all costs, even if they sacrifice a part of themselves to do so. This is not stated to get sympathy. I feel like this. My dad died a long time ago, and today buildings and streets are being named after him. I feel a personal responsibility to make sure he’s protected.

  You have to understand my dad to know how we are as a family. He was a very sincere person. If you asked him how he was doing, he thought you were sincere. He’d tell you, “You know, my back hurts; this hurts; that hurts.” That sincerity was a big part of who he was, and it helped him care about people. He was very outspoken when it came to injustice—not just for any particular race, but for all people. So we all feel like we need to protect that. I know I say that a lot, but that’s why we do what we do.

  * * *

  One day recently, I had a meeting with a Puerto Rican government official. Afterward, I stopped at a local bar, a place I’d been many times before, and upon entering was greeted warmly. There’s one man in the bar who always says hello and I say hello back, but that was the extent of our past greetings. On this day, the man decided to say more than hi, and approached me. The man was slightly intoxicated, which may have been the reason for his sudden bluntness. “I gotta tell you, I observe you,” he told me. “The first thing you do is say hi to everyone. You are so nice, but I have to ask you, are you living your life? Because every time I hear you speak, it’s about your father. I’m sorry to tell you, but your father’s dead.”

  “THERE’S ALMOST A blank page in the lives of the sons when it comes to their father,” says longtime family friend and confidant Chuck Berry, who has known the Clementes for decades. “They were never able to have that close relationship with their father because of the accident. They were left with the job of trying to live up to his legend.

  “In my mind, if they sat down with a psychiatrist and talked about the pressures of growing up the son of Roberto Clemente, you’d see a lot of tears. They are such, in many ways, perfect kids. Compassionate, smart, and good-hearted, like their father. But imagine trying to live up to being their dad.”

  Both sons attempted baseball but could not be what their father was. Then again, not many men in the history of the sport could. In June of 1986, then nineteen years old while playing for the Pittsburgh Pirates, his father’s old franchise, Luis struggled. He had batted .235 the year before and worse that summer. The Pirates organization wanted to keep him in the system, but Luis knew it was over. “I wasn’t going to be a token,” he says now. “I’m going to bust my ass, but if you don’t think I can play on the major-league level, then okay, but I’m not going to be a spectacle or a ticket.

  “My son once asked me, ‘Dad, what is the benefit of being Roberto Clemente’s grandson? People expect so much from you,’” Luis says. “I tell him, ‘You have to look at it the other way. You’re very lucky. Your grandfather is still impacting so many people.’”

  The Clemente family has also faced the same dilemma that’s challenged many famous families: saying no.

  “Sometimes I feel like telling people who try to take advantage of me to go screw themselves, but I can’t,” says Luis. “We can’t. My mom won’t let us. She doesn’t ever want to hurt anyone. She never wants to say no. She makes other people’s issues her issues.”

  Says Roberto: “I told Mom once, ‘You have ruined me in some ways, because the word “no” isn’t in my vocabulary.’ We sometimes hurt ourselves because we don’t say no.”

  VERA CLEMENTE: Roberto still impacts kids in Puerto Rico. They read about him in schoolbooks. They are taught that Roberto was a good person and they should try to be like him.

  LUIS CLEMENTE: People still ask about my dad, what he was like, all these years later.

  ROBERTO CLEMENTE
JR.: There are schools around the country still being named after Dad.

  VERA CLEMENTE: There are people who come by the house asking about Roberto. It’s been that way for a long time. After both of the World Series, our house would be full of strangers. Roberto welcomed everyone.

  LUIS CLEMENTE: People will name their babies Roberto Clemente. They’ll send the birth certificate to my mom asking her to sign it. She’ll sign it with a nice note and send it back. They want Mom to sign it so they can fully explain to their son when he gets older why they named him after my dad.

  RICKY CLEMENTE: My dad was great, but my mom is incredible. Look at what she did. She raised us alone after our dad died. She never felt sorry for herself. She never abused the Clemente name. She’s just a great person.

