A walk off home run is a homer that ends the game. Because of baseball’s rules, the home team bats last, so the hit must come from a home team player. The walk off home run happens in the final inning, usually the 9th inning, but sometimes in extra innings.

The original derivation of the term “walk off” referred to the pitcher having to walk off the mound after losing the game. It’s common meaning nowadays is more associated with the celebration on the field of the hitter and his teammates, while the home crowd cheers.

The most exciting play in baseball? Perhaps. How about a walk off, grand slam home run? As of 2010, it has happened 24 times in Major League Baseball. It’s referred to as the “ultimate grand slam.”

Bobby Thompson and “The Shot Heard ‘Round the World”

Twins Jim Thome’s walk off homer against the White Sox

Front page Photo credit:  Information |Description=Scott Hairston rounding the bases after hitting a 3-run walk-off home run for the Padres in 2007. [http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/boxscore?gameId=270919125) via Wikimedia Commons

The Catch

The 27th batter Galarraga faced was Cleveland Indians Jason Donald.  Donald hit a grounder between first and second that was fielded by Detroit’s first baseman who threw to Galarraga, who had moved from the mound to cover first.  Although close, it was apparent that Donald had not beaten the throw.  However, first base umpire Jim Joyce saw it differently and called the runner safe.  TV replays showed that the runner was  indeed out.  Joyce had made an error, and it was a big error as a perfect game was on the line.

After Galarraga retired the next batter ending the game, Joyce immediately went to check the video.  He realized immediately that he had made the wrong call.  He quickly admitted his mistake and personally apologize to Galarraga who he had deprived of the perfect game.

Joyce’s honesty mixed well with Galarraga’s grace.  Galarraga didn’t protest on the field, but simply smiled.  After Joyce apologized, Galarraga told reporters,

“He really feel bad. He probably feel more bad than me. Nobody’s perfect, everybody’s human. I understand. I give a lot of credit to the guy saying, “Hey, I need to talk to you because I really say I’m sorry.” That don’t happen. You don’t see an umpire after the game say ‘I’m sorry.’”

Joyce was scheduled to call the following day’s game in Detroit, but given the circumstances was told he could take the day off.  Joyce chose to face what could be a hostile crowd and call the next game.  Joyce, expecting boos, heard applause.

It seemed that the good sportsmanship was contagious as Detroit fans cheered the umpire.

###

My nominations for the biggest story lines by sport this year:

NFL:  Saints win Super Bowl

NCAA Basketball:  Butler’s Cinderella run to Championship Game

NBA:  LeBron’s Decision

MLB:  Sportsmanship displayed after Joyce’s missed call

The Play

Sports Illustrated — A Different Kind Of Perfect — Tom Verducci (with special reporting by Melissa Segura)

Often encouraged to play softball, especially by opposing team’s parents, Chelsea’s first love is baseball.  Her teams have won multiple city championships over the past couple of years along with two District Championships.  Chelsea hopes to one day play professional baseball.

ENJOY THIS ESPN VIDEO

The bat and ball’s construction seem to make it a perfect fit in backyard fields for several reasons.  It takes a well-hit ball to make it out of your yard, house windows are less likely to break, there are fewer injuries than with traditional baseball, and its hard for bigger players to overpower smaller players with power.

Wiffle Ball was invented in 1953 in Fairfield, Connecticut.  When 12-year-old David A. Mullany and a friend were playing baseball with a plastic golf ball and a broom handle, his dad, David N. Mullany, had an idea after watching his son try to throw a curve ball with the plastic golf ball.  Reasoning that everyone would like to throw a curve ball that really curved, he had the idea to make a plastic ball that would easily curve.  Using plastic ball from a friend’s factory, he started making prototypes of balls with unequal weight on their sides.  He cut out holes on one side of the balls, and learned that in addition to the number of holes, the shape of the holes was important as well.  The ball that curved the best had 8 oval shaped holes on the top half and the bottom was solid.

A former college and semi-pro pitcher, Mullany sat down to write rules for his new game.  He needed a name for the game.  When he asked his son what they call the game they played in the backyard, his son replied, “Wiffle.  When you miss it, it’s a wiff.”  So, “Wiffle Ball” it was.

Taking a second mortgage on his house, Mullany went about marketing the new game.  It quickly caught on.  In the 1960s, it was hard to find a house that didn’t own a Wiffle Ball and bat.  Wiffle Ball’s popularity is apparently here to stay.  Today, there are Wiffle Ball leagues, tournaments and national championships.

The Mullany’s, 3rd generation owners, still run the company.  Stephen A. Mullany, a V.P. with the company and grandson of the founder, notes, “You get people who played as kids, and then play with their kids, and then will play with their grandchildren.  You can play right across the board.  You don’t have to be Nolan Ryan.”

Wiffle Ball is available at Sports Authority, Kmart, Toys R Us and at mom-and-pop sporting goods and toy retailers across the country.  You can read more about the product at their website:  www.wiffle.com.

One Wiffle Ball pitcher you don’t want to face

Abbot & Costello’s “Who’s on First?” routine from the 1945 movie “The Naughty Nineties

There are many versions of “Who’s on First,” as the comedians sometimes shortened the act to fill various time requests.  Here’s the written transcript to one performance.

——————–

Abbott: Well, Costello, I’m going to New York with you. Bucky Harris the Yankee’s manager gave me a job as coach for as long as you’re on the team.

Costello: Look Abbott, if you’re the coach, you must know all the players.

Abbott: I certainly do.

Costello: Well you know I’ve never met the guys. So you’ll have to tell me their names, and then I’ll know who’s playing on the team.

Abbott: Oh, I’ll tell you their names, but you know it seems to me they give these ball players now-a-days very peculiar names.

Costello: You mean funny names?

Abbott: Strange names, pet names…like Dizzy Dean…

Costello: His brother Daffy

Abbott: Daffy Dean…

Costello: And their French cousin.

Abbott: French?

Costello: Goofe’

Abbott: Goofe’ Dean. Well, let’s see, we have on the bags, Who’s on first, What’s on second, I Don’t Know is on third…

Costello: That’s what I want to find out.

Abbott: I say Who’s on first, What’s on second, I Don’t Know’s on third.

Costello: Are you the manager?

Abbott: Yes.

Costello: You gonna be the coach too?

Abbott: Yes.

Costello: And you don’t know the fellows’ names.

Abbott: Well I should.

Costello: Well then who’s on first?

Abbott: Yes.

Costello: I mean the fellow’s name.

Abbott: Who.

Costello: The guy on first.

Abbott: Who.

Costello: The first baseman.

Abbott: Who.

Costello: The guy playing…

Abbott: Who is on first!

