Roberto Clemente 1971 Timeline

This is the 1971 installment in a chronology of memorable moments in the professional career of Roberto Clemente.

__ Jan 29 __ Clemente's Core Belief, Clearly Stated

In accepting the Tris Speaker Award from Houston sportswriters , Clemente gives a speech which, apart from being called by many of those in attendance "the best talk any baseball player ever made," is the source of Clemente's best-known quote, reproduced many times down through the years, with varying degrees of fidelity:

"If you have an opportunity to accomplish something that will make things better for someone coming behind you, and you don't do that, you are wasting your time on this earth."

__ May 17 __ Shuts Down Expos and Fair Weather Fans

“Roberto Clemente knocked a two-run triple off the center-field fence with two out in the ninth inning to give the Pirates a 6-5 victory over Montreal after the Expos had taken a 5-0 lead... Clemente, retired twice in crucial situations early in the game (*), belted Mike Marshall’s 1-1 pitch high off the wall near the 410-foot mark."

* To be fair, Clemente had already made inroads against Expos' lead and Three Rivers' boobirds with previous inning's leadoff home run to bring Bucs back to within two.

__ May 19 __ RC Hits Riverfront Stadium's First IPHR

“Clemente got his name in the history books when he became the first player ever to hit an inside-the park homer in Riverfront Stadium. The blow, a smash off the left-centerfield wall, came off Gary Nolan.” "[His home run hit] high off the left-field wall over the reach of Bernie Carbo. The ball bounced high and back toward the infield past Buddy Bradford in center and by the time he was able to retrieve it on the rain-soaked turf, Clemente was rounding third."

__ May 30 __ Epic Battle Between Ken Holtzman and Robby C

Results in 2-Out, 2-Strike, Three-Run Blast Blowing This Game Open

“Roberto Clemente touched off the fusillade of long hits with a drive over the left-field fence for his sixth home run of the season." “Clemente, in a classic struggle with Holtzman, fouled off seven pitches before driving a three-run homer. Willie Stargell followed with one of his patented wallops – a 500-foot drive which became the first homer to reach the top deck of the new stadium – and the rout was on... 'He must have fouled off six curves, and the ball he hit out was the same kind of curve I struck him out [with] in the previous inning,' Holtzman said of Clemente's home run. 'It was a good pitch. The one Stargell hit was a bad one. Heck, I supplied half the power myself.'"

__ Jun 15 __ "GREATEST CATCH IN ASTRODOME'S HISTORY!"*

Writer Roy Blount, Jr. reports:

"In July 1971, just before his thirty-eighth [sic ] birthday, he made what may have been the most spectacular catch in the history of right field. In the eighth inning, with the Pirates ahead 1-0 in a crucial game, two out and a man on base , Houston’s Bob Watson, a right-handed hitter, sliced a vicious shot into the corner. Clemente ate up a great stretch of turf with his back to the ball, leapt with a half-twist in full flight, made a one-hand catch above the Astrodome’s yellow home-run line, and in a fully extended, leaping-stab posture hit the wall wide open. He didn’t feel for the wall, he ignored the wall, and WHAM. When he got up, the left or glove side of his body was swelling, bleeding, and bruised at, respectively, the elbow, knee, and ankle; and the game was saved."

* Darrell Mack, "Clemente's Catch Astrodome's Greatest: Best Ever Saw, Says Houston's H. Walker," The Cumberland Evening Times (Wednesday, June 16, 1971), p. 37

__ Jun 16 __ "CLEMENTE CLIPS ASTROS AGAIN" – HR Wins It

Here's the story of RC's encore performance from Joe Heiling of the Houston Post:

"Roberto Clemente, the complete ballplayer! One night, he beats the Houston Astros with his glove. The next night, he does it with his bat. The Pittsburgh superstar exploded a two-run homer to right field in the seventh inning Wednesday night, snapping a 4-4 deadlock and lifting the National League East leaders to a 6-4 triumph over the Astros.

"Roberto the Great did it with a bat that has been his favorite for ten years, but which he had been getting away from more and more of late. 'I have used the U-1,' said the 36-year-old veteran, 'since 1960. I like the bat. It has good balance and a thick handle. The other one has most of the weight at the end of the bat.' That’s the bat he took up against Wade Blasingame in the seventh after Cline’s one-out single. He had used the U-1 before, but it didn’t feel right to Roberto. So he switched.