  VERA CLEMENTE: Roberto would say, “I’ll die young and not grow old. You’ll probably remarry.” I’d tell him, “Don’t say things like that. Don’t talk about sad things. God forbid something ever happened to you; I would never remarry.”

  ROBERTO CLEMENTE JR.: Mom took those words to Dad as a promise to him. No one would blame Mom if she remarried, but she was so dedicated to him.

  LUIS CLEMENTE: Our mom is a saint. That’s what you’ll hear from everyone. She welcomes anyone into her home. She’s nice to everyone. Dad used to tell her all the time he was going to die young. She’d say, “Stop talking like that.” But he’d say it, and he’d tell Mom that if he did die young, she had to keep going on with her life. But Mom has been so loyal to Dad. She hasn’t gone on so much as a lunch date.

  I also think there’s a small part of her that hopes someday, somehow, Dad will come back. He’ll walk through the front door and be home again.

  * * *

  ROBERTO CLEMENTE JR.: I’ve had a different kind of challenge than some of my family members. I have the same name—Roberto—as my father. When I introduce myself to people who know the legacy of my father loosely, they recognize the name. When I meet people who know the Clemente name well and cherish it, they look at me intimately. To some, I am Clemente, and they act accordingly.

  I was in Pittsburgh once and I stopped to assist a woman who had a flat tire. She was extremely grateful and began a conversation.

  “Where are you from?” she asked me.

  “I’m from Puerto Rico.”

  “Puerto Rico! That’s where Roberto Clemente is from. He was such a great man. So what’s your name?”

  “Roberto Zabala.” [He laughs.]

  There are pictures of me in my diapers swinging a baseball bat. I was trying to be him. I played baseball in the major leagues like my dad. When I was eighteen, and at my first spring training with the Philadelphia Phillies in 1984, all I was ever asked was what it was like to be Roberto Clemente. People who knew my father would always tell me how my father hit. “He could hit to right field. He could do this. He could do that.” All I’d ever do was listen. I love my dad but I’m my own person.

  Even at seven years old, following those terrible days after my dad died, I became him almost instantaneously. I was never personally able to mourn Dad’s death. I was never able to cry. I was told, “You’re the man of the house now. You have to be there for your mom.” Literally, right after the accident, I went to school. In essence, I didn’t really enjoy my childhood.

  As the years went by, and everyone reminded me of how I looked like my father and acted like my father, each comment reminding me that my father was, in fact, gone, I thought of something drastic. I was thirteen. I went to my mom and said, “I want to change my name.” She said, “It’ll be okay. It’ll be okay. It’ll get better.” There was so much pressure being Roberto Clemente, at that moment, I didn’t want to be Roberto Clemente.

  * * *

  THEN THE SONS again talk about their mother, and that word arises—sacrifice. It is clear the sons love and cherish their mother. Adore her, actually.

  “The best thing my father did was pick the perfect wife and perfect mom for his kids,” Roberto says.

  “She rescued the family,” says Luis.

  Rescued?

  “The family could have fallen apart after my father died,” Luis says. “We could have fractured. She kept us together. She’s a strong woman.”

  It is also clear to the sons that their mother is still deeply connected to their father.

  “She still mourns him,” says Roberto. “In essence, she’s still married to my father.”

  | CHAPTER THREE |

  MEMORIES

  ROBERTO CLEMENTE JR.: In my mind, he is always floating.

  TONY BARTIROME: He had these huge, strong hands. People always thought that because he hit with such power he was this big guy. He wasn’t, especially by today’s standards. He’d come into spring training at 185 pounds. At the end of the season, he was 181. The power came from those hands.

  LUIS CLEMENTE: I remember when we were kids and we were playing with these toy guns with the suction cups. We were shooting them at a sliding glass door. It was getting late and we were loud. My dad slid back the door. He had these big hands. He grabbed our heads and said, “You’re going to bed now.”

  ROBERTO CLEMENTE JR.: If I was doing something I wasn’t supposed to be doing he’d just give me a look and I’d stop. He didn’t have to say a word.