Costello: I’m asking you who’s on first.

Abbott: That’s the man’s name.

Costello: That’s who’s name?

Abbott: Yes.

Costello: Well go ahead and tell me.

Abbott: That’s it.

Costello: That’s who?

Abbott: Yes. PAUSE

Costello: Look, you gotta first baseman?

Abbott: Certainly.

Costello: Who’s playing first?

Abbott: That’s right.

Costello: When you pay off the first baseman every month, who gets the money?

Abbott: Every dollar of it.

Costello: All I’m trying to find out is the fellow’s name on first base.

Abbott: Who.

Costello: The guy that gets…

Abbott: That’s it.

Costello: Who gets the money…

Abbott: He does, every dollar of it. Sometimes his wife comes down and collects it.

Costello: Who’s wife?

Abbott: Yes. PAUSE

Abbott: What’s wrong with that?

Costello: I wanna know is when you sign up the first baseman, how does he sign his name?

Abbott: Who.

Costello: The guy.

Abbott: Who.

Costello: How does he sign…

Abbott: That’s how he signs it.

Costello: Who?

Abbott: Yes. PAUSE

Costello: All I’m trying to find out is what’s the guys name on first base.

Abbott: No. What is on second base.

Costello: I’m not asking you who’s on second.

Abbott: Who’s on first.

Costello: One base at a time!

Abbott: Well, don’t change the players around.

Costello: I’m not changing nobody!

Abbott: Take it easy, buddy.

Costello: I’m only asking you, who’s the guy on first base?

Abbott: That’s right.

Costello: OK.

Abbott: Alright. PAUSE

Costello: What’s the guy’s name on first base?

Abbott: No. What is on second.

Costello: I’m not asking you who’s on second.

Abbott: Who’s on first.

Costello: I don’t know.

Abbott: He’s on third, we’re not talking about him.

Costello: Now how did I get on third base?

Abbott: Why you mentioned his name.

Costello: If I mentioned the third baseman’s name, who did I say is playing third?

Abbott: No. Who’s playing first.

Costello: What’s on base?

Abbott: What’s on second.

Costello: I don’t know.

Abbott: He’s on third.

Costello: There I go, back on third again! PAUSE

Costello: Would you just stay on third base and don’t go off it.

Abbott: Alright, what do you want to know?

Costello: Now who’s playing third base?

Abbott: Why do you insist on putting Who on third base?

Costello: What am I putting on third.

Abbott: No. What is on second.

Costello: You don’t want who on second?

Abbott: Who is on first.

Costello: I don’t know. Together: Third base! PAUSE

Costello: Look, you gotta outfield?

Abbott: Sure.

Costello: The left fielder’s name?

Abbott: Why.

Costello: I just thought I’d ask you.

Abbott: Well, I just thought I’d tell ya.

Costello: Then tell me who’s playing left field.

Abbott: Who’s playing first.

Costello: I’m not…stay out of the infield!!! I want to know what’s the guy’s name in left field?

Abbott: No, What is on second.

Costello: I’m not asking you who’s on second.

Abbott: Who’s on first!

Costello: I don’t know. Together: Third base! PAUSE

Costello: The left fielder’s name?

Abbott: Why.

Costello: Because!

Abbott: Oh, he’s center field. PAUSE

Costello: Look, You gotta pitcher on this team?

Abbott: Sure.

Costello: The pitcher’s name?

Abbott: Tomorrow.

Costello: You don’t want to tell me today?

Abbott: I’m telling you now.

Costello: Then go ahead.

Abbott: Tomorrow!

Costello: What time?

Abbott: What time what?

Costello: What time tomorrow are you gonna tell me who’s pitching?

Abbott: Now listen. Who is not pitching.

Costello: I’ll break you’re arm if you say who’s on first!!! I want to know what’s the pitcher’s name?

Abbott: What’s on second.

Costello: I don’t know. Together: Third base! PAUSE

Costello: Gotta a catcher?

Abbott: Certainly.

Costello: The catcher’s name?

Abbott: Today.

Costello: Today, and tomorrow’s pitching.

Abbott: Now you’ve got it.

Costello: All we got is a couple of days on the team. PAUSE

Costello: You know I’m a catcher too.

Abbott: So they tell me.

Costello: I get behind the plate to do some fancy catching, Tomorrow’s pitching on my team and a heavy hitter gets up. Now the heavy hitter bunts the ball. When he bunts the ball, me, being a good catcher, I’m gonna throw the guy out at first. So I pick up the ball and throw it to who?

Abbott: Now that’s the first thing you’ve said right.

Costello: I don’t even know what I’m talking about! PAUSE

Abbott: That’s all you have to do.

Costello: Is to throw the ball to first base.

Abbott: Yes!

Costello: Now who’s got it?

Abbott: Naturally. PAUSE

Costello: Look, if I throw the ball to first base, somebody’s gotta get it. Now who has it?

Abbott: Naturally.

Costello: Who?

Abbott: Naturally.

Costello: Naturally?

Abbott: Naturally.

Costello: So I pick up the ball and I throw it to Naturally.

Abbott: No you don’t you throw the ball to Who.

Costello: Naturally.

Abbott: That’s different.

Costello: That’s what I said.

Abbott: you’re not saying it…

Costello: I throw the ball to Naturally.

Abbott: You throw it to Who.

Costello: Naturally.

Abbott: That’s it.

Costello: That’s what I said!

Abbott: You ask me.

Costello: I throw the ball to who?

Abbott: Naturally.

Costello: Now you ask me.

Abbott: You throw the ball to Who?

Costello: Naturally.

Abbott: That’s it.

Costello: Same as you! Same as YOU!!! I throw the ball to who. Whoever it is drops the ball and the guy runs to second. Who picks up the ball and throws it to What. What throws it to I Don’t Know. I Don’t Know throws it back to Tomorrow, Triple play. Another guy gets up and hits a long fly ball to Because. Why? I don’t know! He’s on third and I don’t give a darn!

Abbott: What?

Costello: I said I don’t give a darn!

Abbott: Oh, that’s our shortstop.

Costello: (makes screaming sound)

###

—————————————

Prologue

On May 24, 1951, a young center fielder who had dazzled crowds in
the minor leagues left Sioux City, Iowa, traveling light: a change
of clothes and some toiletries, his glove, his spikes, and his two favorite
thirty-four-ounce Adirondack bats. The twenty-year-old Alabaman was
driven to the airport in Omaha, Nebraska, where he bought a ticket from
United Airlines for an all-night journey, landing in New York early the following
day. He had been there once before, three years earlier, to play in
the Polo Grounds with the Birmingham Black Barons. On that team the
veterans had protected him, instructing the youngster on how to dress,
act, and play ball; on how to represent his team, his city, and his race. But
now, on a sunny morning at La Guardia Airport, Willie Mays slid into the
back seat of a taxi and pressed his face against the window, alone. He had
never seen so many people walk so fast in his life.

