Original subtitles

ANNOUNCER: Everybody's standing,

and they want Bobby to get that hit number 3,000.

Matlack on the 0-1.

Bobby hits the ball into the gap in left center field.

There she is.

They respond. Everybody's standing.

A double for Roberto.

This week, the week that Roberto Clemente

got his 3,000 hit,

and joined the most elite circle of baseball players in history,

Joe Namath appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

The article on Roberto Clemente amounted to one line

or I think two sentences

on page 45 or 50 or something like that

in the magazine.

And it really graphically portrays

what you have talked about for 18 years.

You don't get the kind of exposure

that the other athletes do.

ANNOUNCER: Pittsburgh, they call him the great one.

I always have a goal in my life,

and I always try to bring the name of Puerto Rico up.

You know, he was a very proud man.

And to him, his people were first.

[speaking Spanish]

The greatest right fielder in the game of baseball,

Roberto Clemente.

Once told by a reporter

that he threw and ran like Willie Mays,

Clemente retorted,

nonetheless, I play like Roberto Clemente.

Here's that Clemente swing once again,

hitting off the front foot, now a trademark.

He just played at another level.

You were just kind of in awe of the skill set.

However it is caught by Clemente

with a tremendous running, sliding catch.

He was so stylish, so unmistakable.

If he wore a generic uniform, you would still know who he was.

I remember him, like, throwing fools out.

His arm was supernatural.

Oh.

I'd never seen a throw like that in my life.

Man, the grace, and with a body.

Like, cool, just cool as [s...].

[speaking Spanish]

Clemente set the bar for Latino players.

You cannot only be a good player.

You gotta be a great person off the field as well.

He wanted to represent not only our people,

but every person out there that was suffering injustice.

His heart was with the people that were suffering.

[speaking Spanish]

On an island only 100 miles long and 35 miles wide,

what Puerto Rico lacks in size

it more than makes up for in the energy of its people.

Puerto Rico, we are special.

And I'm telling you, don't mess with Puerto Ricans.

Comprende, mi amigo?

[laughs]

My father was born in San Antonio, Carolina, Puerto Rico,

August 18, 1934.

My memories of Puerto Rico are paradisiacal.

I remember my mom and I

going to a local creek to do the laundry,

where we scrubbed the clothing on rocks,

and so did a bunch of ladies.

And they yelled to each other and laughed and sing songs.

It was almost a cliche.

Dad was the baby of the family.

There were six before him.

Anairis was already five years old

when my father was born,

but Anairis used to ask my grandfather

for a baby brother

and continue, continue to ask for a baby brother.

Hence, that's how my father was born.

Roberto was born in 1934 during the Depression,

which was a depression in Puerto Rico

as well as the United States.

It was rural.

Dad's family was not poor.

It was right below middle class, if you will,

right at that middle.

They had enough money to put food on the table

and put clothes on the children's back.

But the parents didn't have a lot of money for luxuries.

My grandfather was a foreman of the sugar plantation,

and my grandmother would fix lunch

for the sugar cane plantation workers.

[speaking Spanish]

My dad's older sister, she was playing outside,

and a spark got to her silk dress,

and the dress went up in flames.

[speaking Spanish]

That tragedy played out again and again in his mind.

Roberto would talk about dreaming about Anairis

being at his side at various times during his life.

She would approach him, grab his hand,

open his hand, and would give three coins.

The number three is a very mystical number in his life.

He had three sons,

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, home of Three Rivers Stadium,

where he played in.

And then you end up with exactly 3,000 hits.

Threes everywhere you look.

My father was brought up to be a hard worker,

but any time he had an opportunity,

a chance to go to that empty lot to play ball,

that's what he did.

Puerto Rico was very rich

when it came to the game of baseball.

Santurce Crabbers,

the Senators of San Juan,

Ponce Lions.

Puerto Ricans have been playing baseball

since the island existed.

Every kid here in Puerto Rico played baseball.

There was nothing else to do.

There was nothing,

either go to a movie or play baseball.

Those were the only two things that we had in Puerto Rico.

The thing was to play.

It didn't matter how, the thing was to play ball.

We'd take the shopping bags,

and that's what we put on our hands.

We didn't have no gloves. [laughs]

It was a way of forgetting about challenges

that were going on at the time,

and baseball united everyone.

It still does.

Dad would take the train down to San Juan.

That is where the Negro Leaguers played.

American ballplayers, especially Black players,

came here to develop their game.

When they came down here,

they didn't feel at all any segregation.

This was a very hard league.

You had Major League pitching here,

you had Major League batting, you had Major League everything.

If you came down here and you excelled,

next season you're gonna be up in the big leagues.

Dad's idol was Monte Irvin.

One day he was roaming around

and waiting for the players to come in,

and Monte saw him and recognized him.

So Monte opens his bag and hands my father a glove.

Now my father has

his first, like, real glove from Monte Irvin.

[speaking Spanish]

Dad says he got a lot of his talent

from my grandmother

because she was very fast.

If you have so many kids

and you can get to your kids at that age,

you're an athlete.

It was funny how dad would say he got a great arm from her.

She would get a chancaleta and just throw it

and had a great arm.

[speaking Spanish]

Since he was a young boy,

he would do things

that no one at his age would even think about.

[speaking Spanish]

REPORTER: We asked Mr. Branch Rickey, Sr.

what he looked for in a young ballplayer,

and this was his reply.

That's a whale of a question.

Can he throw hard?

And can he run fast?

Does he like to play?

Branch Rickey is one of the more important sociological figures

in the 20th century.

He was the general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers

in the 1940s when he decided

that it was the time to integrate the game,

to break the color line.

He chose Jackie Robinson for that purpose

and really changed not just baseball,

but American society through that.

He was fairly conservative

and certainly had his own prejudices.

Boy, when you read all of his scouting reports

about different players, you can see that in evidence.

And yet he believed in integrated society

and not in discrimination in that larger sense.

At first, Dad was playing softball.

A scout for the Santurce Grabbers

saw him playing shortstop at a softball game.

Santurce was the powerhouse of the Puerto Rican league.

They were the New York Yankees of that league,

and they signed him because he was that good of a player.

You know, the Grabbers would bring major players

from the states to play Winter Ball.

So you have this young kid, 20 years old,

and next to him is Willie Mays.

Imagine that.

Branch Rickey sees Roberto playing down in Puerto Rico,

playing next to Willie Mays, and they're not that different.

