April 13, 1969: Clemente booed at Forbes Field, spearheads game-winning rally for Pirates

Home fans at Forbes Field booed Roberto Clemente on the first Sunday of the 1969 season, the 15th of his legendary career with the Pittsburgh Pirates, following inflammatory local press coverage of a spring-training injury, three comeback-stalling double plays in two games, and an error in right field. Clemente acknowledged the crowd graciously, tipping his helmet when he batted in the eighth inning, then walked to set up Willie Stargell’s game-tying homer in Pittsburgh’s 6-5 win over the Philadelphia Phillies.

A lingering injury to Clemente’s right shoulder, stemming from an offseason accident, had marred his 1968 season.1 His .291 average – still 10th-best in a pitching-dominated National League – was the four-time batting champion’s only sub-.300 season from 1960 through 1972.2 The Pirates came in sixth in the NL.

Clemente’s right shoulder was sound when he arrived at spring training in 1969, but he injured his left shoulder during a Grapefruit League game.3 With the condition persisting, Clemente went home to San Juan, Puerto Rico, in late March to consult a local doctor.4

Before, during, and after the six-day visit to San Juan, Pittsburgh’s daily newspapers – the Post-Gazette and the Press – chronicled his rehabilitation with barbed language. One headline characterized Clemente’s explanations as “double talk.”5 “I’m fed up with the guy,” a Pirates physician asserted in another article.6

On March 30 Clemente rejoined the Pirates in Florida and publicly admonished a broadcaster who suggested that “some people” believed he was not a team player.7 The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s account of the incident referred to Clemente as the “100 grand right fielder,” noted his 1-for-17 hitting in spring play, and concluded, “It is not a good bat image for a $100,000 super star.”8 Follow-up articles in both newspapers were unsympathetic to or dismissive of Clemente’s claims that the media treated him unfairly because he was Black and Puerto Rican.9

Clemente was in the lineup for the Pirates’ season-opening three-game sweep of the two-time-defending NL champion St. Louis Cardinals.10 But he reported a sore right shoulder on the morning of Pittsburgh’s home opener, and manager Larry Shepard held him out of a 7-1 win over the Phillies on April 11.11 Clemente returned a day later but bounced into a double play with the bases loaded in Philadelphia’s 8-1 win.12

For Sunday’s series finale, Clemente was again batting third, and several Pirates veterans accompanied him in the lineup. Left fielder Stargell had finished in the NL’s Top 10 in home runs twice in the past three seasons;13 center fielder Matty Alou had few rivals in hitting for average;14 and second baseman and team captain Bill Mazeroski, like Clemente, remained from Pittsburgh’s 1960 World Series champions.15

Alongside Mazeroski in the infield, however, were the so-called “Kiddie Corps.”16 Catcher Manny Sanguillen, age 25, had debuted in 1967 as an injury replacement before spending ’68 at Triple A.17 Freddie Patek, 24, filled in for an injured Gene Alley at short.18 The corners were 22-year-old first baseman Al Oliver, splitting time with 22-year-old Bob Robertson, and 21-year-old third baseman Richie Hebner.19

Pittsburgh starter Steve Blass, an 18-game winner in 1968, held the Phils hitless through three innings. Stargell, who had homered off Bob Gibson in his first at-bat of the season,20 led off the second with an opposite-field home run against Philadelphia’s Rick Wise, clearing the 406-foot sign in left-center and sailing to the right of the scoreboard.

Blass’s early success aside, he “appeared to have trouble getting his curve over the plate,” the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette observed.21 Philadelphia capitalized against his fastball in the fourth.22 Dick Allen crushed a one-out triple off the batting cage in center field, 450 feet from home plate. Johnny Callison pulled another triple off the screen in right, driving in Allen.

Deron Johnson – swinging one of Allen’s 40-ounce bats, his own gear delayed by a strike at Louisville Slugger23 – cranked the Phillies’ third long hit in a row, a two-run homer flying high past the left-field light tower. The three-batter barrage gave the Phils a 3-1 lead.

Pittsburgh attempted to narrow the gap, but Clemente, who had struck out in the first inning, grounded into a double play after Hebner’s leadoff single in the fourth; Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Frank Dolson noted that Clemente “tried so hard to beat the throw that he ran out from under his cap.”24 An inning later, Sanguillen was tagged out attempting to advance from second to third on Patek’s one-out grounder to short.

Walks to John Briggs and Allen to start the sixth ended Blass’s day. Shepard summoned lefty Luke Walker, who walked Callison to load the bases. Patek turned Johnson’s grounder into a short-to-home-to-first double play to put Walker one out from getting out of the jam.