Mays was driven to the midtown offices of his employer, the New York
Giants, and promptly escorted inside. At 5-foot-11 and 160 pounds, he
did not yet have the sculpted body that would later evoke comparisons
to Michelangelo’s finest work. He was taut and fluid, but not physically
imposing. Only his rippling forearms and massive hands, each one large
enough to grip four baseballs, hinted at his crushing strength.
Mays entered the office of Horace C. Stoneham, the Giants’ shy but personable
owner, who was rarely seen in the clubhouse or interviewed by
reporters. He had thinning hair, a ruddy complexion, and thick-framed
glasses, and while his counterpart at the Brooklyn Dodgers—Walter
O’Malley—had the aura of a corporate chieftain, Stoneham more closely
resembled a rumpled bank manager who preferred the intimacy of his
office to the bustle of the lobby. Alcohol was his most notorious vice, but
undue loyalty wasn’t far behind. He liked to hire family members and fellow
Irishmen and hated to trade or cut Giants who had lost their usefulness.

But give him his due: he cared deeply about his players, about their finances, their family, and their well-being, and he would help them as he would his own children. He also needed good players, and he never needed one more than he needed Willie Mays.

The Giants were a family business, and Stoneham was only thirty-twowhen he inherited the team after his father’s death in 1936. At the time, the Giants were the National League’s preeminent franchise, having won eleven pennants and four World Series since the turn of the century. They captured consecutive pennants in Horace’s first two years at the helm—clubs essentially assembled by his father—but the team grew stale, fan interest declined, and championships became a memory.

In 1951, after a dismal start, the Giants risked, not just a losing season, but irrelevance or even ruin. The franchise had lost money in each of the last three years and had been eclipsed by New York’s other baseball teams.  Their blood rival, the Brooklyn Dodgers, had won three pennants in the last decade, with Ebbets Field featuring social history as well as fierce competition.

Since 1947, the Dodgers had been led by Jackie Robinson, whose
breaking of the color barrier, combined with electrifying play, made for riveting
theater. Yankee Stadium, meanwhile, was its own showcase of dominance
and glamour: five World Series championships in the past decade,
one deity in center field. Joe DiMaggio would turn thirty-seven in 1951, his
final season, after which the landscape would be ready for a new hero. But
the Yankees had already found their next wunderkind in the zinc mines
of Oklahoma. The rookie Mickey Mantle—his brawn and speed exhaustively
chronicled in spring training, his alliterative name tripping off the
tongues of wide-eyed reporters, his blond crew cut and blue eyes capturing
the hearts of young fans—was poised to be Gotham’s next baseball god.

Who needed the Giants?

“Glad you could make it so soon,” Stoneham told Mays as the rookie
entered his office. “But they aren’t glad where you came from.”
Mays, confused, said nothing.

“The Minneapolis fans,” Stoneham said. “They’re upset.” Mays had
begun the season with the Minneapolis Millers, a Giants’ farm club. In
thirty-five games, he had hit .477; one searing drive, in Milwaukee, punctured
a hole in the fence. Stoneham told Mays that the Giants were putting
an ad in a Minneapolis newspaper to apologize for taking the local team’s
prodigy. “We’re going to tell them,” Stoneham said, “that you’re the answer
to what the Giants have got to have.”

Mays remained silent.

“It’s unusual, I know,” Stoneham said, “but—is something the matter?”
Mays finally found his voice, high-pitched and earnest: “Mr. Stoneham,
I know it’s unusual, but what if—”

“What if what?”

“What if I don’t make it?”

Stoneham pointed to a folder on his desk, stuffed with papers. Mays
saw his name on the cover.

“You think we just picked your name out of a hat?” Stoneham demanded.
“You think we brought you up because somebody saw your name in a
headline one day in Louisville or Columbus or Milwaukee or Kansas City?
You think nobody’s been watching you? You think managers haven’t been
up nights doing progress reports, that our own scouts haven’t checked you
out time and again? You think all of this is something somebody dreamed
up in the middle of the night two days ago?”

Mays stood there, unsettled by the barrage.

The owner pushed a buzzer beneath his desk and spoke into the intercom:
“Ask Frank to come in here.” He looked at Mays. “Got luggage?”
“No, sir. It’s still back in Minneapolis. They’re sending it on.”
Stoneham nodded and pushed the buzzer again. “Ask Brannick to save
out seventy, eighty dollars,” he said, referring to the team’s dapper traveling
secretary, Eddie Brannick. Then to Mays: “Buy yourself a couple
things—underwear, shirts, socks—until your stuff gets here.”
The door opened, and Frank Forbes, a black fight promoter hired by the
Giants to be Mays’s chaperone, walked through. “Here he is,” Stoneham
said. “Take him with you.” He extended his hand. “Good luck, Willie.”

“Thank you, Mr. Stoneham. I hope I can get into a few games, get a few
chances to help. I hope you won’t be sorry.”

“I won’t be sorry.” Stoneham turned away, then suddenly turned back.
“Get in a few games? Get a few chances to help? Don’t you know you’re
starting tonight?”

Mays’s mouth went dry. “Starting? Where?”
Stoneham glared at him, then laughed. “Center field!” he barked.

“Where else?” He looked at Forbes. “Get him out of here, Frank.”

The Giants were already in Philadelphia, where they would begin a
three-game series that night at Shibe Park. Forbes and Mays hustled to
Pennsylvania Station, boarded a train, and sat in a Pullman parlor car.
Mays had seen the opulent coaches in the movies, the ubiquitous Negro
porter fawning over white passengers. But now Mays was the passenger,
and the swivel armchairs were layered with meaning. His father, Willie
Howard Mays, Sr., had been a Pullman porter, making beds in the sleeping
cars chugging out of Birmingham. The train’s quiet rhythm lulled the
white passengers to sleep, and the elder Mays, wearing a white jacket,
would listen to the sound of the whistle at night, signaling which engineer
was driving the train. “He’d lay his hand on that rope,” he said, “and it was
like an autograph.”

Now his son sat in a Pullman car, heading south on an eighty-five-mile
trip that the young man could not have envisioned even a month earlier,
with the clicking of the wheels saying to Willie: You’re a Giant. You’re a
Giant. You’re a Giant. You’re a Giant. . . .

