Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero [Paperback]

David Maraniss (Author)

Book Description

Release date: April 3, 2007

On New Year's Eve 1972, following eighteen magnificent seasons in the major leagues, Roberto Clemente died a hero's death, killed in a plane crash as he attempted to deliver food and medical supplies to Nicaragua after a devastating earthquake. David Maraniss now brings the great baseball player brilliantly back to life in Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero, a book destined to become a modern classic. Much like his acclaimed biography of Vince Lombardi, When Pride Still Mattered, Maraniss uses his narrative sweep and meticulous detail to capture the myth and a real man.

Anyone who saw Clemente, as he played with a beautiful fury, will never forget him. He was a work of art in a game too often defined by statistics. During his career with the Pittsburgh Pirates, he won four batting titles and led his team to championships in 1960 and 1971, getting a hit in all fourteen World Series games in which he played. His career ended with three-thousand hits, the magical three-thousandth coming in his final at-bat, and he and the immortal Lou Gehrig are the only players to have the five-year waiting period waived so they could be enshrined in the Hall of Fame immediately after their deaths.

There is delightful baseball here, including thrilling accounts of the two World Series victories of Clemente's underdog Pittsburgh Pirates, but this is far more than just another baseball book. Roberto Clemente was that rare athlete who rose above sports to become a symbol of larger themes. Born near the canebrakes of rural Carolina, Puerto Rico, on August 18, 1934, at a time when there were no blacks or Puerto Ricans playing organized ball in the United States, Clemente went on to become the greatest Latino player in the major leagues. He was, in a sense, the Jackie Robinson of the Spanish-speaking world, a ballplayer of determination, grace, and dignity who paved the way and set the highest standard for waves of Latino players who followed in later generations and who now dominate the game.

The Clemente that Maraniss evokes was an idiosyncratic character who, unlike so many modern athletes, insisted that his responsibilities extended beyond the playing field. In his final years, his motto was that if you have a chance to help others and fail to do so, you are wasting your time on this earth. Here, in the final chapters, after capturing Clemente's life and times, Maraniss retraces his final days, from the earthquake to the accident, using newly uncovered documents to reveal the corruption and negligence that led the unwitting hero on a mission of mercy toward his untimely death as an uninspected, overloaded plane plunged into the sea.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. If ever a baseball player were deemed worthy of canonization, right fielder Roberto Clemente might be the one. Jackie Robinson may have suffered greater hardships during his career, but Clemente's nobility, charity and determination make him far more appropriate for a postage stamp than a Nike commercial. After 18 distinguished seasons, the Pirate star with the astonishing throwing arm died in a 1972 plane crash while en route to deliver relief supplies to Nicaraguan earthquake victims. Considering the potential for hagiography, Washington Post staffer and Clinton biographer Maraniss sticks to the facts in this respectful and dispassionate account. Clemente is a deceptively easy subject for a biographer: his acquired halo tinges past events and the accounts of his colleagues (although close friend Vic Power is frequently quoted to both admiring and frank effect). Clemente wasn't entirely virtuous—he had a temper and was sometimes given to pouting—but his altruism appears to have been a genuine product of his impoverished Puerto Rican upbringing. Maraniss deftly balances baseball and loftier concerns like racism; he presents a nuanced picture of a ballplayer more complicated than the encomiums would suggest, while still wholly deserving them. Photos.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Bookmarks Magazine

It's hard not to feel that Clemente, for all its virtues, is a bit of a letdown. With a Pulitzer Prize and notable biographies of Bill Clinton (First in His Class) and Vince Lombardi (When Pride Still Mattered) under his belt, David Maraniss sets high expectations. He mostly satisfies by revealing details about Clemente's tragic death and the compassionate instincts and dogged stubbornness that enabled it and by rightfully placing him alongside his generation's best players. But some critics note a reliance on research rather than reporting, which leaves Maraniss's famously inscrutable subject opaque until the closing pages. Still, not every hit is a homer, and critics applaud Maraniss for delivering the first notable biography of one of the most compelling players to take the diamond.<BR>Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; Reprint edition (April 3, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 074329999X
• ISBN-13: 978-0743299992
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (83 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #142,955 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

David Maraniss is an associate editor at The Washington Post. He is the winner of the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting and has been a Pulitzer finalist two other times for his journalism and again for They Marched Into Sunlight, a book about Vietnam and the sixties. The author also of bestselling works on Bill Clinton, Vince Lombardi, and Roberto Clemente, Maraniss is a fellow of the Society of American Historians. He and his wife, Linda, live in Washington, DC, and Madison, Wisconsin.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