But 21-year-old shortstop Don Money – one of four players the Pirates had traded for pitcher Jim Bunning in December 196725 – grounded sharply over the bag at third, a day after his second five-RBI game of the season’s first week had paced the Phillies’ attack.26 The ball got past Hebner; Allen and Callison scored on the error.27 The Phillies’ lead was 5-1.

Hebner had another leadoff single in the Pirates’ sixth, bringing up Clemente. By this point, the crowd’s disenchantment was palpable. One Pittsburgh newspaper noted that Clemente’s fourth-inning double play had prompted “a mild raspberry” from the stands.28 Another reported “raspberries” and “catcalls” when he came to bat in the sixth.29

“There had been a few boos in the first inning, a few more in the fourth, a lot more in the sixth,” the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Dolson commented.30

This time, Clemente grounded back to the mound, and Wise started another double play. The crowd booed, and the Pirates went scoreless again.

The Phillies still led by four runs when Oliver led off the seventh with a single. Another fruitless inning seemed imminent when Sanguillen hit into a force and Mazeroski lined out. But Sanguillen stole second and Patek singled him home.

Robertson batted for Walker and grounded to short; Money, going to his left after playing the righty-swinging Robertson to pull, bobbled the ball for an error. Alou ripped Wise’s 1-and-2 pitch over Briggs’s head in left for a double, scoring Patek to cut the deficit to 5-3.

Phils manager Bob Skinner – Clemente and Mazeroski’s teammate on the 1960 Pirates – replaced Wise with rookie Bill Wilson, who retired Hebner to end the inning. Philadelphia was positioned to get one of the runs back when Johnson singled to right off Ron Kline with one out in the eighth; the ball bounced through Clemente for an error.31 Johnson raced to third, and the crowd booed again.

The “Kiddie Corps” kept the game close. Patek fielded Money’s grounder and threw to Sanguillen, catching pinch-runner Terry Harmon by 15 feet. Sanguillen then gunned down Money trying to steal second.

Wilson, appearing in his fourth major-league game after seven seasons in the minors, remained on the mound for the bottom of the eighth. When Clemente left the dugout as Pittsburgh’s leadoff batter, the booing resumed, stronger than ever.32

Clemente responded with a grand gesture. “The 34-year-old Puerto Rican star stopped near the plate, took off his batting helmet and waved it in a circular motion above his head,” the Pittsburgh Press reported.33 “The booing continued, only then it was lessened by a mixture of applause.”

Clemente drew a four-pitch walk. Wilson’s first offering to Stargell missed for a ball. The next pitch was a high slider, and Stargell hammered it to straightaway center. His drive sailed over the ivy-covered wall between the 457-foot and 436-foot signs, landing in adjacent Schenley Park, a spot only a few sluggers had ever reached in Forbes Field’s 60-year history.34 The game was tied, 5-5.

It did not stay tied for long. Oliver singled and took second on Sanguillen’s sacrifice against reliever Turk Farrell. Mazeroski followed with a hard grounder to third. Oliver, not forced, ran toward a likely out – but the ball went through the legs of Tony Taylor, who had moved from second to third that inning.

Oliver scored on the error for a 6-5 Pirates’ lead, and Kline closed out the Phillies on three grounders in the ninth.

Monday’s headlines in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia alike marveled at Stargell’s power show. Coverage also noted the crowd’s unprecedented treatment of Clemente.

“Roberto Clemente waited 15 years before he was booed by patrons at Forbes Field,” the Pittsburgh Press declared.35 “This has to be a first, for I’ve never heard them pick on the great one before,” longtime Pittsburgh Post-Gazette sports editor Al Abrams wrote.36

Clemente’s own postgame remarks had a magnanimous tone, consistent with his helmet-tip to the fans.

“The fans of Pittsburgh have cheered me a lot through the years,” said Clemente, who finished 1969 with a .345 average, second in the NL, and culminated his career two seasons later by leading the Pirates – with many of the “Kiddie Corps” as key contributors – to a World Series championship.37

“I feel they booed me because they think I deserve to be booed. If they feel I should be booed, let them boo. It is their choice. They clapped for me a lot before. Why should I be mad at them now?”38

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Bruce Slutsky and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for pertinent information, including the box score and play-by-play. He also reviewed newspaper coverage in the Philadelphia Daily News, Philadelphia Inquirer, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and Pittsburgh Press newspapers, and SABR Baseball Biography Project biographies of several players involved in the game, especially John Vorperian’s biography of Deron Johnson.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/PIT/PIT196904130.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1969/B04130PIT1969.htm

Notes

1 David Maraniss, Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball’s Last Hero (New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks: 2006), 216; Les Biederman, “Clemente’s Ailing Again – So Are Bucs,” Pittsburgh Press, August 5, 1968: 25.