And so he knows he's good.

And he's telling his scouts, let's keep our eye on this guy.

Now, there were actually other teams that wanted him, too.

He was pretty hotly sought after.

The New York Giants made him an offer.

The Milwaukee Braves made him an offer.

So he had at least three solid offers.

But he ended up going with the Dodgers,

who gave him a large bonus of more than $4,000,

which was a really large bonus for that time period.

The Dodgers have no room for Dad in their major league roster,

so they sent him to AAA up in Montreal

until they had space for Dad in the major leagues.

Roberto was in Montreal playing,

and every time that he would get a hit,

they would take him out of the lineup

because they didn't want him to be in the media.

He was unprotected at the end of the season,

and they couldn't move Roberto to Brooklyn.

They had no room for him on the roster

because the Brooklyn Dodgers were the best team in baseball.

And they didn't need him, but they wanted to keep him.

So he was hanging there like low-hanging fruit.

You know, there are almost no photographs of my father

in a Montreal uniform because he never played.

I mean, he was always on the bench.

By 1955, Branch Rickey had moved on

from the Dodgers to the Pirates,

and Rickey, he knew all about Clemente.

[speaking Spanish]

The valley of steel mills and factories.

In spite of its industrial smoke,

which made life and breath treacherous for its citizens,

Pittsburgh was often picturesquely described

by 19th-century writers as resembling Vulcan,

the mythical god of fire.

Needless to say, these writers didn't live there.

It was a shock.

It was a dirty, smoggy city.

When my mother and I came to America,

Puerto Rican culture was deeply maligned.

I remember being called terrible names

on my way to school.

I was in deep shock and very scared.

Think of Pittsburgh in 1955.

There weren't many Latinos, if at all.

Certainly there are not a lot of Latinos in baseball.

So Roberto literally was alone.

Occasionally you would hear from older guys

talking about sports, the name Clemente would come up.

Great. He's a great player.

But, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah.

There was always the "but,"

like, an unspoken "but" in italics,

you know, dot, dot, dot.

And I distinctly remember someone said,

I hear he carries a knife.

And to me, I'm going, he's, like, one of my heroes.

And I go, you know, kind of inside my head,

I'm thinking, what's that mean?

Is he a bad man?

As I get older and I think,

I'm a black Puerto Rican in Pittsburgh in the sixties,

I might carry a knife.

Dad often called himself a double [n.....].

From the white class, he was black.

On the Black side, he was Latino.

He was not part of them either.

He was right in the middle,

and there was no middle at the time.

[speaking Spanish]

There was a lot of racial tension.

If you looked like you weren't white or black,

people want to know what you were.

Roberto had people thinking

he couldn't speak English very well.

He could speak English perfectly.

I said, well, why do you pretend

that you can't speak English that well?

And he said, because you can find out how the person feels.

Because thinking you can't understand them,

they will say anything,

and you'll remember what they say.

Clemente is joining a team that is A, not very good,

and B, has a lot of faces that don't look like him.

You think of any ballplayer who's Black or Latino

playing baseball throughout the 1950s,

into the early to mid-1960s,

they are faced with Jim Crow segregation at its worst.

The names that we got called playing the game

was just unbelievable.

They call us LBJ Boys.

The N-word or "send them back to Africa."

We're at the ballpark,

and there's this guy walking through the stands,

and he's handing out these flyers and leaflets,

and here it was.

It was an application to join the Klan.

I'm saying, whoa!

Roberto rolls into spring training

and doesn't know what's about to hit him.

So imagine this.

You end the game.

Now you're starving.

You expect to go eat, but that place, that restaurant,

does not accept you.

You're in a bus for whatever time they spend there.

You're sitting there waiting to be brought food

like you're an animal or something.

I don't know.

Dad did not accept that.

He had to step forward and really go against the grain.

That's when he actually decided to talk to management

and say, we need a station wagon or a vehicle

to go on our own

where we can actually sit down and eat as human beings.

That station wagon, it became a symbol

of we don't need to abide by those rules.

Please, come on.

Absolutely not.

The Pirates of the early fifties were a pretty hapless crowd.

It was a combination of players who were on the fringes

or very young or very old.

And pretty boring.

And really no definition to them.

From 1955 through the '59 season,

he wasn't living up to what he wanted to be.

He definitely struggled through the fifties.

He's taken a while to get his footing.

He's hitting into some double plays.

He's frustrated.

He's cracking his batting helmets,

where they start fining him for doing that.

In '57, he had an injury.

But in '58, he gets drafted into the Marines.

He spends the whole winter,

instead of playing Winter Ball back in Puerto Rico,

he goes to the Marines where they work out and they drill

and that's all they do.

NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER: They are taught footwork

and basic bayonet attack movements by experts.

He comes out of boot camp

and jumps into spring training with the team.

He's in great shape,

and that's when his career really starts off.

ANNOUNCER: Roberto Clemente comes to bat.

He's finally hitting over .300 for the whole season,

driving in runs, playing great right field,

winning ballgames with game-winning hits.

Roberto played with an abandon, I felt like.

When he would run the bases, you could tell he ran full out.

And when he would throw it, he was so accurate and so fast.

It was seeing something that you've never seen before.

He could catch a ball running away or into the ivy.

He was a weapon.

It just would be so exciting

if a runner tried to outrun Roberto's arm.

I would almost take personal offense.

You didn't test Roberto Clemente's arm.

He was one of the most vicious hitters to the opposite field

that ever played.

And everything he did was unorthodox.

Dad was known for his unique way of catching the ball,

called the basket catch.

ANNOUNCER: Caught by Clemente.

When he was growing up, he would lay in bed,

throw the ball against the wall above his head

and catch the ball.

So he would throw and catch, throw and catch.

ANNOUNCER: Tremendous running, sliding catch.

He did things

and you start to break it down from a player standpoint,

like, how did he do that?

ANNOUNCER: Here's that Clemente swing once again,

hitting off the front foot.

Look at that right foot.

And his feet are in the air,

and yet the ball is still going very far.

That's some athleticism that you can't be taught.

At the plate, Roberto wasn't looking to walk.

He was a notorious bad ball hitter.

Trying to pitch around him, he might reach out

and hit the ball off the right field wall.

I never laughed so much when he's running.

I mean, he's so funny running the bases.

[J....], is he really running like that?

All legs and arms and all that.

The way he played, it was very electric.