  LUIS CLEMENTE: Ricky looks the most like our dad now. It’s uncanny. Ricky is quiet but he’s really funny. He jokes around a lot. He has Dad’s respect for people. If he’s driving, and there are cars headed to a funeral, he’ll turn the radio off.

  RICKY CLEMENTE: I was too young to truly get to know my dad, but I’ve learned everything about him. I try to treat people the way he treated people.

  JUSTINO CLEMENTE WALKER: Roberto cared about people he didn’t know. He also understood the impact he could have on people’s lives. Just saying hello. Or going by hospitals to visit patients. He would go the funerals of strangers. He used to say, “I go to everyone else’s funerals but maybe no one will come to mine.”

  LUIS CLEMENTE: Think about the irony of my dad wondering if people would go to his funeral. He never really got to have a funeral.

  STEVE BLASS: Roberto could be serious, but people forget he could also be very, very funny. He was constantly cracking jokes. I went up to him one time and said, “If I ever get traded, and I face you, I’m going to pitch you inside.” He said, “If you pitch me inside, I will hit the fucking ball to Harrisburg.”

  VERA CLEMENTE: There was an organ in the home that he would play. He’d play it with one finger. He’d drive while playing a [Hohner] harmonica.

  LUIS CLEMENTE: My dad loved the U.S. and he was also very proud to be a Puerto Rican. He wanted each of his kids to be born in Puerto Rico. We all were.

  ROBERTO CLEMENTE JR.: [Laughs.] He wanted me to play baseball but had some advice…. [He laughs again.] “Just don’t play catcher. Their knees go bad.”

  * * *

  THESE ARE THE memories of sons, Roberto’s wife, and brother, and others. Roberto Jr. remembers waking, heading to breakfast, and in the kitchen would be a table full of chicken, steak, and eggs. The blender would churn loudly as Clemente created a concoction of egg yolk, sugar, and orange or grapefruit juice, often his last meal before heading to the ballpark.

  Roberto Jr. remembers his father watching scary movies late at night and sleeping through parts of the day—the latter being the life of a baseball player.

  Strangers would knock on the door of the Clemente house in Puerto Rico. Clemente would answer, dressed in shorts and wearing no shirt, and he’d talk to people he didn’t know, sometimes for hours. Some would come to the house in a wheelchair, or using crutches, or be in great pain. Clemente would work on their back or their legs the way a physical therapist does and the pain they’d arrived with would be gone when they left. Sometimes as a form of repayment, or simply out of adulation, people would leave gifts at the front door.

  “One of the biggest memories I have was how I first realized just how big of a star he was, and that happened almo
st immediately after the accident,” Roberto explains. “We came to our house and there were helicopters and police everywhere.”

  After the crash, on that beach where thousands came to hope and, eventually, to mourn, was Willie Montañez. Clemente had a profound effect on the life of Montañez almost a decade before the infamous flight. Montañez was a promising player in whom the Pirates had a great deal of interest. Just a matter of hours after the 1963 season ended, there was a knock on Montañez’s door in Puerto Rico. “Hey, Willie,” said Montañez’s brother, “Roberto Clemente’s here.”

  Clemente had come unannounced and with a message. He wanted Montañez to know that he was good enough to play in the major leagues, but there was another, equally important thing the young player had to digest. “You are a good player, good enough to play in the United States,” Clemente said. “I do not think they are going to offer you the money you are worth. You can get more if you want to wait or maybe talk to other teams. Do not make the mistake of settling for less than you are worth.”

  * * *

  MEMORIES… “HE IS standing on second base,” Steve Blass, a pitcher for the Pirates, said of Clemente. “This is after he doubled off Jon Matlack for his three thousandth hit. He has one foot on the bag, and his hands are on his hips. The fans are cheering wildly, but he is just standing there, like a statue, the essence of dignity and pride and grace. That is my freeze-frame of him, how I picture him to this day.”

  “He never made a mistake in the field,” remembered Joe Brown, who from 1956 to 1976 was the Pirates’ general manager. “He never threw to the wrong base, never failed to take the extra base, never was thrown out trying for the extra base. He was simply the most intelligent player who ever played for me.”