This “Broeg & Baseball” column, by weekly contributor Bob Broeg, first appeared in the Jan. 20, 1973, issue of The Sporting News, musing at the time on several topics related to Roberto Clemente, including whether the standard five-year waiting period for induction to the Baseball Hall of Fame should be waived for the Pirates star who had died in a plane crash weeks earlier.
Quick Enshrinement Disservice to Roberto
Roberto Clemente was one of a kind — as high-strung as a thoroughbred, sensitive, pleasant most of the time, bitter on occasion, but always proud. He was part insomniac, part hypochondriac and all ballplayer. As one of the best ever, a super star who had considerable self-esteem and yet even more consideration for others, the trim, wasp-waisted No. 21 in Pittsburgh's black-and-gold didn't need the special privilege of an extra election to bypass the Hall of Fame's five-year wait for selection.
When Lou Gehrig was voted into the Hall of Fame by acclamation in 1939, there were differences. For one thing, only a one-year wait for eligibility then was involved. For another, Gehrig just had received a death sentence from his doctors.
Clemente can't walk in the garden and smell the roses or, more pertinently, take a bow next August 6 at Cooperstown. So, the way I see it, to steamroller Roberto into the Hall of Fame now is really a disservice to the proud person who liked to feel that he was best in life, not in death.
Besides, the customary five-year cooling-off period between the end of a player's career and his eligibility for induction, adopted in the early '50s, would be particularly appropriate in Clemente's case.
Five years from now, all of us could benefit anew by renewing the faith, so to speak, by a reminder and restatement of the compassion and consideration of the outstanding athlete and humanitarian who died on a mission of mercy to the helpless and homeless of Managua.
As one subject to imaginary ailments myself, I was extremely fond of Clemente, who, though hypochondriac, did suffer enough real hurts to fill a medical chart.
If you'll examine his magnificent record, which included just one season of minor league apprenticeship, you'll note that his poorest season was his third year in the big leagues. He batted only .253 and said he suffered so severely with neck and back troubles that he almost quit.
A couple of years ago, just before the All-Star break in 1970, Clemente was telling me how he'd stumbled into the Logan College of Chiropractics here (in St. Louis) in 1957. Dr. Vinton Logan apparently had the magic touch, relieving the pressure of a pinched nerve, and Clemente had become a constant customer.
X-Rays Proved Ailments Were Genuine
Intrigued, I drove Roberto the next afternoon to the late Dr. Logan's establishment and found that the Pittsburgh player was the pet patient. Doctors showed me X-rays of his arthritic spine, aggravated by the whiplash effects to the neck of an old automobile accident.
Said Dr. George Goodman, smiling, "Roberto is the best-known pain in the neck we've got. And he doesn't help his cervical condition by his neck-jerking habit in the batter's box."
Clemente ignored the remark about his batting-stance idiosyncrasy and said in his high pitched heavily accented chatter, "All I know is that they give me relief, which is more than I can say about the medical doctor whose remedy was to take my tonsils out and the tell me that my continuing neck discomfort was mental."
From nervous stomach to his sleeplessness, his long list of ailments, including ankle tendinitis last season, made Clemente the best walking or, rather, running-ad for Blue Cross.
Although he didn't steal bases often, he could. He was extremely quick, whether tearing down to first base to leg out an infield hit or releasing the ball rapidly with just about the most accurate, powerful throwing arm anyone ever saw. He was, as perfect player George Sisler recalled, a perfect player and "real champion."
For one, I resented with Clemente his apparent failure to receive unlimited recognition until, at least, the 1971 World Series.
Clemente thought the slight was, in part, because he was black and Puerto Rican. Maybe. But Willie Mays, whom he admired, isn't exactly Snow White and never has wanted for an army of admirers. Henry Aaron's complete acceptance, like Clemente's, was slower to come.
Roberto's batting averages were the kind the hitting masters of old could admire. He had seasons of .351, .357, .345 and .341. His career average, .318, was the highest since Stan Musial retired with .331. And only Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner, Musial, Rogers Hornsby and Ted Williams had more batting championships than Clemente's six.
Standing far off the plate, deep in the batter's box, the lithe athlete lunged into the ball with hands and arms strengthened from throwing the javelin as a collegian back home in Puerto Rico. He hit the ball savagely to all fields, especially to right, and, though he never got 30 homers in any season, he could hit a ball a long way.
In Brooklyn, He'd Have Been Super
In Brooklyn, if the Dodgers hadn't gambled and lost when they failed to protect him, Clemente obviously would have tattooed the ball much more often off the beckoning barriers of the Ebbets Field dollhouse. Without the false fences of Greenberg Gardens or Kiner's Korner, Pittsburgh's spacious Forbes Field could break the heart of a long-ball hitter.
To have deprived Pittsburgh of Clemente, however, would have been a shame. The folks at old Fort Pitt, who waited 40 long years with Art Rooney to win a division championship in the National Football League, might have waited even longer in baseball if Branch Rickey hadn't filched Roberto from the Dodgers for the $4,000 waiver price.
The Pirates went from 1927 to 1960 without a pennant and Clemente, hitting .314 with 94 RBIs, was bitter when he finished a distant eighth in the Most Valuable Player voting to teammates Dick Groat and Don Hoak, the shortstop and third baseman who were 1-2.
Clemente, angered, set his only personal goal in '61, he would recall, and blossomed with a .351 average and his first batting championship. But Frank Robinson won the MVP, an award which eluded Roberto until 1966.
In the '71 Series, with the national spotlight on him, when he proved his worth by getting 12 hits good for 22 bases and a .414 average, Clemente showed that he was all class, on and off the field.
Switching from English to Spanish when talking on television, the handsome Jack Armstrong of the Caribbean addressed himself to his parents and said, tenderly:
"On this, the proudest moment of my life, I ask your blessing …”
How could anyone ever forget this kind of man, even if he weren't probably as fine an all-round right fielder ever to turn his own double into a triple and an opposing double into a single?