He was very coordinated,

but looked very wild.

He still looked like he could throw the ball

anywhere on the field and you're was like, what?

He was so beautiful.

Man, the grace.

And I can never tell if he was aware

of how [f......] cool he looked.

You know what I mean?

Did he know he looked that cool?

Do you think the fact that you are like you are

in facial expression makes you sometimes unapproachable?

A reporter comes in and sees Clemente,

perhaps stalking around the clubhouse

with that particular expression on his face

and says, oh, my goodness,

how can I go near the great Roberto Clemente

when he doesn't look happy?

The press did not like my father.

One of the problems that Dad had with the media

was the way that they would quote him.

He would say "hit" like "heat."

So they would spell H-E-E-T,

and that really bothered him.

That's where that contentious relationship started to evolve

because he's saying, you know what I'm trying to say,

but you're trying to make me look like I'm not educated.

Sports writers in Pittsburgh were old school white guys,

part of sort of a clubby atmosphere.

There was always this sort of tension

from this beautiful, proud, talented Puerto Rican,

and these older sports writers who didn't know Spanish

and didn't know how to connect with him.

His name was Roberto, and yet a lot of people

would refer to him or would call him...

ANNOUNCER: [echoing] Bobby...

Bob.

They would try to Americanize him.

Dad was a very proud Puerto Rican.

That was his pride.

His pride and joy where he grew up,

where his people were, his food, his culture.

He did not want to lose that

and wanted to make sure that people understood

that his name was not Bob.

His name was Roberto.

He was born in Puerto Rico.

NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER: Fans who waited 33 years

since the home team's last pennant

swarm into Pittsburgh's Forbes Field

as the Pirates open against the New York Yankees.

What a great contrast

between the two teams in the World Series.

The Pittsburgh Pirates, a secondary market

versus the New York Yankees,

the Bronx Bombers

of Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra and Roger Maris.

The Yankees were in the World Series

every year in the 1950s

except for 1954 and '59.

The Pirates had not even been in the World Series

since they were swept by the Yankees in 1927.

The Yankees were clearly the better team.

The Pirates are a good team,

but they're given little to no chance

of even being competitive in the series.

When the Yankees win, they're blowouts.

ANNOUNCER: The Yankees roar back

to a shattering 16-3 victory,

and the fans go wild!

When the Pirates win,

they squeak out the victory

by one or two or three runs.

ANNOUNCER: And Clemente hits a soft dribbler towards Scowron

and nobody's gonna get over.

Bases loaded.

Clemente gets a hit in every game.

He's playing a brilliant right field.

He's really at the center of the action.

Dad hit .310.

He had nine hits in 29 at bats.

I mean, he did it all on the field as well.

No errors. He was perfect.

The Yankees and Pirates,

they end up playing even through the first six games.

ANNOUNCER: Forbes Field in Pittsburgh,

the seventh game of the 1960 World Series.

That sets up this incredible game seven.

The Yankees were my team

and my mother wanted me to go to school

and my father said, no, he'll remember this

longer than he'll remember what happened at school.

So many swings in momentum.

Times where it looked like the Yankees were gonna win.

Times where it looked like the Pirates were gonna win.

It ends up being tied.

Mazeroski comes up leading off for the Pirates.

ANNOUNCER: Sudden death now, last of the ninth.

9-9.

Ball one outside.

There's a drive into deep left field.

Look out now.

That ball is going...

[cheering]

Bill Mazeroski

hits it over the left field fence for a home run!

The Pirates win it 10-9 and win the World Series!

Over the left field fence.

Yogi Berra watches it fly out of Forbes Field.

It's one of the most dramatic endings to a World Series,

and it's one of the most dramatic game sevens

in the history of the Fall Classic.

The heart of the team, under-recognized,

was their most talented player

who was finally reaching his potential,

and that was Roberto Clemente in right field.

I was crestfallen.

I vowed not to speak, which for me was quite a thing.

Not only has my team lost,

but they're not supposed to lose.

I'm eight years old.

Baseball is all I really care about.

Clemente is part of my eight-year-old pain.

Clemente left the locker room.

They were gonna try to do some champagne and stuff

in the locker room and hang out, and he snuck out on his own.

He just felt his people were outside,

and so he went out into the streets

and hung out with fans.

How cool was that?

So for the fans, it was pretty awesome.

I was coming home from St. Malachy School.

My brother, he was jumping up and down

and yelling, they won, the Pirates won!

The Buccos won!

It was so thrilling.

Roberto was from the Caribbean.

Roberto was from Puerto Rico.

It was a big, bloody deal.

He's greeted in Puerto Rico as this conquering hero,

this migrant worker went up to the mainland and prevailed.

But then he gets a call about the Most Valuable Player Award.

Clemente didn't finish second, third, fourth,

fifth, sixth, or seventh.

He finished eighth in the voting and that hurt him.

His teammate, Dick Groat, ends up winning the MVP.

Groat was an All American basketball player at Duke,

and sort of an all-American stereotype.

Clemente had no resentment toward Groat,

and he didn't want it to be perceived

that he was trying to say that he was better than Groat.

His whole argument, though,

was I should have been voted higher than eighth.

He was behind a pitcher, Lindy McDaniel,

who was a relief pitcher for the Cardinals.

It doesn't even make any sense.

The stats with Dick Groat and Dad were very comparable.

For him to see those stats and come in eighth,

that in itself is, like, are you kidding me?

I mean, why?

He was furious, absolutely furious.

He knew the reason why he was eighth in the voting

is because of how he looked.

I look at that winter and that denial,

that rejection as the fuel that flamed him

for the rest of that decade as this unstoppable ball player.

ANNOUNCER: Lines a drive down the right field line.

From that point on, he was Clemente the Great One.

ANNOUNCER: And what a magnificent performance

from Pittsburgh's right fielder, the great Roberto Clemente.

You'll see what I do.

My name will be across this nation.

My mother, she was born in Carolina, Puerto Rico,

same town as my father.

[speaking Spanish]

You know, Carolina, it's a small town.

And one day in particular,

my mother is going to the pharmacy

to pick up some meds for my grandmother.

When she walks into the pharmacy,

she was surprised to see my father

sitting in front of the counter reading the paper.

She said when she saw him, her heart skipped, you know.

[laughs]

[speaking Spanish]

When he got home, he told his mother,

I met the girl I'm gonna marry.

And my grandma was, like, but who is she?

He said, I don't know, but I'm marrying her.

