Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero by David Maraniss Page A

also came upwith the idea of publicizing the new team by flying a plane over Havana and dropping thousands of matchbook sewing kits that featured Beisbolito on the cover. Years later, after Fidel Castro took power in Cuba and the baseball franchise fled to New Jersey, Martínez would settle in Puerto Rico and remain close to Clemente, whom he called “the top personality I ever met in my life.” At first, he knew him only as a talented, lonely young man. The highlight of the trip for Clemente came when Chico Fernández picked him up at the hotel and drove him over to the Fernández house: the big family, the teasing and laughing, the mother making a home-cooked meal—it reminded him of Carolina.
    In the six-game series, the Royals won three, lost two, and tied one. The final game was scoreless in the tenth inning when they had to call it so the Royals could catch their plane back to Montreal. Joe Black had pitched nine more shutout innings. Over the entire series, Clemente never played. Too many scouts in Havana was the word.
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    Scouts and baseball officials were always roaming the International League circuit. A week after the Royals returned home from Havana, Dodgers personnel manAndy High visited Montreal to assess the talent. Rumors were going around that another organization had offered the Dodgers $150,000 for Amoros. “It isn’t hard to believe,” High told the Montreal press. The baseball men in Brooklyn hadn’t given up on Amoros, he insisted. They didn’t think he was much of a fielder, and his arm was weak, but he sure could hit the ball hard. It took Duke Snider a few times to make the big club, too, High pointed out.
    The writers asked him about Don Hoak, the former Royal who was starting at third for the Dodgers in place of the injured Billy Cox. High had nothing but praise. “Hoak is a dynamic type of player,” he said, and would stay in the lineup as long as he was hitting. They also loved the way he charged slow-hit grounders and fielded them with his “meat hand.” Still, Cox remained the best-fielding third baseman in the league, even if he was colorless and backed up on hard-hit ground balls.
    What about Chico Fernández? Would he ever hit big-league pitching?
    “Chico doesn’t have to hit too much,” High said. “I guess you’ve noticed that he’s changed his stance this year. He’s crouching. That’s something he developed in the winter league in Cuba. I remember I was watching him with Fresco Thompson this spring training in Vero Beach. The first time he came to the plate and went into that crouch, Fresco said, ‘Ho, ho, take a look at this! We’ve got a new hitter.’ But he makes some great plays in the field. We don’t teach young ball players to go after a ball with one hand; they do that by themselves. But they’re apt to make those seemingly impossible plays because they practice that way.”
    There was more talk about Don Zimmer and Moose Moryn, Dodgers prospects in St. Paul. Not a word about Roberto Clemente. Better not to put his name in the papers.
    A month later, after a long road trip, the Royals came back to town and found Dodgers front-office men Buzzie Bavasi and Al Campanis waiting for them. During the final road stop in Toronto, Max Macon had been kicked out of a game for the third time that year, and was about to be suspended and fined for almost coming to blows with home-plate umpire Carlisle Burch. But Bavasi and Campanis had other concerns. The Dodgers were going nowhere, lost in the whirlwind of Willie Mays and his Giants. Tommy Lasorda had just been recalled to help the pitching, and they were looking again at Joe Black. They were also worried about the frustrations of their Latin players. Amoros was discouraged. Fernández wondered whether he would ever get a chance. And Clemente wanted to go home.
    It was Campanis who had first seen his uncommon talent during that tryout at Sixto Escobar two years earlier and had stamped Clemente for