Book Captures Clemente's Greatness

Pirates legend shown to be worthy of hero status

http://www.mlb.com
10 May 2006

• Clemente's statistics
• Maraniss to hold Clemente book signing at PNC Park

This is what can happen when a great reporter finds a tremendous subject.

"Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero," by David Maraniss, is one of the best baseball biographies you will ever read. It is one of the best biographies you will ever read, period.

Roberto Clemente is not an easily categorized subject. His heroism is a matter of public record, but he was also a man of seemingly contradictory emotions and personal traits. Fortunately, Maraniss, as usual, is up to the task.

Maraniss, an associate editor at The Washington Post, has won a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting. He has written the definitive Bill Clinton biography, "First in His Class." He has written the definitive Vince Lombardi biography, "When Pride Still Mattered." He has written an epic Vietnam era book, "They Marched Into Sunlight: War and Peace, Vietnam and America, October 1967."

With the progression from Clinton to Lombardi to Clemente, it could be argued that Maraniss is moving up the evolutionary ladder of biographical subjects. In any case, the topic of Clemente requires extreme diligence in reporting from the author, and the baseball legend receives that from Maraniss.




Just about anyone reading this Web site understands the greatness of Clemente as a player. There is plenty of baseball in this biography and a keen understanding of the game as well as Clemente's place in the game. If this were the only part of Clemente's story being told, this would still stand as a fine baseball book. But what is striking here is the quality of Maraniss' reporting, and the depth of his understanding of Clemente, the human being.

What you see unfold in this book is not merely Clemente's emergence as a true star of the game, but his personal growth.

"He was that rare athlete who was slowly achieving grace, not just as a ballplayer but as a human being," Maraniss writes. "The reality of many athletes, even those who become hailed as deities, is that they diminish with time; Clemente was the opposite, becoming more sure of himself and his larger role in life."

And it was not easy. As a Latin American pioneer in the Major Leagues, Clemente encountered prejudice in many forms, from the third-class living arrangements for non-Caucasian players in Spring Training to the sportswriters who, early in his career, delighted in quoting him in broken English and either underestimated or ignored the quality of his play. It was often, even with his growing success on the field, a lonely existence. The slights ate at Clemente, but he rose above them, as a player and as a man.

"He was shy, yet bursting with pride," Maraniss writes. "He was profoundly humble, yet felt misunderstood and undervalued."

In a recent interview with Wisconsin Public Radio, Maraniss said of Clemente: "He had what I call a beautiful fury about him, not unlike Jackie Robinson in that characteristic. Very proud, dignified, could be a pain in the butt, particularly to sportswriters, but a lot of them deserved it.

"There were so many different aspects to him; contradictory, but fascinating. He wasn't a saint, he had his flaws, but you could see him growing as a person and that's quite extraordinary."
Maraniss grew up in Wisconsin with a baseball-loving father, as a full-fledged fan of the Milwaukee Braves, but says that his favorite player was Clemente. "This book touched a part of me that none of the other books had," Maraniss said in the radio interview.

His fascination with Clemente was shared by many fans who normally would have had no rooting interest in the Pittsburgh Pirates. Clemente had the quality of greatness about him, visible to the eye and understood on sight. As is so often the case, numbers could not tell the story of Clemente's greatness.

"The rest of us were just players," Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Steve Blass said. "Clemente was a prince."

As his playing reputation expanded, so did his understanding of what the role of a public figure could be. When asked to list his heroes, Clemente placed Martin Luther King, Jr. first. His own experiences taught him to view people as an individuals, rather than stereotyping them into a group. It was this understanding that was at the heart of his personal greatness.

The story of the circumstances of Clemente's death, in a plane crash, while bringing humanitarian relief from his home in Puerto Rico to earthquake-devastated Managua, is told here in painstaking detail. The plane in question was overloaded and under-maintained, a tragedy waiting to happen. And the tragedy happened.

What did it all mean, this spectacular player, this focal point of Latin American baseball, this emerging humanitarian, dying while still in the prime of his life? Maraniss places a clear and concise perspective around Clemente's life and death.



"The mythic aspects of baseball usually draw on cliches of the innocent past, the nostalgia for how things were," Maraniss writes. "But Clemente's myth arcs the other way, to the future, not the past, to what people hope they can become. His memory is kept alive as a symbol of action and passion, not of reflection and longing. He broke racial and language barriers and achieved greatness and died a hero. That word can be used indiscriminately in the world of sports, but the classic definition is of someone who gives his life in the service of others, and that is exactly what Clemente did."

There are not enough athletes, or enough human beings, for that matter, who rise to the legitimate level of hero. It is a term that has often been distributed too freely in our culture. But in this case, the usage is fully warranted.

"The word 'hero' sort of makes me cringe, because it is overused," Maraniss said in the radio interview. "But I thought I could defend it. I thought it fit for what Clemente was."
The word fits. This entire book fits. Clemente lived a complex, fascinating, and ultimately inspirational, life. This biography rises fully to the level of its subject.

Mike Bauman is a national columnist for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.