Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
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Sunday, April 20, 2008
As luminous as his life was in just 37 years, Roberto Clemente's post-life has been static in the media 35 years since his death. Even if you couldn't watch him enough when he played and sit riveted to every rehash of clips, footage and remembrances of him, new tidbits are welcome .Bernardo Ruiz has assembled a documentary of old broadcast moments and well-used commentators, but his one-hour "American Experience" film, "Roberto Clemente" (9 p.m. Monday, WQED), offers fresh faces and insights, too. It also pays proper homage to Clemente's beloved Puerto Rico, its people and to Nicaragua, his last chapter still largely unexplored.
From his unbringing in the sugar cane fields to his death in 1972, the Pirates' superstar right fielder has become iconic, in part because of his death on a failed flight one mile off the Puerto Rican shoreline. He was bound for Managua, Nicaragua, with supplies for victims of a leveling earthquake eight days earlier.
His body was never recovered.
Described by historian Samuel Regalado as "a complicated individual, because he stepped into some very complicated times," one could argue the Pirates' superstar was complicated regardless; all times are complicated.
He was artistic, musical and open to non-traditional practices, such as chiropractic. He had a sensitive and fiery mind, one so much more active than the average ballplayer's but impeded by delivery in English in a city that had not heard Spanish spoken on broadcasts, if at all.
In Puerto Rico, blacks and whites share the same culture. Here, he found the bewildering and damaging parallel universes that still exist -- maybe the only part of life in Pittsburgh he would recognize were he to come back.
Arguably the richest and most poignant film clip from any World Series clubhouse celebration is included in this film, from 1971: Bob Prince has grabbed the ebullient Clemente, the catalyst of the team's win, for an interview and, before answering, Clemente speaks briefly to his family in Spanish.
The film, narrated by actor Jimmy Smits, includes many interviews with friends, family, teammates historians and writers, including David Maraniss, who wrote "Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero."
Steve Blass, the winning pitcher in the last game of the 1971 World Series, recalls Clemente walking up the aisle to him on the team airplane from Baltimore and saying, "Come here, Blass, let me embrace you."
"What cracked me up about Roberto was in a lot of interviews. ... he would start talking about life," says teammate Al Oliver, "and the writers just weren't ready for that."
Writers Roy McHugh and George Will comment on his eagerness to complain about what ailed him, which Mr. Will said put a lot of people off because it was unseemly for a ballplayer to bare his feelings.
Carol Bass was a girl when she approached Clemente for his autograph after a game, trying out her nascent Spanish and being regaled with a stream of Spanish in return. They became friends and, in fact, she was a guest of the family the night Clemente's doomed plane went down.
Vera Clemente recalls the look her husband gave her as he headed toward that plane: "He looked at me with a very sad look," she said. "I read many things in that look."
Historian Rob Ruck's comment that Clemente, near the time of his death, had blossomed into a man who would transcend baseball, set the stage for Osvaldo Gil's teary conclusion to the film.
Mr. Gil wondered what sense to make of his friend's death, and said his mother gave him "the only explanation that made sense," he said. "'If he had died as a player, only the sports fans would have remembered him. But because he died while helping others, the wider world would know him as a humanitarian.' "
'American Experience: Roberto Clemente'
When: 9 p.m. Monday, PBS.
Narrator: Jimmy Smits
Diana Nelson Jones can be reached at djones@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1626.
First published on April 20, 2008 at 12:00 am
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