El Profe: When baseball heroes die

Receiving news about the death of a baseball hero still in the midst of his playing career is a jarring experience. It reveals the human fragility of baseball heroes, how they too are human and can be gone in an instant.

Not yet four years old, I was not really old enough to experience that feeling when Roberto Clemente died in a plane crash on December 31, 1972. I came to fully understand the impact of that moment listening to stories of individuals older than myself. How they heard the news over the radio as holiday programs were interrupted to announce the plane crash and likelihood that Clemente had died.

For me that poignant moment happened with another plane crash almost seven years later. The circumstances were quite different. New York Yankees catcher Thurman Munson was flying his own plane while visiting family in northeast Ohio when he had a fatal crash on August 2, 1979.

Until then Munson was a baseball player I cheered for as a Yankees fan. But I perceived him in two dimensions, someone you saw on television, read about in the newspaper, and of whom you collected baseball cards. His death made him three dimensional, human, fragile.

Surely, it was the same for all those fans, especially the young ones, who were old enough to remember Clemente’s death.

Unwelcomed News

We were coming out of a youth service at our church Friday evening when I received the unwelcomed news. Another attendee came up to me outside of the church building to inform me Munson had died in a plane crash.

What a cruel joke, I thought angrily. I could not get out of my baseball mindset—he was a Mets fan and I a Yankees fan. Surely, he was just being mean, envious of my team’s success and his team’s lack thereof.

I lashed out at him in my immature anger, lost my holy ghost in church-speak.

As we drove home after receiving a tongue-lashing from my parents and having to apologize for striking my ‘former’ friend, we heard the news about Munson’s death ourselves on the radio.

I was ten years old. I hadn’t experienced death this way before.

Baseball and Life Lessons

Like many other Yankee fans, I had been a Munson fan. He was a player that the New York media described as gritty and a gamer. He played the game the right way, they wrote.

Much later I would become aware that much of how the New York media wrote about Munson was code-speak. That they much more preferred the manner Munson played versus than the flash and bravado of Reggie Jackson.

My own appreciation for Jackson would increase over the years, once I better understood the reality of baseball and life.

Jackson challenged the New York media, aggravated their baseball sensibilities and at times their racial sensibilities. This was particularly the case on the rare occasions Jackson played up his Puerto Rican ancestry.

More than once, Venezuelan journalist Juan Vene informed me years ago, Jackson insisted to the media covering the Yankees that he would only field questions asked in Spanish. By comparison, Munson made them more comfortable, even on the occasions when he glared at the media and told them to leave him alone.

Clemente’s Example

The discomfort Jackson caused the New York sportswriters when he played up his Puerto Rican ancestry and a Latino identity was similar to the discomfort English-language sportswriters experienced with Clemente.

Clemente approached baseball differently than what most of the white journalists were accustomed based on their own upbringing in the United States. The culture of baseball was different in the Caribbean. So was the kind of pride Clemente demonstrated in his performance.

For example, the pride that Clemente felt translated into his insistence that he owed the fans nothing but his absolute best. Thus, if he was not feeling 100 percent and could not play at a top-level, he would not hesitate to sit out a game.

That willingness to sit out drew the ire of the predominantly white cadre of baseball writers and sometimes of team officials and teammates. Clemente was labeled a hypochondriac. Someone who was unwilling to perform for his team’s good, making statements along the line that 70 percent of Clemente was better than 100 percent of most major leaguers.

The Fan’s Clemente

The insistence of giving the fans what they paid for was forever on Clemente’s mind.

His son Luis Clemente recently shared a story with me over dinner in Cooperstown about his father taking other players to the upper-level of a stadium. He told them to look at the view of the field from up there. That is what fans see from here and yet they still pay to see us play, Luis recalled his father telling them.

Clemente’s empathy for fans, not a lack of pride or unwillingness to play hurt, is what inspired him to play at what he believed was his optimal best.

In fact, as Hall of Famer Tony Pérez recounted, opponents worried less when Clemente stated that he felt good before games. It was when he was complaining about various pains and ailments that opponents shuddered because that meant Clemente was going to be hyper-focused, not going to be over-swinging, and posing a real threat.

Remembering Roberto

Roberto Clemente’s birthday is August 18. The Great One would have turned 84. It is hard to fathom that he has now been gone for longer now than he was alive.

On the 21st of each month La Vida Baseball celebrates the life and lessons Clemente taught us through videos where current and former players share “My Clemente” stories or with photos and graphics highlighting Clemente’s words and actions.

His spirit and example are enduring and always worth remembering. He told us: “Any time you have an opportunity to make a difference in this world and you don’t, then you are wasting your time on Earth.”

Those words make many of us recall his life and to declare ¡Que Viva Clemente!

Featured Image: Focus On Sport