Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero (18 page)

I WOULD RATHER HAVE YOU

BEAT THE YANKEES THAN

ANY OTHER TEAM IN THE WORLD.

AND YOU CAN. AND YOU WILL.

The Pirates would need a healthy Vernon Law if they were to have any chance of that; accordingly much of the focus was on the Deacon’s right ankle. He had pulled a tendon in a moment of joy, slipping on a wet dressing room floor as he celebrated with his teammates in Milwaukee after they had clinched the National League pennant. The club tried to hide the injury, but it became obvious a week later when the Braves came to Pittsburgh to finish the season and bombed Law for eight runs and ten hits before he could escape the third inning. There was a day or two when the Pirates were uncertain whether their
twenty-game winner could start the series opener, but Law insisted that he was ready, and trainer Whelan said the ankle had not swelled and was bothersome only when twisted a certain way. It did not hinder Law’s normal delivery.

Law had the stuff to baffle the Yankees, a sinking fastball and curves of various speeds, all delivered with pinpoint control. Early in his career, he had impressed old Branch Rickey with the “change of pace on his fastball with a wiggle-waggle, half fadeaway rotation.” Law had walked only forty-one men in 272 innings all year. He also had the tenacity, despite his reputation as a clean-living elder in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who did not drink, smoke, or curse (once, at his most vituperative, he shouted “Judas Priest!” at an ump and almost got tossed). Nor did he throw at batters’ heads, or so it was said. At a Bucs Fan Club luncheon before the series, Murtaugh jokingly dismissed that last claim. “So I’m talking to one of my pitchers and I says, ‘Look, when the other pitcher comes up there I want you to knock him down.’ And my pitcher [Law] was one of those fellows who is well versed in the Bible and he tells me, ‘Skip, turn the other cheek.’ So I looked at him and said, ‘All right with me. I’ll turn the other cheek. But if this guy don’t go down it’s gonna cost you a hundred bucks.’ So he looked at me and said, ‘They that live by the sword die by the sword.’” Even if that was no more than Murtaugh blarney, it captured Law’s spirit; he was fire and brimstone on the mound and a fierce competitor. New York had a pitcher of equal big-game stature, Whitey Ford, but the Yankees manager, Casey Stengel, for reasons known only to him and those who could translate Stengelese, chose instead to go with right-hander Art Ditmar, who in fact had won more games that season but was not in Ford’s class.

Another perfect autumn day washed over Forbes Field for the opener. The upper deck was dressed in red, white, and blue bunting. In the box seats behind third, Joe Cronin, the American League president, pointed to a screen across the diamond behind first and said he was responsible for it; they installed it after he had made one too many wild heaves into the stands as a rookie shortstop for the Pirates in 1926. A communal gasp sounded from the capacity crowd as a parachutist soared down from the blue sky above, but Jack Heatherington of McKeesport,
who had made the sky-jump after losing a bet that the Pirates would
not
win the pennant, was off-mark again, landing not on the field but on a nearby roof. This was no year to underestimate anything in Pittsburgh.

In the Pirates’ dressing room before the game, Murtaugh adhered to his regular season routine, pulling out a scorecard and going over the Yankee lineup hitter by hitter. “
Any questions?” he asked when he was done. His team had none. Then “go get ’em,” he said. No need for a pep talk, Captain Dick Groat thought. Everyone understood what this series meant. Writing a column for the
Post-Gazette
under the impressive byline . . .

By Dick Groat

PIRATE SHORTSTOP AND NL BATTING CHAMPION

. . . Groat confessed that while he tried to tell himself it was just another game and that there was no reason to be nervous, he had “a peculiar feeling” in the pit of his stomach in his first at-bat and his nerves would not settle for the first few innings.

Law and the Pirates had reason to be anxious in the top of the first when Maris, acting as though it were still batting practice, deposited a home run over the right-field fence, but they got out of the inning with no more damage and swiftly went at Ditmar. Bill Virdon walked and stole second. Groat, nerves and all, doubled him home. Bob Skinner singled in Groat and also stole second. Dick Stuart was retired for the first out, then up came Clemente, batting fifth instead of his usual third, because Murtaugh thought he might have trouble with the six-foot-two 195-pound right-hander. Here was Clemente’s first appearance on the World Series stage, the first by a Puerto Rican hitter since Luis Olmo played left field for the Dodgers in 1949 against the Yankees. Doña Luisa and brother Matino were watching from seats behind the screen. The old man was listening on the radio back in Carolina. With the count at two balls, two strikes, Ditmar came inside with a fastball and Clemente stroked it over second for a single, driving in Skinner with the third run. Ditmar was done for the day, yanked by Stengel after throwing only eighteen pitches and getting a lone out.