That's the one I'm marrying.

[speaking Spanish]

Dad was in Major League Baseball for 10 years.

He was a bachelor in Major League Baseball,

making money, good-looking.

He could have had any woman out there to be his wife.

And it's a very shy, gorgeous woman to grab him.

[speaking Spanish]

My parents go to a game, and the game was rained out.

And he goes, well, let's go to lunch.

And my mother goes, no,

my father is listening to the game on the radio.

I must go home right now.

There's no game. I'm going home.

The very next day, he went to see my grandfather.

He said, you're going to see my daughter.

You have two hours two or three days a week

to be able to go see her.

And that was it.

That's how the courtship started.

[speaking Spanish]

[thunder]

Sometimes there are just these eerie coincidences

and connections in life.

As it turned out,

the person who brought the news of Anairis' death,

Roberto's sister, to the Clementes

was the man who would be the father

of Vera Zabala Clemente, Roberto's wife,

long before there was any other connection of the families.

Roberto would tell Vera about Anairis being at his side

at various times during his life.

So it was sort of a motif of his

perhaps playing into his sense of destiny and fatalism

of being haunted by this sister he'd never really got to know.

He would say things like, I see her.

She's at my side.

I think it was pushing him forward

to accomplish things

that his sister would never be able to see.

[bell chimes]

[speaking Spanish]

Many years. [laughs]

Many years.

And they are old.

Aye-yi-yi.

Dad was really excited to have children.

When it was time,

Dad said, Vera, you're flying to Puerto Rico

because my children are going to be born in Puerto Rico.

So mom had to fly back to Puerto Rico.

And then you had Ramiro Martinez

with a recorder in the delivery room

to record my first cry

so he can play that after the game

over the phone to my father.

[speaking Spanish]

When he was at the house, he would be playing with us.

He would be playing music.

You know, he played the harmonica.

Oh, all the memories. It was awesome.

[speaking Spanish]

Dad told mom quite a few times, Vera, come sit down.

I want you to learn what I'm doing

because I'm going to die young.

[speaking Spanish]

That connection with his sister

had a lot to do with the way he lived his life.

Understanding that it's not promised

that you're gonna be here.

At any moment, you can be gone.

After the '60 World Series and the MVP,

he was mad, he was upset.

He just was, like, I will show you.

My ability is gonna prove to you

that you can't deny me being MVP.

Clemente came out in '61, he was a man on fire.

He was the kind of guy

that if you motivated him by irritating him,

he would get better.

He was out to prove something, out to play hard

and show the world, you know, what a great player he was.

ANNOUNCER: And what a hitter.

So he came out in '61, he wins his first batting title.

ANNOUNCER: There's a rap to right that Clemente comes on.

The ball hangs up for him.

He wins his first Gold Glove.

ANNOUNCER: Clemente lines a drive

deep to right field.

Henry Aaron goes back, back, back

and you can kiss it goodbye.

It's gone for a home run for Roberto.

In '64, he wins the batting title,

In '65, he wins the batting title.

ANNOUNCER: If Roberto can reach the ball,

he'll swing at it.

He went on a tear.

He was unstoppable.

He really went on a mission to show who he was.

ANNOUNCER: Roberto Clemente,

one of the outstanding baseball players

in the game today.

He had one great season after another.

He played great right field,

won the Gold Glove almost every year.

In 1966, everything comes together.

Everything just really meshed,

and it was a major, major year.

In '66, he wins the MVP.

He finally accomplished

exactly what he wanted to accomplish.

For once, I'm recognized,

and there's no buts about this one.

That gave him some hope

that he would be looked at through the media the right way.

I can't leave the show

unless we talk about something you touched upon,

and that's your health,

because that has been the area of Roberto Clemente

that's been the most criticized.

People have called you a hypochondriac.

[speaking Spanish]

He felt that if you asked him a question,

how are you feeling today?

He thought you were being serious

in what you were asking.

He felt that in his neck and back.

To me it wasn't fake. He felt that.

[speaking Spanish]

Constantly he needed to be massaged

you know, to deal with all those pains.

Mom would do it at home.

The truth is that Roberto was a hypochondriac.

Please, come on.

It was not in his head. It was for real.

And the other truth is he was an artist

who had a very sensitive feeling for his body.

His body was his work of art.

He used to tell me, Mako, go to the top of my head.

And I used to squeeze his neck like this

because he said that that makes him look better,

brighter.

I don't know.

Clemente went to L.A.

and told Tony Bartirome, get some goat milk.

Has anybody said this?

No. Get some goat milk.

Rub me down with some goat milk.

And Tony said, what the hell are you talking about?

Went out and got some goat milk.

Rubbed him down. Got four hits.

Gets some goat milk the next day.

He had eight hits in L.A.

So, [C.....], I went up to Tony

and said, give me a gallon of that goat milk.

I'm in a slump.

No. [laughs]

Oh, you know about the punch.

Yeah, I'll tell you about the punch, yeah.

He put like 12 eggs in that blender.

Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop.

And then I recall it was grape juice.

And I drank some of it,

and he went, ooh, with his.

How was it?

I couldn't break his heart because of what he put into it.

So I said, man, that was great.

That was the best.

I lied to him. I really didn't like it.

He would always make fun of players that took hot showers.

And you see steam coming out of their head.

He would ask them, how do you pluck chickens?

And make them think,

well, if I'm taking a hot shower,

I can be losing my hair.

Yeah, absolutely.

Dad would say, I don't drink anything

after eating for an hour because he always ate rice.

What happens with rice when you put water to it?

It expands.

That's why he had a size 30 waist.

Clemente was as human as we all are.

And I never pretended to canonize him.

But I believe that being human

gives you space to have your ups and downs.

Dad was hot tempered.

He would get mad.

He fought. He actually got into fights.

I'll give you some dirt, all right?

You want some dirt? I'll give you some dirt.

ANNOUNCER: Clemente comes up firing.

There was a time where Bob Gibson struck him out.

And he yelled something from the mound,

something like, go back to where you came from

type of deal.

Dad goes back to the dugout fuming.

He tells Jose Pagan,

he says, next at bat,

I'm going to kill him.

ANNOUNCER: Here is Roberto Clemente.

So he decides to just wait for a pitch.

A bullet.

He ended up breaking his leg.

There you go. You got some dirt on Dad.

He hit Bob Gibson on purpose.

ANNOUNCER: Clemente keeps Belanger from scoring.