Willie Mays began his major league career poorly—he went 1-for-26—
but he slowly found his way. He blasted home runs over the lights at the
Polo Grounds, chased down fly balls in the cavernous outfield, unleashed
deadly throws to the plate, and ran the bases with daring glee. But what
mesmerized his teammates, what captivated the crowds, was his incandescent
personality, bringing, his manager said, “a contagious happiness that
gets everybody on the club” and moving Branch Rickey to observe that
the rookie’s greatest attribute “was the frivolity in his bloodstream [that]
doubled his strength with laughter.”

Newspapers promptly hailed the “Negro slugger” as “the Amazing
Mays” and “the Wondrous Willie,” a unique blend of speed and power
who performed with childlike exuberance. But the most prescient account
appeared on June 24 in the New York Post—one month after his debut—
which chronicled a stunning baserunning feat as “part of the legend” of
this new marvel.

Long before his Rookie of the Year Award, long before his two Most
Valuable Player awards and his one batting title and his 12 Gold Gloves,
long before his 24 All-Star Games and his 3,283 hits and his 660 home
runs, and long before “the Catch,” Willie Mays was a legend. And by the
time he retired, he was an American icon whose athletic brilliance and stylistic
bravado contributed to the assimilation of blacks during the turbulent
civil rights era, a distinctive figure of ambition, sacrifice, and triumph
who became a lasting cultural touchstone for a nation in search of heroes.
Mays represented the quintessential American dream. He was the poor
Depression-era black kid from the segregated South who overcame insuperable
odds to reach the pinnacle of society, and he succeeded by hewing
to the country’s most cherished values—hard work, clean living, and perseverance.

He also benefited from great timing. Had he been born fifteen
or even ten years earlier, he would have played most if not all of his career
in the Negro Leagues, probably remembered, along with Josh Gibson,
Oscar Charleston, and Cool Papa Bell, as a mythic but ill-defined figure
who was victimized by America’s racial hypocrisy. Had he been born ten
years later, he would never have been part of perhaps the most celebrated
era in sports history—New York in the 1950s—when baseball dominated
the sports culture, integrated teams stole the march on civil rights, ballparks
sponsored miracles, and legends were born.

Mays was the youngest black player to reach the major leagues, and
his ascension in 1951 coincided with other powerful social and economic
forces. Television, for one, was emerging as a transformative medium in
sports. Fans across the country could now watch baseball in real time,
the grainy black-and-white images turning an anonymous player into a
national hero (Bobby Thomson, following his “Shot Heard ’Round the
World,” being the most conspicuous example). Several decades would pass
before baseball highlights became daily fare, but television still contributed
to Mays’s popularity by broadening access to his spellbinding performances:
the spinning catches followed by laser throws; the churning legs
rounding second base, his feet barely brushing the dirt, his cap sailing off
like a flimsy derby in a windstorm; the giddy smile that bespoke his love
for the game. Mays was a completely new archetype, the first five-tool
player before anyone else had even opened the shed.* But he always saw
himself as an entertainer first, and television gave him a national stage.

Mays was an unlikely celebrity, but he flourished in an increasingly
intense media culture. He appeared on television variety shows, talk
shows, sitcoms, and in documentaries—timid, to be sure, but also handsome,
respectful, and self-deprecating. Magazines splashed him on their
covers while recording artists celebrated him in song, screenwriters
immortalized him in films, and cartoonists grandly etched him in print.
He was the game’s first true international star, playing before huge crowds
from Mexico to Venezuela to Japan in winter league games or exhibitions.
He was a worthy antidote to Ralph Ellison’s lament that the Negro was the
“Invisible Man.”

Mays’s star power made him the most luminous prize in baseball’s great
migration westward in 1958, when the Giants and Dodgers moved to California.
This shift symbolized the broader demographic tilt of the country
and turned the national pastime into a transcontinental enterprise. Mays
benefited from baseball’s entrance into new markets and new stadiums
with new corporate sponsors, all of which helped make him the highest
paid player in the league, topping the magical $100,000 figure in 1963. He
left the game ten years later, just as the system that had restricted players
from the open market was about to collapse. A new era of baseball was
about to begin.

Mays’s career exquisitely overlapped one of the great social movements
in American history—the modern civil rights era. One of the most recognized
and admired black people of that period, Mays led by example, yet
his role in the movement became the most controversial part of his leg-

* A five-tool player can hit for average, hit for power, run, catch, and throw.

acy. In some quarters, he was scorned as a “do-nothing Negro” or an Uncle
Tom for refusing to actively support civil rights or even to speak out when
he himself was victimized or his hometown of Birmingham was terrorized.

But Mays countered racial discrimination on his own terms in ways
that he understood—as a role model who never drank or smoked, who
avoided scandal, and who gave his time and money to children’s causes;
as a player who excelled through discipline, preparation, and sacrifice;
and as a man who brought Americans together through the force of his
personality and his passion for the game. Mays knew his influence, particularly
on the bigots. “I changed the hatred to laughter,” he said. “That’s
what I think.”

Mays also had his disappointments. His first marriage ended badly, with
a painful public divorce and an adopted son with whom he is no longer
close. (His second marriage, however, to a beautiful, educated professional
has been a source of love and strength for more than thirty-five
years.) Financial troubles, caused mostly by overspending, dogged him
through his playing days. Bad financial advice cost him as well. He was
one of the most durable players in history, but the pressures took an enormous
toll, physically and emotionally, causing several hospitalizations
during his career. At times gruff and impatient, Mays was not the easiest to
approach, and his desire for privacy contributed to flare-ups with reporters,
some of whom attacked him in print. The give-and-take of friendships
was not his strength. His distrust of others, born of betrayals and affronts,
ran deep, and strangers with uncertain motives needed to tread lightly
when they entered his space.

Who is Willie Mays? It’s a fair question. He has a small circle of loyal
friends who love him unconditionally, but even they rarely see his wounds.
To his fans, he has long been an enigma who spoons out just enough biographical
morsels to nourish their curiosity but not satisfy their appetite.

The pity is that the most appealing parts of Willie Mays have nothing
to do with baseball.

But baseball is his rightful legacy, and now, almost sixty years after he
nervously asked Horace Stoneham if he was good enough, his accomplishments
loom larger than ever. Baseball has never been more popular,
but the steroid era—an endless train of congressional hearings, legal
maneuverings, and hollow pledges of reform—has tainted records, vindicated
cynics, and placed the biggest names under suspicion.

No one ever doubted Willie Mays. He not only played the game as well
as anyone who’s ever taken the field but he also played it the right way. He is now revered for capturing the joy and innocence of a bygone era, a transcendent
figure who is compared to the most important men in American
history. In the presidential campaign of 2008, Barack Obama emphasized
his biracial appeal by pairing John F. Kennedy with Martin Luther King,
Jr.; Abraham Lincoln with Willie Mays.