The first-inning rally showed the Pirates would not be intimidated. It was Stengel who looked anxious, with his quick hook. This was not what most experts expected. Shirley Povich, the venerable sportswriter for the
Washington Post,
thought it was “like the patient examining the doctor for symptoms.” By the top of the second, with New York still trailing 3–1 and third baseman Clete Boyer coming to the plate with runners at first and second, the impatience bordered on panic. Boyer was called back to the dugout, and at first he assumed that Stengel had a tip for him on how to bat against Law, but the manager’s only instruction was for Clete to find a seat on the bench. Dale Long was sent up to pinch-hit. First game, second inning, Boyer pulled for a pinch hitter on his first at-bat—an uncommon baseball humiliation. Clemente, in right field, knew the feeling; long ago, he had been taken out for a pinch hitter in the first inning with the bases loaded, but that was during his first year in pro ball with the Montreal Royals, when the Dodgers were trying to hide him. As it turned out, Long hit a long fly to Clemente in right, who gathered it in and unloosed a bullet throw to second, nearly doubling Berra.

Stengel’s desperation was for nothing. The game essentially was over after a brilliant defensive play by Virdon in the fourth inning. Law was struggling as he worked his way through the new Murderer’s Row. Maris walked, Mantle singled, and Yogi Berra, playing in his record eleventh World Series and still feared by the Pirates as the Yankees’ toughest clutch hitter, cracked a drive to the deepest expanse of right center. Clemente, racing over from right, and Virdon, at full sprint from center, simultaneously reached the spot where the drive was headed. Clemente, called for it, certain that he could make the catch, and so did Virdon, who “had a beam” on it all along. There was such a roar in the stadium that neither could hear. They brushed against each other, Virdon’s spikes cutting the back of Clemente’s right shoe, and just as Clemente pulled up, the No. 21 on his back facing the infield, Virdon leaped and snared the ball with his outstretched glove as he neared the light green wall. Writers who had not seen Virdon field were stunned. Murtaugh in the dugout, Law on the mound, and regular observers of the Pirates were elated but not the least surprised. They considered Virdon the nearest thing to Willie Mays in center,
perhaps even his equal, and with Clemente patrolling beside him any ball hit to center or right might be caught if it stayed in the park. The Yankees were deflated, and even when Moose Skowron singled to drive in Maris, Murtaugh did not consider taking out Law, who got out of the inning maintaining the lead, which was soon extended in the bottom half when Bill Mazeroski hit a two-run homer for the Pirates.

During the early innings, Elroy Face and his teammates in the Pirates relief corps, unable to get a clear view of home from the bullpen, had raced into the clubhouse when the Yankees were up so they could scout the hitters on television. Everything about the five-foot-eight, 155-pound Face was compact and efficient, including his preparations. He needed only three to four throws to get loose, and rarely bothered to warm up until he saw his manager ambling toward the mound in a late inning. In the eighth, with Law holding a 6–2 lead but looking tired and feeling soreness in his right ankle, Murtaugh made his move. Two gestures signified that he wanted Face. One was simply to hold his hand up to his face; the other was to stick out his right hand, palm down, waist high. Face had a rubber arm and could relieve for two and occasionally three innings, day after day, relying on his specialty pitch, a forkball. Thrown with two fingers spread like fork prongs wide apart over the top of the ball, the forkball was an early variation of the split-fingered fastball that became popular four decades later. (When Steve Blass, a latter-day Pirate pitcher and announcer, asked him to describe the difference between the two pitches, Face replied, “Oh, about four million dollars.”) When Face came in, it was a done deal. No trouble in the eighth. In the ninth, he gave up a two-run homer to Elston Howard, but got left-fielder Hector Lopez to ground into a game-ending double-play, Maz to Groat to Stuart, and the Pirates, 6–4 winners, hollered and whooped as they bounded up the underground ramp to their dusty old dressing room.