He might have gotten beaten up by the writers,

and he might have gotten beaten up

by other managers and players around the league,

but he played all out and Pittsburghers loved him.

He was giving you his all.

That was the most important thing to do.

If someone is willing to spend their hard-earned money

to watch a baseball game,

you have no idea what sacrifice that person made

to be in that stadium.

His fondness for Pittsburgh came from the people,

and the people in the classic sense of regular people.

Over the course of the years, he became more and more beloved,

especially by the kids of Pittsburgh.

Dad thought that was the most important thing to do,

was to be able to take the time to give an autograph.

He would not leave the stadium until he signed every autograph

for every kid standing there.

Sometimes the bus to go to the airport would leave him.

I was able to see the Pirates

for the first time in person on a Father's Day.

That day, after the game,

players came out and there was that excitement.

I saw Roberto, so I just said,

you know, may I have your autograph?

He wrote "Best Wishes, Roberto Clemente."

Some people were shouting, "the bus left for the airport."

And it seemed like they were all trying to figure out,

like, now what?

Who's gonna get a taxi?

I said, wait a minute, just stay here.

I'll go get my dad.

And I said, Dad, come on, hurry up.

We have to go. I'll tell you the story later.

Just come on with me. And so we run back.

I just said, Mr. Clemente,

my dad has the car right outside.

We get into the car.

There's fans jumping on the car

and yelling, Mr. Clemente, Mr. Clemente.

And my dad says, in very colorful language,

like, what the F is happening, you know? [laughs]

I said, well, Dad, let me introduce you.

This is Mr. Clemente.

He and my dad started talking

and Roberto asked him, like, you know,

where he was from, what did he do?

They instantly just, I mean, they talked, you know,

back and forth like they had known each other

their whole lives.

I do remember Roberto asking me, like,

what was I gonna be doing?

What was I, you know,

what was I gonna be doing in the future?

And I said, I wanted to maybe join the Peace Corps

And that just thrilled him.

and wanted to help marginalized children.

We got to the airport.

He gave my dad two slips of papers,

and one said, "call me collect," and he wrote his number

and he asked my dad for his phone number,

so they did the exchange.

And we said our goodbyes and he thanked us so much.

My dad and I, you know, went back to the car.

And driving home, we just said, oh, my God.

Like, how did this happen?

What was born is a 56-year friendship of two families.

It's the most incredible relationship

certainly in my life.

If you look at all of his best friends

and closest friends, we were all nobodies.

We were not the celebrities.

We were not the rich, the famous.

So when we got together, we felt the warmth.

You felt the connection.

Those are the values

that just seemed to be in everything he did.

[speaking Spanish]

When he would go back to his native Puerto Rico

after each season,

he would hold baseball clinics,

and these were for kids who didn't have any money,

and he would do it for free.

[speaking Spanish]

Dad would gather the kids around

and take them to different stations

and start talking about life.

He would incorporate life lessons into the clinic,

and not only for them, but also for the parents.

[speaking Spanish]

[speaking Spanish]

[Jerry Morales speaking Spanish]

Dad loved kids, and I know that it had to do

with experiencing how it felt

to watch Monte Irving on the field,

understanding that feeling of being young,

having an idol

and understanding that he had become someone

that those kids were looking up to,

making sure that he gave the time to inspire them

the same way Monte did.

There's one thing that I didn't like

about Clemente teaching baseball.

He wants some of the kids to be like Clemente.

I say, no way.

You can teach 'em baseball,

you can teach 'em how to hit and all that.

To be like Clemente, forget it.

There will never be another Roberto Clemente.

The first half of the sixties,

he was not the leader of the team.

By '65, '66,

it was evident that he was

more and more every year from then on.

It partly was a transition of the team

from a group of players from the fifties, mostly white,

to a team that was becoming

increasingly Latino and African American.

Part of it was just

the continued excellence of his playing

and part of it was his own confidence

and exuding leadership.

Dad always said, we as Latinos,

we are treated as third class citizens.

He thought it was very important

that we elevate our way of carrying ourselves.

All the eyes are on us,

and we have to work harder than anyone else

to be successful.

He would check on the other Latino players

that were up and coming.

He was a voice of knowledge to them.

For example, Manny Sanguillen, he took him under his wing.

ANNOUNCER: Number 35.

Roberto said if I had Manny Sanguillen's smile,

I'd be the most popular person on earth.

ANNOUNCER: Batting fifth,

catching for Pittsburgh, Manny Sanguillen.

[laughs]

The house that we lived in when I was a child

was near Three Rivers Stadium.

One particular Sunday I went to the Pirate game

and afterwards went home and got my rubber ball out,

and I was out front throwing the rubber ball off the wall.

After an hour, hour and a half,

I looked up and I saw the green El Dorado

coming down the drive from the stadium,

and I knew that was Roberto's car.

So I waved to him and he beeped.

He got out of the car and he said, okay,

let's see what you got.

So I started playing catch with Roberto.

My father, who was a very hard man to impress,

I remember he came to the front door

and he was watching us,

and I remember him calling to my mother,

saying, hey, Sadie, come look at your kid.

And I think that was the first time

I ever impressed my father.

My mom was in the midst of cooking a Sunday dinner

and she comes out and she says, Roberto, Roberto,

it's such a pleasure to meet you.

You're Harry's favorite.

Come on, you gotta come in the house.

You gotta come in, we're just having dinner.

And he's like, oh, no, no, no,

I don't want to intrude, I don't want to intrude.

And my mom's tugging on his sleeve.

So he's, okay.

He comes in and he sits down

and we had burgers and crinkle cut fries

and iced teas and Roberto sat there

and he was just so personable and just so down to earth.

He just carried himself so differently

and he spoke differently

and everything about him was royalty.

I've never had the feeling

that I did when I met Roberto Clemente,

and I've never met anyone like him since.

One of the things Dad always received

was a lot of fan mail,

and they came in in sacks.

As a kid, you want to have some connection to the ballplayers.

So I would find pictures

in Sports Illustrated sports magazine,

and I would send them a letter with the picture,

just asking for their autograph.

And hardly anyone ever got back.

You know, it didn't, especially the superstars.

I was just this fourth grader, you know,

sending, "Dear Mr. Clemente, you're my favorite player.

I saw this picture, if you could sign it."

It was always just a needle in a haystack.

Like, how would this ever get to him?

Would they really sign it?