Heady company indeed, though maybe not a stretch for a man who
seemed to embody the impossible. “The first thing to establish about Willie
Mays,” Jim Murray once wrote, “is that there really is one.”

###

Excerpted from Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend by James S. Hirsch, Authorized by Willie Mays. Copyright © 2010 by James S. Hirsch. Excerpted with permission by Scribner, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

—————————————

Willie Mays:  The Life, The Legend available at Amazon.com

Prior to his magical leap, the game had been an odd one for Kownacki.  He entered the game in the 5th inning and was hit by a pitch on the wrist.  In the 8th inning where he made the leap, he batted twice as Fordham batted around the order and was hit by pitches in both instances.  Given the lumps he had already taken in the game, it’s no surprise that Kownacki wanted to avoid contact with the Iona catcher.

ENJOY THIS VIDEO

Here’s a video clip of an interview with a fan who caught the first home run at Target Field off Jason Kubel’s bat

In Chicago, when Bill Murray was unable to be in attendance to throw out the first pitch, the Cubs ended up asking a random family of 4 to carry out the ceremonious task.  Read the Sluga’s family story of a memorable home opener at the DailyHerald.

“Roberto Clemente was a hero in every sense of the word. On
the professional baseball diamond as a Pittsburgh Pirate from
1956 to 1972, he frustrated opposing pitchers with his aggressive
hitting. From his position in right field, he could peg a
runner at any base with his strong, accurate throws. Off the field, he
dedicated himself to improving the lives of others in his native Puerto
Rico. He gave of himself and his money freely, and most of all, he loved
people. Clemente’s life and play paved the way for a new generation of
Latino baseball players. His tragic and untimely death, in the service to
others less fortunate, continues to inspire many.

Roberto Clemente Walker, known to the world as Roberto Clemente,
was born August 18, 1934, in Carolina, Puerto Rico, in the heartland
of the Caribbean island. He was the youngest of seven children
born to Melchor and Luisa Walker de Clemente. His father earned forty-
five cents a day, an above-average wage by Puerto Rican standards,
working as a foreman in a sugarcane mill. His children enjoyed a happy,
well-balanced childhood. Despite having little material wealth, the Clementes
were rich spiritually. Faith in God formed the bedrock of their
home. Roberto remembered his parents as “lovely persons” who taught
him “the right way to live.” He recalled, “I never heard any hate in my
house. I never heard my mother say a bad word to my father, or my father
to my mother.”

At age eight, Roberto, a small boy with a contagious smile, played
on his first baseball team—a group of neighborhood boys. His bat was
a crudely formed tree limb, his glove a coffee sack, and the ball a collec-

tion of used rags. According to his father, “Roberto played surprisingly
well against boys his age and older.” His older brothers were sensational
players who showed their shy younger brother how to hit and field. Roberto
quickly fell in love with baseball. He often forgot to eat when a
neighborhood game lasted past dinnertime.

In school, Roberto Clemente applied what he learned at home about
loving and helping others. He organized his classmates to clean up the
school grounds, and he impressed his teachers with his respectfulness.
Even as a young boy he showed great compassion. When a neighbor
died, he would run from house to house to spread the word and make
sure people attended the funeral. He often volunteered to be a pallbearer
in his community.

Young Clemente had one glaring physical attribute that set him
apart. Even though he was a small boy, he possessed extremely large
hands. As a former teacher explained, “Those big hands would express
what he would not say in words.” She spoke of the giving, caring qualities
of his hands.

His hands also gave him a firm grip on a baseball and a bat.
A local baseball talent scout soon noticed Clemente’s catching,
throwing and batting skills. This scout had watched him play in many
competitive softball tournaments and offered him a professional baseball
contract with Santurce, a team that played in the Puerto Rican Winter
Leagues. Though Clemente’s father wanted a bigger contract than
was offered his son, he soon agreed to the $400 bonus and $40 weekly
salary. Although Clemente had succeeded in school and could have entered
college, he joined the Santurce Crabbers on October 9, 1952. Like
many rookies, he sat on the bench most of his first season and hit a
meager .234. The next season, however, he got his wish for more playing
time.

The Puerto Rican Winter Leagues attracted major leaguers from the
United States who wanted to play ball year-round and stay sharp in the

offseason. Some of the best and brightest stars in America descended
upon Puerto Rico in the winter, giving local players the chance to team
up with their American idols and showcase their own talents. In 1953
Clemente played alongside Willie Mays, the New York Giants star center
fielder. He learned from Mays the “basket” catch, which he used the
rest of his career. The tandem of Mays-Clemente wowed many fans that
winter with their fielding and hitting. One of his teammates told him,
“You’ll be as good as Willie Mays some day.”

Though American baseball “seemed so far away” to Clemente, nine
different teams approached him that winter, eager to sign him to an
American big league contract. The Giants were the first to call, but the
Brooklyn Dodgers, afraid of the prospect of their archrival having both
Mays and Clemente in the same outfield, bid a sizable $10,000 for him.
Since Roberto was still underage, his father accepted and signed the
Dodgers’ offer. The Dodgers assigned him to their top minor league
team in Montreal, the same farm team that Jackie Robinson played for
before becoming the first African-American major leaguer in 1947.

Clemente’s first season in professional baseball did not live up to his
expectations. Montreal’s manager, Max Macon, in an attempt to “hide”
the young sensation from other teams, played Clemente only occasionally.
Montreal did not want other big league teams to bid for his contract.

When Clemente played well, which he did most of the time, Macon
would remove him from the game. The few times he played poorly,
he was kept in, thereby hoping to fool his would-be bidders. But the
ploy did not work. Pittsburgh Pirates general manager Branch Rickey,
who left the Dodgers in 1950 to work for the Pirates, picked Clemente
up in the offseason for a mere $4,000. A confused Clemente recalled
later: “I did not even know where Pittsburgh was.” Although frustrated
at being treated as mere property by owners, Clemente took consolation
in the fact that he would get a chance to play in the majors, even
though the Pirates were a desperately inept, last-place team.

Clemente’s eager anticipation of his rookie season was overshadowed
by his older brother Luis’ diagnosis of brain cancer. To add to his
misery, a drunk driver struck Clemente’s car as he was returning home
from the hospital after visiting his dying brother. He miraculously survived,
but three vertebral disks were jarred out of place. From then on,
he would suffer intense back pain that caused his characteristic habit of
rotating his head and moving his neck side to side before every at-bat.