"Blasingame ran the count to 2-and-2 on him, and after the second strike, Roberto, who stole a cinch homer from Bob Watson the night before, returned to the dugout. Peering into the bat rack, he yanked out his old reliable U-1. 'After getting two strikes on me,' said Roberto, 'all I wanted to do was make contact. I wasn’t trying to hit the ball hard, just to swing and protect the plate and take what I can get.'

"What he got was a line drive to right that took off and kept rising. Cedeno had the ball zeroed in from the moment it left the bat. 'At first,' he said, 'I thought I would be able to catch it.' Then Cedeno, the Astros’ right fielder, ran out of running room. 'When I got close to the wall, I knew there was no chance. It was too high for me to catch. I couldn’t even jump and reach the ball.'

__ Jun 27 __ Was Vet's First Bell-Ringer Roberto's 1200th RBI?

Personal milestone aside, this pinch-hit, game-winning upper deck shot to center field at Philly's recently opened Veterans Stadium is pretty monumental in its own right. It's recalled 32 years later by Gene Collier on the eve of the Vet's retirement:

"In those earliest years, there was an enormous mock Liberty Bell mounted on the facing of the upper deck in dead center, maybe 40 feet above and behind the fence, which was and is 408 feet from the plate. Roberto Clemente lined a homer off that bell that afternoon, which was, pretty clearly, unforgettable.”

That would make Clemente not only the first player ever to reach the centerfield upper deck in the new ballpark (a fact confirmed in the 2003 Philadelphia Phiilies Media Guide, making this the first of only seven CF upper deck home runs in the stadium's 33-year history) but also the first to 'ring' the bell, preceding by more than ten months the Vet's only officially recognized bell-ringer, Greg Luzinski's prodigious May 16, 1972 shot. Just to give a frame of reference, Luzinski's drive would later be estimated at 505 feet by home run researcher Bill Jenkinson.

Paul Giordano's contemporaneous account is vivid if somewhat more vague:

"The breeze had nothing to do with Clemente’s center field shot. The only ballparks the ball wouldn’t have carried out of would have been the old Polo Grounds and the current Yankee Stadium."

Unfortunately, Pittsburgh was in the midst of a citywide newspaper strike at this time, so we'll never know if any of the Pirates beat writers might have given us more contemporaneous confirmation from their distant crows nest perch. Incidentally, aside from the Clemente hiccup, Phillie reliever Joe Hoerner had little trouble that inning, striking out the side, including Willie Stargell before and Gene Clines and Al Oliver after.

__ Jul 13 __ Classic All-Star Confrontation, Sadly Forgotten

Entertaining eighth-inning All-Star encounter between Clemente and Detroit's Mickey Lolich, one of which the latter obviously wants no part. After backing his nemesis off the plate with a low, inside fastball, then sneaking a strike past on the outside corner at the knees, Lolich wastes the next two, waaayy high and outside, eliciting some amusingly disgusted and demonstrative reactions from Clemente, by way of his plea for something remotely reachable. And – wouldn’t you know it – Lolich obliges with a reasonably palatable offering: on the corner, at the letters, which, as any veteran NL hurler could've told him, is, to "the Great One," pretty much right down the middle. Seizing the moment, Number 21 once again proves himself a true magician with the bat – transforming the small, white sphere from something remotely reachable into something unreachably remote, as it lands in the upper deck, just a tad to the right of dead center.

__ Jul 21 __ Mays vs. Momen: Home Run Number 241?

Clemente must have been doubly upset with the official scorer on this play: first, for robbing him of the home run and RBI and, even more so, for showing up his old friend for not being able to get to a ball that probably would have been in his back pocket not so very many years before.

"The Pirates went ahead, 3-2, in the seventh inning, loudly punctuated by a line drive off the bat of Roberto Clemente and an ensuing home run by Manny Sanguillen, his fourth. Clemente’s screaming single went though Willie Mays in centerfield and Clemente fled past base after base to score standing up on what the official scorer ruled a single and an error by Mays. In the clubhouse after the game, weary and stretched with stomach down on the training table, Mays said, 'It should have been a home run. The error makes no difference to me and I don’t really care if the ruling’s changed. But I was playing Roberto in right centerfield and I had no chance to catch up to it, it was hit so hard. I guess they gave me an error because they thought I touched it. But it was at least a foot away from my glove when it bounced past me.'”