But damned if one day showed up a letter.

It's from the Pirates.

I was, like, what, the Pirates?

So I open it up carefully.

There's that beautiful picture of Clemente

behind the batting cage just looking.

And in the corner,

to Rick, best wishes, Roberto Clemente.

He's, like, the only superstar who ever got back.

He would show up at children's hospitals

and just walk into the hospital and wanted to go visit kids.

There's not many people doing as much work.

I'm not saying that guys didn't go to hospitals,

because they did.

Babe Ruth did. Ted Williams did. Willie Mays did.

They did it, but did they do it as much?

And no one knew about it,

because he wouldn't allow the media to come.

He would tell everybody, don't tell anyone.

So think of what we do know, think of what we don't know.

[chanting] The whole world's watching!

The whole world's watching!

REPORTER: The demonstrators came.

Their positions on the war, racial discrimination,

and other political issues were made known.

Throughout the rally, officers of the Metropolitan Police

were directed to maintain a low visibility profile.

It was a period of unease in America.

The Vietnam War was still going on.

The Civil Rights Movement

had moved from integration to Black Power.

You know, there's always divisiveness in America.

'71 was one of those periods.

It was a funky time,

and those Pirates reflected that in every way.

ANNOUNCER: Number 21, Roberto Clemente.

[cheering]

The 1971 Pirates were a very good team.

You know, just talent oozing all over the place,

with young stars like Willie Stargell and Al Oliver,

Manny Sanguillen.

They had a lot of great players,

with Clemente as the leader and the oldest of the group.

In some ways, they were almost like

this great boy band of a team.

Like, there's the bad boy and there's the cute one

and there's the slightly rough around the edges,

but approachable one. [laughs]

Yeah, we had a little thing in the clubhouse

called the Kangaroo Court.

It was set up to take guys to court

that did things that were out of the ordinary.

Put it that way.

Put your hat on backwards

or miss a belt loop in your pants.

Throwing a bat, getting thrown out of the game.

Not buying someone a beer after the game.

And you would get tried in front of your peers.

If you went to a Kangaroo Court,

you were guilty no matter what.

Yeah, you do that in the big leagues now,

there's a fist fight.

The characters we had,

and Clemente was right in the mix.

Dave Giusti would scream at him in Italian,

Clemente would holler back in Spanish,

and then Manny Sanguillen would try to interpret.

Now, you would have bought a ticket to that.

And that was in our clubhouse.

We had a milestone that happened in baseball

that very few people talk about.

September the 1st, 1971.

September 1st, 1971.

I always got to the ballpark early

the days I knew that I was playing.

The lineup had been posted,

and I knew I was in there.

And I remember our little bat boy,

he makes the comment that the Homestead Grays are in town.

And I kept saying,

Homestead Grays are one of the Negro League teams.

And it just kind of like, pssht,

went right over my shoulders.

Didn't think too much about it.

ANNOUNCER: And for the Bucs,

who get a fine ovation now

as they come out of the dugout

and head on to the field.

I played third base that night,

and Rennie played second.

Jackie played short. Scoop played first.

Clemente was in right.

Gene was in center. Willie was in left.

And Sanguillen was catching.

I'm out there in center field,

and I'm thinking about what the bat boy had said.

Then I looked to my left and there was Stargell.

Then I looked to my right and there was Clemente.

And then I kind of turned around and then I start...

I looked at Al.

I said, Al, man, there's all brothers out here.

And he said, yeah, I guess you're right.

That day, the Pittsburgh Pirates

fielded the only minority starting lineup

in baseball history.

And we did win.

It wasn't about having nine black and Latino players.

It was about having a group of guys out there

with the same mindset of winning.

ANNOUNCER: The Baltimore Orioles make the World Series scene

for the third straight year.

And they're heavily favored to win as they did a year ago.

There was a Baltimore newspaper

that ran up a headline before the series,

predicting that the Orioles

are gonna win the series in three games.

Of course, that's impossible to do.

But it was an insult to the Pirates,

saying you Pirates have no chance.

The deck appeared to be stacked once again

against the Pirates in '71.

The Orioles were truly

one of the great teams in baseball history.

The Pirates, in a World Series for the first time in 11 years,

start Dock Ellis.

And the Orioles, with a choice of four 20-game winners,

pick Dave McNally.

Baltimore had four 20-game winners.

Four 20-game winners.

Four 20-game winners.

It's very odd

to have four pitchers on your team

that each one of them won 20 games.

Game one, they didn't give us a chance.

They had a devastating team.

They had Frank Robinson,

the Most Valuable Player in both leagues.

Boog Powell, 30 home runs.

Brooks Robinson, probably one of the greatest third basemen

ever to play the game.

ANNOUNCER: Brooks Robinson goes into his act.

It's beyond Stargell's desperate leap.

The Orioles lead 4-3.

The impact sends Sanguillen spinning.

Buford in the fifth.

In so many ways,

the Orioles are reminiscent of the Yankees

of a generation ago.

Baltimore 5, Pittsburgh 3.

In that World Series, I mean, I was a nervous wreck.

I was probably shaking like a leaf,

I'd just put a uniform on it, I went out there,

and said, here I am in the big leagues.

ANNOUNCER: Now Willie Stargell,

the home run king of the majors.

And when Oliver fumbles and falls,

three birds are sent into orbit.

Guys were mad.

That was embarrassing to us.

Baltimore 11, Pittsburgh 3.

They kicked our butts pretty good.

We got pounded, you know, we got beat.

We were just frustrated and mad

because we didn't represent the true Pirates at the time,

and that was embarrassing to us.

They looked like they didn't belong on the same field.

And a lot of people gave up on the Pirates

after those first two games.

Now we're coming back to Three Rivers,

and I know the fans of Pittsburgh

were starting to panic.

You can't lose the third game

and go down three to nothing to the Baltimore Orioles,

who had won 100 games coming into the World Series,

had a 16-game winning streak coming into game three.

ANNOUNCER: Game three comes to Pittsburgh's

magnificent Three Rivers Stadium.

They're down two games to none,

and the Pirates are in a close one-run game.

They're facing Mike Cuellar,

one of the four 20-game winners on the Orioles staff.

He threw me a first-pitch screwball,

and I hit it down the left field line for a double

to start the game.

ANNOUNCER: Now Clemente.

Clemente's the next hitter.

I want to go back to one play in particular.

Clemente hits a routine bouncer.