2 Maraniss, Clemente, 217. At the time, Clemente’s 1968 season – the only year from 1960 through 1972 that he was not selected to play in the All-Star Game – was regarded as a step backward from his peak. “The super play seemed to be lacking,” observed a February 1969 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette column. By twenty-first-century metrics, however, 1968 was one of Clemente’s most productive all-around campaigns. Baseball-Reference.com credits him with 8.2 Wins Above Replacement in 1968, equaling 1966 for the second-highest total of his career after his 9.0-WAR season in 1967. Charley Feeney, “Roamin’ Around,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, February 12, 1969: 25.

3 “Clemente Hurts Other Shoulder,” Pittsburgh Press, March 16, 1969: 4,1.

4 Bill Christine, “Clemente’s ‘Flight’ a Bitter Pill to Doc,” Pittsburgh Press, March 26, 1969: 79.

5 Bill Christine, “Clemente’s Replies Go On And …,” Pittsburgh Press, March 21, 1969: 41.

6 Christine, “Clemente’s ‘Flight” a Bitter Pill to Doc.”

7 Charley Feeney, “Clemente Back, Lashes Out at Writers,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, March 31, 1969: 28.

8 Feeney, “Clemente Back, Lashes Out at Writers.” From March 25, 1969, through April 1, 1969, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Pirates beat writer Charley Feeney referenced Clemente’s $100,000 annual salary five times in seven daily editions. (The Post-Gazette did not publish on Sundays.) Charley Feeney, “Roamin’ Around,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, March 25, 1969: 21; Charley Feeney, “Bucs Look Bad, Bow to Dodgers, 10 to 4: Clemente Leaves for Treatments,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, March 26, 1969: 27; Charley Feeney, “Roamin’ Around,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, March 29, 1969; Feeney, “Clemente Back, Lashes Out at Writers”; Charley Feeney, “Roamin’ Around,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 1, 1969: 17.

9 “Roberto Clemente said what was on his mind,” Feeney wrote in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “Perhaps he would have been better off if he had kept his mouth shut. Perhaps not. Right or wrong, Roberto Clemente has put his image on the line.” Added Bill Christine of the Pittsburgh Press, “[I]f Clemente thinks the men of letters refuse to vote for a man because he doesn’t know the Star Spangled Banner or because he hasn’t mastered drawing-room English, or because he has a tendency to mix with his countrymen rather than the Americanos, then surely Roberto must have lost his head the last time he lost his hat.” Feeney, “Roamin’ Around,” April 1, 1969; Bill Christine, “Sports Writers Batting .000 with Clemente,” Pittsburgh Press, April 2, 1969: 58. In the Pittsburgh-based Black newspaper the Pittsburgh Courier, by contrast, influential columnist Bill Nunn Jr. asserted, “[t]he outburst made by all star outfielder Roberto Clemente against certain members of the press who intimated he was something less than a team player with the Pittsburgh Pirates as welcomed in many quarters. Roberto is only one of many athletes who have complained bitterly, sometimes in private, over their treatment by the white press. I’ve been told all [too] often by players that certain writers want the black athlete to fit into their role of what the Negro should be like. In most cases this is one of subservience.” Bill Nunn Jr., “Change of Pace,” Pittsburgh Courier, April 12, 1969: 14.

10 Bill Christine, “Kline Gets ‘The Message,’ Holds Fort for Bucs,” Pittsburgh Press, April 9, 1969: 65; Bill Christine, “Veale Beats Major Problem (Cards),” Pittsburgh Press, April 10. 1969: 41; Bill Christine, “Ellis A ‘Misfit’ Among Pirates,” Pittsburgh Press, April 11, 1969: 40.

11 “‘Bad’ Shoulder Halts Clemente,” Pittsburgh Press, April 12, 1969: 8.

12 Bill Christine, “Money Checks Bunning, Pirates, 8-1: Phils Manhandle Ex-Teammate,” Pittsburgh Press, April 13, 1969: 4, 1.

13 Roy McHugh, “Willie Stargell Gets His Poor Dog a Bone,” Pittsburgh Press, April 11, 1969: 40.

14 Roy McHugh, “Matty Alou Goes by His Own Book,” Pittsburgh Press, April 10, 1969: 41.

15 Charley Feeney, “Mazeroski Man of Few Words: ‘Pirates Could Go All the Way,’” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 5, 1969: 6.