In 1950s America, Major League Baseball was peaking in popularity.
The entry of Jackie Robinson into the majors in 1947 opened the way for
other black players, and gradually white and black fans attended games
together and rooted for their favorite players. Hispanic fans, however,
had only a few players of Latino origin to cheer. When Clemente arrived
at spring training in Florida, his reputation as a highly talented player
preceded him. Yet the sports media quickly stereotyped him as they had
other Latin American players. They branded him a “Puerto Rican hot
dog,” a label he resented because he said the writers did not even know
him.

Worse than that, however, was the tendency of reporters to quote
Clemente and other Latin players by writing their words phonetically.
To quote Clemente by writing, “Me like hot weather, veree hot. I no run
fast cold weather. No get warm, no play gut,” made him sound unintelligent
and invited racism and condescension. He even received his share
of hate mail from anonymous people who said outrageous things such
as “Go back to your jungle.” But when he was told he could not dress
for an exhibition game in Alabama in 1954, the problems of being darkskinned
in America became real. He had never even entertained the
notion of being kept from doing his job just because of his skin color or
ethnicity.

Sadness over his brother’s untimely death and his own health hung
over Clemente’s head during his first season with Pittsburgh. His temper
flared when he struck out, and he broke several dozen batting helmets
that season, throwing them on the ground in disgust. Overall, though,
his play stood out as a bright spot on an otherwise dismal team. In only
his second major league game, against the New York Giants, Clemente
hit a rare inside-the-park home run, and then later forced a double play

at first base with a powerful throw. He had a flair for the dramatic in the
field and when running the bases. With his hard-throwing, fast-running,
solid-hitting, daredevil performances, he put on a show that Pittsburgh
fans were not accustomed to seeing. This sensation from Puerto
Rico gave them hope for the future.

Clemente soon became the sole reason many people attended Pirates
games again. Each time he stepped up to the plate, the crowd rose
to its feet and began cheering, even before he took his first practice
swing. He loved to communicate with the fans at the stadium, often
speaking to them in his Spanish or broken English from right field. They
loved him back. Spanish-speaking fans would assemble in right field to
root for their hero in his own tongue. People brought him sandwiches
between doubleheader games. It did not hurt that he was extremely
handsome. One associate at the time commented on how attractive he
was to young women, with his striking good looks, broad shoulders,
huge chest, and lean body. One writer noted, “He was without flaw
physically.” Despite his popularity, Clemente was still a rarity in the big
leagues: a Latino ballplayer who was fast becoming a star in America.

No one worked harder than Clemente to help his team win. “A lot of
people don’t understand that you have to push yourself to play day after
day,” Clemente told his friend and American father figure, Phil Dorsey.
But until 1960, his efforts went to a losing cause in Pittsburgh. In the preceding
five years, Clemente’s back, injured in the car crash back home,
acted up and forced him to miss games due to debilitating pain. Again,
the press roughed him up. “Hypochondriac” and “lazy” were terms they
used in their articles to describe the ailing Clemente. They accused him
of faking his injuries so he could rest. Yet Clemente cared deeply about
the Pirates and would do anything to help them win.

In 1960, Pirates fans finally saw real results from the shot in the arm
Clemente provided their team. They won the National League pennant
and went on to meet the indomitable New York Yankees in the World

Series. The Series was tied at three games each, and in Game Seven the
Pirates found themselves three runs behind. It was Clemente’s infield
single with two outs that extended their at-bat in the eighth inning, giving
the following batter the chance to hit a grand slam home run. But
the Pirates had to rally in the bottom of the ninth inning to beat the
mighty Yankees on a home run by Bill Mazeroski.

No one was more jubilant than Clemente, who celebrated with
Pittsburgh fans. After their World Series victory, he witnessed a mob
of frenetic people outside the clubhouse: “It was something you cannot
describe. I did not feel like a player at the time. I felt like one of those
persons, and I walked the streets among them.”

Nowa recognized star, Clemente began to speak out about prejudices
against Latino players. Baseball in Latin America did not suffer from
segregation, as in the United States, and Latino players in the major
leagues were baffled by such racism. “Latin American Negro ball players
are treated today much like all Negroes were treated in baseball in
the early days of the broken color barrier,” Clemente said. Furthermore,

“We [Latin Americans] bear the brunt of the sport’s remaining racial
prejudices.” He emphasized the adjustment to American life that Latino
players had to make before they could play their best baseball. Luis
Mayoral, a Spanish-language sportscaster and close friend, believed
that Clemente took the lead on this issue, even though other Latin players
preceded him, because “he had the intestinal fortitude to become
the spokesman for Latinos in the game. There have been other Latinos
prior to him—great players, great individuals—but they did not have
that makeup to really take the flag and lead Latinos in searching for
recognition and respect in major league baseball.” Many players feared
management’s retribution and felt inhibited by their own ability with

the English language, and hesitated to speak out.
Roberto Clemente’s concern for civil rights led him into a littleknown
relationship with Martin Luther King Jr. They met in 1964 on a
farm Roberto owned in Puerto Rico. Luis Mayoral remembered: “Somewhere
along the road in his major league career, he befriended Martin
Luther King. I think that was a key relationship, in relation to the development
of Roberto Clemente, the fighter for social equality.” Later
Clemente received a King medallion for playing in an All-Star game
of blacks and Latinos to raise money for King’s foundation. Clemente
cherished that honor.

Clemente befriended other Latin American ballplayers, especially
rookies like Panamanian catcher Manny Sanguillen. Sanguillen grew
to love and respect Clemente as a friend, teammate, and as a Latino
brother. He recalled in an interview, “When I joined the Pirates, he took
me with him to best places, meet everybody. He did this all the time.”
Clemente, the star, helped him and other young players adjust to the
language, the big league pressure, and the news media. He assured Sanguillen
that even if he did make mistakes, it wouldn’t be the end of the
world. Clemente often took on the role of intermediary between the
Latin American players for the Pirates and the team’s administration.

The Pirates, in fact, were one of the most integrated teams in the
National League. Black, white and Latino players mingled well both on
the field and off. This was due, in part, to the leadership of Clemente,
who consistently refused to make derogatory comments about any
teammate. At a time in America when racial issues dominated the news
and emotions ran high, the Pirates represented the possibility of races
working together successfully.

In 1963, while in Puerto Rico, Roberto Clemente met a woman
who captured his attention, Vera Zabala. Six months later, in 1964, they
married. About 1,500 friends, family, and fans attended the wedding
in Clemente’s hometown in Puerto Rico. Within five years, they had

three sons. Vera, according to a friend, was the only person who “knew
what went on inside this complex man.” Although a quiet woman who
remained behind-the-scenes, she enhanced her new husband’s life in
ways that baseball could not.