Easy play for Cuellar.

But instead of, you know, just jogging to first,

assuming it was gonna be an out,

Clemente busts out of the batter's box.

ANNOUNCER: Roberto's 37-year-old legs

beat the relay to first,

and Cash scored.

Every time Clemente hit a ground ball to anybody,

he was full speed all the way through first base.

He set the standard, and we tried to emulate it.

ANNOUNCER: Should have been over on first base now.

We should have two out. You nervous a little bit?

Right then, it was game on, okay?

They knew that we were here to play some baseball.

Sanguillen's hit is to right center,

and the smiling Panamanian dives into second with a double.

In that World Series,

Clemente showed the world what he could do.

I mean, the way he run, the way he slid,

the way he caught balls,

the way he threw runners out.

You can go on and on and on.

ANNOUNCER: And when the last out is made,

the Orioles win streak ends at 15,

and the final score, Pittsburgh 5, Baltimore 1.

Game three was like a stepping stone.

Like, hey, we got part of the job done.

We'll take one game at a time and see what happens.

ANNOUNCER: Game four, the first night game

in World Series history,

and the tranquility of the riverboat

belies the excitement of the occasion.

On the field, Stan Musial joined by the Misses

and Pittsburgh Vice President Bing Crosby,

who also has a few hits to his credit.

And quickly, the Pirates get back in the ballgame.

And the kangaroo bounce off the synthetic grass

makes it a two-base hit.

Clemente settles for a single,

a 10th straight series game in which he's hit safely.

When we needed a hit,

Roberto came through every time.

As a teammate, when you see him do that,

we're gonna do it as well.

ANNOUNCER: Now the Bucks call on Dave Giusti to lock it up,

and Powell's foul pop tells it all.

The World Series is all tied up.

Clemente said, we're gonna go home,

we're gonna win this series,

and the other Pirates believed him.

They thought that that four 20-game winners

was gonna handle our lineup.

Uh-uh. You better get more than that.

ANNOUNCER: The Pirates taking the World Series lead,

holding the Birds to nine hits in 27 innings,

showing the kind of pitching and defense

that Baltimore is endowed with, but has not unveiled so far.

Three games in a row.

What was so clutch about Roberto in the World Series

was his power.

He showed power that a lot of people didn't think that he had.

ANNOUNCER: Fans might want to take a look

at the body of this man.

You can almost put your hands around his waist.

He weighs about 185.

If you've seen him stripped from the waist up,

a marvelous chest and shoulders,

long, limber muscles.

I call it almost the perfect body for an athlete.

Clemente, who tagged Palmer for a single and double

the first two times they met up with each other,

improves on that.

I always tell people that haven't ever had a chance

to see Clemente play in the field,

watch some of the highlights of him

from the 1971 World Series.

ANNOUNCER: Roberto going with the pitch

and sailing it over Frank Robinson's head.

It's his 11th hit and first homer of the series.

And the Pirates lead 2-0.

In the ninth, the Orioles go for the tiebreaker.

Buford with Belanger on first and two out.

And only a good play by Clemente keeps Belanger from scoring.

We're going into extra innings.

Rettenmund up next.

And he bounces one though.

And look at Frank Robinson shift into high gear.

Frank Robinson made the play of the game,

and it set up a situation

where they had first and third and one out.

ANNOUNCER: Puts runners on first and third.

The infield, the outfield drawn in.

We got a fly ball to center field.

ANNOUNCER: Davalillo's under it and shallow.

Davalillo's got it, Frank is coming.

Here comes the throw!

He scores and the Orioles win!

And the final score in 10 innings,

Baltimore three runs, two runs Pittsburgh.

They walked us off the field.

We had to walk off the field with our tails between our legs.

But we still had one game to play.

ANNOUNCER: Roberto Clemente in right field,

and behind the plate, we have Manny Sanguillen.

And on the mound, Steve Blass.

Two strikes to Powell.

One out, Buford at first.

Look out. One and two.

Well, it has been strictly a home team World Series so far.

The Pirates have won every game played in Pittsburgh.

The Orioles have won every game played in Baltimore.

And now time, Earl Weaver is on his way.

Earl Weaver: 8.01.

Rule 8.01 says he's got to take us--

He's got the pitch from in front,

on the rubber in front and not on the side.

This is a lot of tricky stuff.

Rule 8.01. 8.01.

He's not lined up properly on the rubber.

Stopped the game.

Came out in an effort to distract me.

ANNOUNCER: Now here is a good close up shot.

And quite obviously,

Blass is exactly where he is supposed to be

in contact with the rubber.

And this is the payoff. 3-2 pitch to Powell.

Buford at first and one out.

They hold Buford and Powell strikes out.

What he didn't realize I got so upset with him

that I forgot how nervous I was.

ANNOUNCER: So now pitching from in front of the rubber,

Steve Blass.

Rule 8.01.

Roberto was the guy that said, I will lead you guys.

Just give me a little help, and I'll take care of the rest.

ANNOUNCER: And speaking of problems to contend with,

Baltimore has had its hands full and then some

trying to handle Roberto Clemente.

Three scoreless innings with less trouble.

But with two out in the fourth,

Clemente, the unsinkable Pirate.

2nd ANNOUNCER: A Clemente home run,

and the Pirates lead 1-0.

1st ANNOUNCER: The Pirates lead 1-0.

We could not let him down.

ANNOUNCER: Pittsburgh 2 and Baltimore 1.

Blass has struck out five.

One more out, the Pirates are world champs.

But that's always the hardest out to get.

Now here is Merv Rettenmund.

He's very emotional

and he just might explode out there.

Now the last hope for the Orioles, Merv Rettenmund.

There's a drive up the middle.

Hernandez in back of the bag. He's got him!

Jackie Hernandez! Look at Blass!

Blass has pitched the Pirates to the World Championship.

The Pirates, two games down,

they come back and become the world champs.

Clemente, of course, played brilliantly in this series.

I saw in Clemente

how bad that he wanted that World Series,

not for him alone,

but also for his teammates and the city of Pittsburgh.

He dominated that series,

and that's really the signature performance of his career.

Clemente is an indisputably great player,

and his era is a great era

filled with some of the most memorable players,

and he took his place among them.

It's Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, and Roberto Clemente.

You know, little Pittsburgh in 11 years

winning two championships

against two behemoths with one commonality:

Roberto Clemente.

The world finally recognized this great ballplayer.