_ Jul 22 __ Mays vs. Momen: Bucs Lose Battle...

In the rubber game of this three-game preview of 1971's triumphant NLCS, Bucs come up short, but Clemente comes through in his lone plate appearance, driving in two to tie in the bottom of the ninth.

"Still doing their thing as though they own stock in a heart clinic, the Giants blew a four-run lead in the ninth inning but scored in the 10th yesterday to defeat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 8-7, before an hysterical afternoon crowd of 33,185 [in Pittsburgh]. The big blow in the Pirates’ comeback was a screaming, left-field-corner double by pinch-hitter Roberto Clemente.”

_ Sep 24 __ RC Accepts Honors and Earns Them

"Roberto Clemente, who obviously has a fine sense of occasion, showed his appreciation of pregame ceremonies honoring him last night at Shea by driving in two runs including the one that gave the Pirates a 3-2 triumph over the Mets. Clemente broke a 2-2 tie with a double to left center in the eighth that scored Gene Clines from first."

_ Oct 03 __ Mays vs. Momen: Game 2, 1971 NLCS

"A double by Mays produced one run with one out. The Pirates walked Willie McCovey intentionally, whereupon Dave Kingman blooped a single to center. Only a quick, pinpoint throw by Roberto Clemente, who glided across from right field to grab the bounding ball, prevented Mays from scoring. But the bases were loaded – and Ellis struck out DIetz and retired Al Gallagher on an infield bounder...

"Henderson walked, filling the bases with one away. 'Clemente made a great catch,' said reliever Johnson, who was working in the bullpen, not far from Roberto. 'But for some reason he had moved over about five yards just before that pitch and was in exactly the right place or Willie would have had a hit, driving in a couple of runs."

"Mays rifled a home run off reliever Bob Miller in the ninth, with Tito Fuentes on base from a single, but it was too little, too late."

_ Oct 06 __ Mays vs. Momen, Final Chapter

Game 4, 1971 NLCS: Clemente Clinches, Then Pays Tribute to the Master

"In the 9-5 clincher, Clemente won the game four different times. In addition to delivering two two-run singles that ultimately represented Pittsburgh’s margin of victory [sic ], Roberto made two of the key plays in the game, one in the field and one on the bases. With San Franciscans on first and second in the top of the first inning, and one Giant runner already home, Dick Dietz lined a single to right. Clemente charged fast and threw hard and low to the plate. Tito Fuentes, not a slow man, stopped at third. He never scored.

"In the bottom of the inning, Roberto’s first two-run single gave the Pirates a short-lived lead. In the sixth, again with two out, Clemente sent the Pirates ahead with a base hit. He promptly proceeded to wrap up the contest when he advanced to second on a short passed ball by Dietz, the kind most players wouldn’t have dared run on. This maneuver made it necessary for the Giants to intentionally walk Willie Stargell, whereupon the next batter, Al Oliver, delivered a three-run homer. Clemente later revealed why he risked going on the pitch that had gotten away from Dietz. 'An intentional walk to Willie was the best thing that could have happened to us,' he said. 'He wasn’t hitting and Oliver has been our hottest hitter.'"

Sadly, Mays was banged-up and several years past his prime by this time; he was not really a factor in the last two games. Clemente, however, while having already made his feelings about his rival and onetime mentor known on several occasions, took the opportunity presented by the postgame questions to clarify and amplify those feelings for the national audience:

“How do you measure a man? How can you compare one man with another unless you’ve seen them both? I cannot tell about other men who played long ago. I saw Mays. To me, Willie Mays is the greatest who ever played. But he is forty and has had his days – he is tired. San Francisco is all tired. For them it was not easy. For twenty days, they were in a tight pennant race and don’t know where they are. Mentally, they were going to be tight. You could see Mays is tired.”

When writers questioned the wisdom of Mays' unsuccessful 2nd-inning bunt with 1 out, 2 on and the score tied, Clemente quickly came to his colleague's defense:

“If he bunts good, you say it is a great play. He bunts bad, so you say it is a bad play. Tie game, I think maybe I bunt too.”