54 of 55 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars "The rest of us were just players - Clemente was a prince" May 3, 2006

By Theo Logos

Format:Hardcover

Roberto Clemente was a legendary ballplayer - a .317 career batting average, 3000 hits, four N.L. batting titles, twelve gold gloves, 1966 National League MVP, 1971 World Series MVP, and the first Latino elected to the Hall of Fame. Impressive as these statistics and facts may be, they cannot capture Roberto's greatness. To try to capture Clemente this way, David Maraniss writes, "is like chemists trying to explain Van Gogh by analyzing the ingredients of his paint. Clemente was art, not science...it was hard to take one's eyes off him". Maraniss' new biography of Clemente, (the first since shortly after he died) captures the many facets of this complex man who truly did live his life both on and off the diamond with passion and grace.

Where the earlier Clemente biographies, written shortly after his death, were little more that tributes and eulogies for the fallen hero, Maraniss writes of the man in all his complexity, and though he deservedly calls him a hero, he does not treat him as a saint. Notoriously thin skinned and prickly, Clemente had a career-long feud with the press. Though it was aggravated by the racism of the time, (Clemente was infuriated when the press would quote his interviews using phonetic spelling to capture his accent) and the language barrier, his sensitive personality, often perceiving slights where they were not intended, was equally to blame. He was obsessed with his health and ailments, complaining constantly about his pain, and some accused him of being a goldbricker and a hypochondriac, yet he seemed to play at his best when in his greatest pain, and ended his career breaking the record for most games played in a Pirates uniform. He constantly and vociferously complained about how he did not get the recognition that he deserved, and played every game like it was the seventh game of the World Series.

Clemente was baseball's last hero, not just for his greatness on the field, but for his life off the baseball diamond. He constantly (and quietly) visited children in hospitals throughout his career, both in the states, and in his beloved Puerto Rico. He dreamed of building a sports city for the children of Puerto Rico (a dream fulfilled after his death). He paved the way for Latin players in the major league, and mentored many of them throughout his career. He once said, "If you have a chance to accomplish something that will make things better for people coming behind you, and you don't do that, you are wasting your time on this earth", and he lived by that line. And of course, he died a hero's death, attempting to bring aid to victims of Nicaragua's earthquake. Steve Blass, Clemente's teammate, put it best - "The rest of us were just players - Clemente was a prince."

Maraniss has written a worthy biography that is more than just a sports book. The incredible character that Clemente was - the passionate grace with which he lived his life, and the heroic way in which he lost it should interest even those only marginally interested in baseball. I highly recommend it to all.

Theo Logos

44 of 47 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Star Is Born April 26, 2006

By Robert W. Kellemen

Format:Hardcover

I still recall where I was (family living room) and who I was with (my Dad) when we heard the news of Roberto Clemente's tragic death. As a pre-teen boy, at the time all I knew of Clemente was his batting average and his bullet arm. Then, as details trickled out concerning the events surrounding his death--his mission of mercy to people in need, I learn more and more about Clemente the man.

Maraniss does a superb job telling both a baseball story and a biography. He also deftly balances the many remarkable traits of the man, with the few flaws he, like every human being, had.

If you love baseball history, you'll love "Clemente." If you love a "poor boy makes good" story, you'll love "Clemente."

Reviewer: Bob Kellemen, Ph.D., is the author of "Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care and Spiritual Direction," "Soul Physicians," "Spiritual Friends," and the forthcoming "Sacred Friendships: Listening to the Voices of Women Soul Care-Givers and Spiritual Directors."

30 of 32 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Clemente April 15, 2006

By Kim Eisler

Format:Hardcover

I was carrying an advance copy of this book on the Washington Metro and several people stopped to ask me how they could get it. They won't be disappointed. At times Maraniss can be a little wordy like when he takes a page and a half to list all the players on some labor committee and he takes a long time to get to the end, and when he does get to the end, it turns into an NTSA report. I have written a full review at [...] and I encourage all potential readers to find my full opinion at that location. Having said that, this is an absolutely amazingly complete and fascinating account of one of my favorite all time players and the baseball era in which many of us just turned 50 somethings lived. Juan Pizarro, Vic Power, whose pre-swing I emulated all my life, they all come alive on these pages. Clemente of course in all his pride and arrogance. From 1960 to 1971, two pennant seassons, baseball and the world changed a lot. Clemente would be happy that his story was told not by a hack baseball writer, but by a world class biographer. Who does the player and his tragic, heroic story more than justice.