And here with me right now, the greatest right fielder

in the game of baseball, Roberto Clemente.

Bobby, congratulations on a great World Series.

[speaking Spanish]

I never see anybody, anybody-- And I see a lot of games--

and I never see anybody

saying, let me say something in Spanish first.

[speaking Spanish]

It never happened before.

Hearing Roberto Clemente speak in Spanish,

my Dad cried.

Because think for a moment.

You're listening to games in English.

It's not like you have a telecast

that's going to be in Spanish.

So to hear his native tongue,

the impact not only for my father,

but for everybody throughout the United States

and certainly in Puerto Rico

that they're hearing Roberto Clemente spoke in Spanish.

He's speaking to me.

Before I say anything English, I would like to say something

for my mother and father in Spanish.

[speaking Spanish]

It was after the '71 World Series.

He arrived in Puerto Rico.

It was a sea of people

and they were trying to get to Dad,

like pulling and, I mean, fighting to get--

it was insane.

There was a correlation of how people acted towards Dad

and what he did for them.

For me, it was just Dad, you know?

It's like, what's the big deal?

It's Dad.

Roberto:

REPORTER: The airport here in Managua

is practically deserted.

Fires are blazing everywhere.

The rubble is in the streets.

It is impossible for traffic to get through.

It is not known at this point whether they would be able to.

The central portion of the city is practically destroyed.

[siren]

Right before Christmas in 1972,

there was a massive earthquake in Nicaragua.

Hundreds of people killed,

thousands and thousands pushed out of their homes.

Dad had gone to Nicaragua several times

and continued to go because he loved how he felt.

He always thought that Nicaragua reminded him of Puerto Rico

when he was growing up.

He had friends there that he loved very much.

[speaking Spanish]

Immediately Dad says, you know what?

We're gonna have to do something about this.

He called a friend who has a TV show

and asked to go live television

to start asking for aid.

[speaking Spanish]

That was Dad.

Dad was the guy that spearheaded the whole thing.

He was right in the middle of it,

carrying boxes and taping boxes

and getting them ready to be shipped.

Word came back to him

that the aid wasn't getting to the people.

It was being basically stolen

by the strongman Anastasio Somoza of Nicaragua

and his troops.

When he understood that the aid,

it was not getting to Masaya Hospital

where it was sent to, he decided to go.

He said, I need to go and cross the militia line

and get to the people that need the help.

The morning, I remember waking up.

I went out crying through the front door.

When I got to him, I said, Dad, don't get on that plane.

You know, he looked at me and he goes,

I'll see you when I get back.

I said, no, you won't.

REPORTER: Today was a day of mourning in Puerto Rico

for Roberto Clemente,

the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball star.

Clemente was a hero in Puerto Rico.

Yesterday, he and four other men

died in a plane crash in the ocean.

They had been flying a load of relief supplies

for victims of the earthquake in Managua, Nicaragua.

Today, the search continued for the plane

and the men who went down with it.

All I heard was a scream.

Mom screaming.

And, um...

And I knew that, um...

that Dad was gone.

[speaking Spanish]

[sniffles]

It was like losing a family member.

And I'll never forget that day.

It still bothers me.

[bell tolls]

He fell on a mission of mercy

as he journeyed south

to help the distressed people of Nicaragua.

We have known him

as a fitting example for our children,

as a living demonstration

of sportsmanship and athletic excellence.

When it came across the radio

as the number one headline of the day,

my mother and my father and I just sat there and bawled.

The research I did,

finding out what really happened with that plane

was the most devastating research

I've done in my career.

The plane that he got on

had been purchased at a part of Miami airport

that was called Cockroach Corner.

It was where all these bad planes were housed.

The man who bought it got it back to San Juan.

And when he heard that Clemente was looking for a plane,

he went to Clemente and said, I've got a plane for you.

He eventually recruited a pilot

who had just flown into the airport,

hadn't had any sleep for over 20 hours.

Turns out he had 30-some FAA violations against him.

The pilot did not have a flight engineer.

They literally recruited a mechanic off the ramps

to come be the flight engineer for the plane.

These people didn't know how to load a plane.

Turns out it was overloaded by several thousand pounds.

Clemente knew none of this.

Every single day I would hide somewhere in the house

and I would be crying until finally I realized

that that wasn't gonna bring him back.

I remember his calloused hands,

his huge hands, rough and soft at the same time.

He had this energy.

When he touched you, it was just...

I've never felt it again.

REPORTER: Three months later, at Cooperstown, New York,

Roberto Clemente was inducted

into the baseball's Hall of Fame.

The rule that a player is not eligible

until five years after his last active year was waived.

Roberto's wife was there to accept the honor.

He remains this sort of paragon of what the best of us can be.

It really transcends sport.

It's like look at your life,

and then take the things that you believe most deeply

in an uncompromising way, and merge those two things.

When you talk about Clemente,

you don't really talk about numbers.

You don't really talk about

how many times he hit 300, you know.

You don't talk about his Gold Gloves.

You talk about the legacy he left outside of the game.

[speaking Spanish]

ANNOUNCER: Today it is Roberto Clemente Day

in Major League Baseball.

What does that number mean to you?

[speaking Spanish]

ANNOUNCER: He scores!

Walk it off on Clemente Day

with a great hustling play

that the great one would appreciate.

He was a humanitarian that came to the MLB

and opened the door for Puerto Rico people

and all Hispanics.

Baseball unites people.

That's what Dad saw in baseball,

that it was his way to getting his message across.

You see a lot of people do a lot of talking,

but Roberto was for real.

[speaking Spanish]

He went beyond the game of baseball.

That is the part that separates him

from the Babe Ruth,

from the Willie Mays, from the Ted Williams,

from all these guys that are the best of the best

in the game of baseball,

baseball's secondary to what the name Clemente means.

Time sort of dictate, I think, who transcends the game.

There's that wonderful photo of him

with the clouds behind him where he's just an angel.

He became that.

At times I don't think he's dead, man.

I feel his presence, you know.

We still miss him. This city misses him.

The game misses him.

You say the name Clemente,

the first thing that comes is Puerto Rico, Pittsburgh.

He's still carrying the flag for the minority people,

for his family, for his sister.

[speaking Spanish]

Bobby, at 38 years old

and 18 years in the major leagues

and having accomplished just about everything there is

to accomplish in baseball,

I guess the thought enters your mind

that one of these days it's gonna be all over.

ROBERTO: