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My first memory is of my father carrying a hammer into our bedrooms and smashing open our piggy banks on the night Roberto died.
I couldn't have known what was happening. I didn't know about the sputtering airplane, carrying one superstar and too many supplies for earthquake victims in Nicaragua. But I might have understood what Roberto meant to my dad.
Three years earlier, as my father arrived for his first day on the job with the Pittsburgh Pirates, he had been intercepted by Dick Stockton in the parking lot of McKechnie Field, the Bucs' spring training home in Bradenton, Fla. Stockton is a first-tier play-by-play announcer now, but in 1970 he was a Pittsburgh television sports anchor, and he asked whether Dad was the team's new public relations director. When my father said he was, Stockton said he would like an interview with Roberto Clemente. My father explained that he'd been on the job only a few minutes and that he hadn't even met Clemente yet. Nevertheless, he would see what he could do.
My dad has Alzheimer's, so I can't ask him what happened next, but when his memories were still present, he took out a yellow legal pad and wrote down many of his baseball stories. In these pages, he describes his first encounter with Roberto. Dad introduced himself as the new PR guy, and in the next breath asked whether Clemente would do an interview with the sports director from KDKA-TV.
OTL: The enduring mystery of Roberto Clemente's bat - MLB - ESPN
I couldn't have known what was happening. I didn't know about the sputtering airplane, carrying one superstar and too many supplies for earthquake victims in Nicaragua. But I might have understood what Roberto meant to my dad.
Three years earlier, as my father arrived for his first day on the job with the Pittsburgh Pirates, he had been intercepted by Dick Stockton in the parking lot of McKechnie Field, the Bucs' spring training home in Bradenton, Fla. Stockton is a first-tier play-by-play announcer now, but in 1970 he was a Pittsburgh television sports anchor, and he asked whether Dad was the team's new public relations director. When my father said he was, Stockton said he would like an interview with Roberto Clemente. My father explained that he'd been on the job only a few minutes and that he hadn't even met Clemente yet. Nevertheless, he would see what he could do.
My dad has Alzheimer's, so I can't ask him what happened next, but when his memories were still present, he took out a yellow legal pad and wrote down many of his baseball stories. In these pages, he describes his first encounter with Roberto. Dad introduced himself as the new PR guy, and in the next breath asked whether Clemente would do an interview with the sports director from KDKA-TV.
OTL: The enduring mystery of Roberto Clemente's bat - MLB - ESPN
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