Clemente’s nagging injuries were tearing down his strong yet vulnerable
body. Bone chips in his elbow, shoulder soreness, tonsillitis, a
serious blood clot in a leg, malaria, and various pulled muscles and tendons
were part of an array of injuries he incurred over the course of
his career. The most hampering of all his injuries was still his chronic
back pain. He sought relief from the team trainer, private chiropractors,
and friends. At times, he would spend three hours before a game
on the training table being rubbed down. After a while, he learned the
technique for himself and offered to rub down his teammates who had
similar pain. (He later opened a free clinic to treat people with ailing
backs, and patients swore he had a healing power in his hands.)

In 1966, Clemente not only overcame potential career-ending injuries,
he also had the season of a lifetime. He earned the Most Valuable
Player Award in the National League, the first Latino player to win this
highest honor. Rather than bask in his own glory, he reflected on the importance
that this award had for others: “They [kids] will work harder,
try harder, be better men.” The veteran of more than a decade with the
Pirates “got along with all his teammates” and had “great feelings for all
the worries of the players” according to ballplayers who knew Clemente
best. Even players from other teams consulted Clemente about their
problems. “What am I doing wrong?” they would ask about their batting
woes. Clemente never withheld advice and gave it cheerfully. One thing
he insisted on, especially from his Latino friends, was that they maintain
their pride in who they were as individual people worthy of respect. “You
must never lose your dignity,” he cautioned. To him, fellow Puerto Ricans
were “somebody,” regardless of their performance on a baseball field.
Clemente’s value to the Pittsburgh club resulted in a record-break-

ing contract in 1967. He was the first Pirate in history to sign a one-year
contract for six figures—$100,000. It took only minutes to reach the
agreement, as had been the case with all of his previous negotiations.

With his fame and fortune growing, Roberto needed to share himself,
as well as his money. “He was always thinking of other people,” said Phil
Dorsey, with whom Clemente lived in Pittsburgh. Clemente turned his
new-found celebrity into a mission, especially for kids. He spent much
time with sick children at the Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh. His visits
were often spontaneous.

While Clemente, according to Pirates manager Danny Murtaugh,
was “the best all-around ballplayer I ever saw… without qualification,”
he never let the limelight set him apart from those he cared fervently
about—namely his family, friends, and teammates. His greatest joy from
success was “to erase the old opinion about Latins and blacks.” A friend
put it this way: “In a certain sense, Roberto was a man from another
century… from a ‘cultured’ family in the sense of values.” Another friend
observed, “Money did not matter much to him.” Not once did he hold
out at contract time. He gave of his own money without reservation to
those who needed it more than himself. “Baseball has enabled me to
support eleven people and it has given me an education,” he once said.

He even gave a struggling forty-year-old pitcher who had finally made
it to the majors half of his banquet fees. He often gave big tips to equipment
managers and clubhouse men. It was not at all uncommon for him
to hand out money to the poor children on the streets of Puerto Rico, or
to anonymously provide for the needs of people with disabilities.

To Roberto Clemente, sports were an ideal way to teach kids “the
values of good citizenship” and “that one must sacrifice a bit for the
common good.” He went to great lengths to ensure they had what they
needed to excel both in sports and in life. He promoted responsibility
and hard work and his belief that no man is create above another. He
believed strongly in “giving everything I can according to my ability.”

The years 1971 and 1972 were filled with bigger highs than Clemente
had yet experienced in baseball. Many fans, now worldwide, saw
in him the stardom of a Willie Mays or a Mickey Mantle, and put him
in an elite group of the best to ever play the game. In 1971, he almost
single-handedly won the World Series for the Pirates over the tough and
favored Baltimore Orioles, even after losing the first two games.

Although he had been in the majors since 1955, Clemente was just
beginning to get the national recognition others had received for lesser
achievements. In 1971, he won the Babe Ruth Award as the World
Series’ outstanding player. Even many of his Oriole opponents admitted
he was the best all-around player in either league. Then, by 1972,
he approached a milestone: 3,000 major league hits. Only ten players
in the history of the game had reached this mark. In the last game of
the 1972 season against the New York Mets, as Pirates fans cheered
in anxious anticipation, their hero hit a clean double and became the
eleventh player ever to achieve that total. As Clemente rounded third,
Willie Mays came over from the third-base dugout and hugged his rival,
honoring him for such an outstanding accomplishment.

Because of nagging injuries, Roberto Clemente, now thirty-eight,
had struggled to show his full potential. But baseball fans finally saw
the flowering of his true greatness in 1972. “Now, at last, they know me
for the player that I am,” he said to a friend after that season—a season
in which he had also won his twelfth consecutive Gold Glove award
for fielding. But he had always enjoyed the respect and admiration of
his countrymen and fellow Latinos. To them, he embodied success in
baseball, the most popular sport in Puerto Rico, but he gave so much
more in his tireless efforts off the field. Working constantly with youth
in Puerto Rico, he wanted to “stop drugs before they start.” He organized
and coached kids and seeded the idea of a “Sports City,” a large

multi-sport facility in San Juan, with his own money. But his greatest
humanitarian challenge lay ahead.

After spending the offseason enjoying his hobbies of sculpting, classical
music, and writing poetry, Clemente took time to manage a team
of Puerto Rican amateur All-Stars. In November 1972, he spent nearly
a month in Nicaragua with them at the Amateur Baseball World Series.

He made many friends there before returning to Puerto Rico for the
holidays. Then two days before Christmas in 1972, the world woke to
shocking news. A fierce earthquake had devastated Nicaragua’s capital
city, Managua. It was responsible for more than 25,000 deaths and took
the homes of thousands more. When Roberto heard of the tragedy, he
went into action as a citizen “ambassador,” immediately appearing on
television and organizing a relief effort—collecting food, clothing and
money to send to his Nicaraguan brothers and sisters. Tens of thousands
of dollars poured in as Puerto Rican people of all ages responded
to his urgent plea. All Christmas Day, Clemente labored to box all donations
while his own presents went unopened.

As Clemente worked around the clock, his friends and family worried
about his health. “He forgot about eating,” fretted one friend. Another
attributed his intensity to a type of pride that did not allow discouragement.
He planned to fly to Managua, but at first was dissuaded
by friends from boarding the small, unstable cargo plane loaded down
with supplies. But he then ignored their pleas after receiving an urgent
request for sugar and medicine from his Nicaraguan friends, who told
him that the government was commandeering the relief supplies that
were arriving in the city. Clemente was outraged. He decided to deliver
the next shipment personally, and invited his best friend, Manny Sanguillen,
who was in Puerto Rico at the time playing winter ball, to come
along. Sanguillen was eager to help but missed the plane after two bouts
of car trouble delayed him.
Despite further warnings from friends, Roberto Clemente and three

others pressed on. At five p.m. on December 31, 1972, he kissed his wife
goodbye and boarded the aging DC-7 cargo plane headed for Managua.
After several last-second delays, the plane finally taxied down the
runway around nine p.m. and was in the air twenty minutes later. As it
shook to reach takeoff altitude, the engines began to sputter. Less than
one mile off the coast of San Juan, one engine caught fire. Three explosions
followed before the plane crashed into the sea.