16 Roy McHugh, “The Happy New Year,” Pittsburgh Press, April 13, 1969: 4,2.

17 Bill Christine, “Language, Handling Pitchers: Sanguillen Finds Passport,” Pittsburgh Press, March 13, 1969: 38. Sanguillen was starting because Sheppard wanted to give first-string catcher Jerry May – just 25 years old himself – a day off. Phil Musick, “May No. 1 But Tries Harder,” Pittsburgh Press, April 12, 1969: 8; Charley Feeney, “Stargell Hits Pair; Bucs Edge Phils, 6-5: Clemente Booed As Pirates Fail in Early Going,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 14, 1969: 28.

18 Alley, the Pirates’ regular shortstop since 1965 and a two-time NL All-Star and Gold Glove winner, had a persistent injury to his right shoulder from the 1967 season. Feeney, “Roamin’ Around,” March 25, 1969.

19 Robertson had made his major-league debut in September 1967; Hebner and Oliver had joined the Pirates in September 1968. All three were on an Opening Day roster for the first time in 1969.

20 “Gibson Makes Hit With Stargell,” Pittsburgh Press, April 9, 1969: 65.

21 Feeney, “Stargell Hits Pair; Bucs Edge Phils, 6-5.”

22 Feeney, “Stargell Hits Pair; Bucs Edge Phils, 6-5.”

23 “If I ever check a swing with [Allen’s bat] I might dislocate both wrists,” Johnson told the Philadelphia Daily News. “But it’s keeping me waiting on the pitch.” Bill Conlin, “Willie’s Thunderbolts Jolt Sagging Phillies,” Philadelphia Daily News, April 14, 1969: 53. The Phillies had purchased the 30-year-old Johnson from the Atlanta Braves in November 1968. His home run in this game was the first of 88 that he hit with Philadelphia before being traded to the Oakland A’s in May 1973.

24 Frank Dolson, “Roberto ‘Bows’ to Fans Booing,” Philadelphia Inquirer, April 14, 1969: 30.

25 Woodie Fryman, Bill Laxton, and Harold Clem also went to the Phillies in the deal. Lester J. Biederman, “Bucs Get Bunning for Fryman: Pirates Also Give Phillies 3 Farmhands,” Pittsburgh Press, December 17, 1967: 4, 1.

26 Money hit two homers and drove in five runs in the Phillies’ 7-6, 11-inning Opening Day loss to the Chicago Cubs on April 8. His first-inning bases-loaded triple off Bunning was the first of his four hits on April 12 at Forbes Field, including an RBI single and a run-scoring double. Allen Lewis, “Money Hits 2 Homers But Cubs Edge Phils,” Philadelphia Inquirer, April 9, 1969: 33; Allen Lewis, “Phils Jolt Bucs for 1st Win As Money Drives in 5 Runs: Jackson Goes Distance in 8-1 Victory,” Philadelphia Inquirer, April 13, 1969: 3,1.

27 Both Bill Conlin’s game story in the Philadelphia Daily News and Allen Lewis’s account in the Philadelphia Inquirer questioned the official scorer’s decision to rule the play an error instead of a double.

28 Feeney, “Stargell Hits Pair; Bucs Edge Phils, 6-5.”

29 Bill Christine, “Clemente Still Loves Pirate Fans,” Pittsburgh Press, April 14, 1969: 32.

30 Dolson, “Roberto ‘Bows’ to Fans Booing.”

31 “Indecisive in right field, neither charging a ball nor playing the bounce correctly, he … let it get through for a two-base error,” wrote Pittsburgh Press columnist Roy McHugh. Roy McHugh, “Fickleness Is a Very Normal Thing,” Pittsburgh Press, April 15, 1969: 43.

32 Christine, “Clemente Still Loves Pirate Fans.”

33 Christine, “Clemente Still Loves Pirate Fans.”

34 “Only a couple of handsful [sic] of players had ever reached that spot in Schenley Park behind center field,” the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette noted. “Mickey Mantle did it against Fred Green in the 1960 World Series. Stargell has done it once before. So has Clemente, Donn Clendenon, Dolph Camilli, Duke Snider and a few other powermen.” Feeney, “Stargell Hits Pair; Bucs Edge Phils, 6-5.”

35 Christine, “Clemente Still Loves Pirate Fans.”

36 Al Abrams, “Sidelights on Sports,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 14, 1969: 28.

37 Christine, “Clemente Still Loves Pirate Fans.”

38 Dolson, “Roberto ‘Bows’ to Fans Booing.”