The Yankees were grouches after the game. They had banged out thirteen hits, more than they had in any game during their season-ending fifteen-game winning streak, yet lost. How could this happen? Boyer made no effort to hide his rage over being yanked before his first chance to bat. Ditmar was despairing over not finishing the first. Mantle, called out on strikes twice, thought one of them was a bad call. Second
baseman Bobby Richardson criticized the Pirates infield, notorious for its concrete-like hardness. And Stengel, in his inimitable way, lodged the same complaint. “If they want to I guess they could have the groundskeeper plow it up pretty good because he could get a plow here where they have all the steel to make one but they don’t want it,” he said. Stengel also took a shot at Clemente, who had grounded into a fielder’s choice in the fifth but stayed on first while second baseman Bobby Richardson chased after Skinner on a rundown between second and third. Was this the lack of adventure that Branch Rickey had mentioned during his first scouting report on Clemente in San Juan in January 1955? “Where was the man who hit the ball?” Stengel asked. “He’s the fastest man, ain’t he? Now if that play had decided the game, they’d all be asking why he didn’t go to second. And if I was the manager I wouldn’t have an answer.” No one asked Clemente about it. In the locker room, he sat alone while the writers gathered around Virdon, Maz, Law, Face, and Bob Friend, who would be starting the next day.

•   •   •

It rained all that night in Pittsburgh and into the next day. By 12:26
P.M.,
only thirty-four minutes before Game 2 was to begin, the skies were dark, a tarp covered the infield, the players were lounging and playing quick rounds of gin in the clubhouse, and fans were taking shelter under the overhang. But Commissioner Frick, protected by raincoat and hat and working a walkie-talkie with his staff, said the weathermen promised him that sunshine was coming, and within twenty minutes his confidence was rewarded. Stengel presented a starting lineup with veteran catcher Berra playing left field for the first time in his World Series career. His pal Joe Garagiola, who grew up with Berra in St. Louis and had dinner with him in Pittsburgh the night before, thought the talkative Yogi, so accustomed to conducting a running commentary with the home plate umpire and opposing batters, would be “lonely out there with no one to talk to.”

Bob Friend, the eighteen-game winner, who threw what was known as a heavy ball, with a fastball reaching ninety-two miles an hour, took the mound for the Pirates, and the home crowd settled in feeling optimistic. Warming up, Friend realized that he had “tremendous stuff,”
and he felt powerful and in the groove through the opening innings. “The ball was moving all over the place.” He had six strikeouts in four innings and it seemed only accidental that he was trailing 3–0. One Yankee run was unearned and another came on a bounding double by Gil McDougald that third baseman Hoak insisted was foul. Fans and writers second-guessed Murtaugh after he removed Friend in the bottom of the fourth for pinch hitter Gene Baker, who rapped into a sharp double play, and at the time Friend himself was distraught. The Yankees weren’t really hitting anything, he thought, and he was just getting warmed up. But decades later, the event distanced by time, Friend gave his manager a reprieve. “
I don’t blame Danny for taking me out,” he said. “Danny did the right thing.”

There could be no right thing for the Pirates in this game. The Yankees went on a tear after that, pounding out nineteen hits, one short of the World Series record of twenty by the 1921 Yankees and 1946 Cardinals; and sixteen runs, only two less than the record set by the Yankees against the Giants in 1936. They turned the game into a romp in the sixth, sending twelve batters to the plate and scoring seven runs on the way to a 16–3 victory.

In the mess of this slaughter, one sportswriter shouted from the press box, “Bring in Yellowhorse!”—a lament so evocative that several colleagues stole the quote and attributed it to an anonymous fan. Mose J. Yellowhorse, a full-blooded American Indian from Pawnee, Oklahoma, known affectionately as Chief, possessed the most felicitous name in Pittsburgh Pirate history, if not the best record. He pitched two seasons, 1921 and 1922, and won a total of eight games. Perhaps his best move in the majors, according to baseball historian Ralph Berger, came when he and shortstop Rabbit Maranville made some barehanded grabs of pigeons fluttering outside the sixteenth-story window of their road-trip hotel.
Bring in Yellowhorse!
The Chief was sixty-two years old in 1960 and fishing in retirement back in Pawnee, but certainly could have fared no worse that day than the relief quintet of Green, Labine, Witt, Gibbon, and Cheney. Once his sluggers gave him an edge, Stengel became a relentless bench jockey from the shadows of the visitors’ dugout, directing a nasal torrent of sarcastic jibes at Smoky Burgess and the procession of hapless Pittsburgh firemen. When Hoak,
from his position at third, would shoot a stern look at him, Stengel would “just look at me,” Hoak recalled, “throw his hands in the air, and shrug, as if to say, ‘What’s going on? Why the dirty look, Hoak?’”