Officials informed Vera Clemente shortly after midnight on New
Year’s Day 1973 that the plane had crashed and that they feared there
were no survivors. Clemente’s devout mother clutched her Bible and
read the Twenty-Third Psalm over and over again throughout the unbelievable
night: “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want… He leads me
beside still waters, he restores my soul.… Even though I walk through
the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me….” Word of the
crash spread quickly across Puerto Rico, stunning the entire nation.

Three days of national mourning were declared. For many years, Puerto
Ricans would speak of that horrific New Year’s in the same way Americans
recall President Kennedy’s assassination, remembering exactly
where they were when they heard the news.

Many of Clemente’s Pirate teammates were celebrating the New
Year when they heard the news. Fans in Pittsburgh flooded the Pirate
office with phone calls, just wanting to talk. Joe Brown, then general
manager of the team, recalled, “That was devastating to me, not because
I was general manager of the team, but more because of what he was.…
He was loyal as could be, loyal to his family and his country, to his team,
to baseball.” Willie Stargell, another Pirates star player, with tears in his
eyes as he summed up his feelings toward his friend: “Roberto was always
trying to help someone.… He lost his life on the thirty-first of December,
one of the most sacred days in Puerto Rico; it’s a very religious
day. It’s when families traditionally are together. He broke that tradition
because he felt the need to go to Nicaragua to help the victims of the

earthquake. He gave his life trying to do something, at a very special
time, when so many people tried to talk him out of going. But he had
that determination.”
Beyond Clemente’s immediate family, perhaps no one took the news
harder than Manny Sanguillen. For several days after the crash, Sanguillen
stood with Vera Clemente and friends on Roberto’s favorite beach
to watch first a civilian team of deep-sea divers, and then a U.S. Navy
team, search the turbulent 125-foot-deep waters while avoiding sharks.

Only a few personal items of the victims were recovered. Sanguillen
told Sports Illustrated later, “I was really hurt for his wife.… I know how
much one and the other used to love, and be together. She went down to
the beach every day too, to pray or see what she could do.”

It was Sanguillen, though, who decided to do something to cope
with his grief. He put on full scuba gear and made his own dives into the
Atlantic in the vicinity of the crash. From a small boat, he could see the
schools of sharks on the surface of the water, but he dove anyway, over
and over, for several days from early morning until midnight. He even
missed the memorial service a few days later. Yet he told the Sporting
News, “So many things he help me. He go to my room, talk about every
different hitter.… It was like my own brother die.” Only one body, the
pilot’s, ever was found.

Bowie Kuhn, the commissioner of Major League Baseball at the
time, said he did not know of any ballplayer he ever had more respect
for than Clemente, a man who “had about him the touch of royalty.”

That respect was shared by so many others that a group of baseball writers
arranged for Clemente to be inducted immediately into the Baseball
Hall of Fame, waiving the usual five-year waiting period. On August 6,
1973, only seven months after Clemente’s death, a ceremony was held
in Cooperstown, NY. Kuhn spoke for many, in a voice broken with emotion:
“So very great was he as a player, so very great was he as a leader,
so very great was he as a humanitarian in the cause of his fellow men,

so very great was he as an inspiration to the young and to all of us in
baseball and throughout the world of sports.… Having said all those
words, they are very inadequate to describe the real greatness of Roberto
Walker Clemente.”

The legacy Clemente left is indelible. His wife and sons carry on the
work with Puerto Rican youth that he began. Latin Americans now comprise
roughly twenty-five to thirty percent of all Major League Baseball
players. One of baseball’s biggest and most charismatic stars, Sammy
Sosa, had declared Roberto Clemente his hero: “I wear his number [21],
I watched his film, I studied his swing,” says Sosa. Roberto Clemente’s
oldest son, Roberto Jr., told Sosa during the 1998 All-Star Game, “My
father’s spirit is with you.” Roberto Clemente was the first Latin American
to be immortalized in the Hall of Fame. But his claim to greatness
far exceeds baseball statistics or any historic “first.” A quarter of a century
after his death, ex-commissioner Bowie Kuhn still had much to
say about the legacy of the man. In 1998, he said that not only should

Clemente be known as a great ballplayer, but one who wanted “to fulfill
that obligation which players should feel to the people in the stands who
adore them.… That is the legacy which I think he would have wanted
to leave, a great professional who gave everything. Beyond that I’m sure
he would want to leave the legacy that there is an obligation to be a role
model.… He was a marvelous role model, not only as a player but also
as a human being.”

In 1972, Major League Baseball instituted the annual presentation
of an award to recognize the player who “best exemplifies the
game of baseball, sportsmanship, community involvement and the
individual’s contribution to his own team.”

Originally known as The Commissioner’s Award, it was renamed
The Roberto Clemente Award in 1973 after Clemente’s tragic and untimely
death. The winner is selected from an annual list of thirty nominees,
and is selected by a panel that includes the Commissioner of Baseball
and Vera Clemente. The stellar list of winners, players who have
demonstrated the value of helping others, includes Clemente’s teammate
Willie Stargell, as well as Kirby Puckett, Tony Gwynn, Al Leiter,
Edgar Martinez, John Smoltz, and Carlos Delgado.
Delgado, the 2006 winner, is from Clemente’s native Puerto Rico
and has, throughout much of his career, worn Clemente’s uniform
number (21) to honor his countryman. Delgado’s off-the-field work is
focused on the importance of education. He sponsors two four-year
college scholarships, and is the founder of Extra Bases, an organization
with a mission “to help individuals and charitable groups in Puerto Rico
and abroad who assist people in need.” You can learn more about Extra
Bases at www.extrabases.org.”

###

Book excerpt posted with permission from author Fritz Knapp.

About the Author: Fritz Knapp graduated from the College of William & Mary in Virginia where he played lacrosse. He has taught and coached extensively in the Richmond Area. He is a teacher and coach at Fork Union Military Academy in Virginia. He is the founder of the Blue Sky Fund, an orgnization which serves at-risk students in the Richmond area. 20% of the author’s royalty from sales of this book will serve at-risk students through the Blue Sky Fund.

To purchase the book: www.sportvirtues.com