Saluting Pittsburgh's finest.

• Author: Vatz, Richard E.
• Position: ATHLETIC ARENA - Roberto Clemente - Cover story

IN THE PAST FEW YEARS, there has been a renewal of attention to one who some believe to be the best all-round player ever to have played the game of baseball: Roberto Clemente, the right fielder for the Pittsburgh Pirates from 1955-72. Let us, in the interest of full disclosure, say up front that the authors of this piece are born and raised Pittsburghers; so, we admittedly are partial to the growing recognition of this remarkable man and player. In fact, one of us currently occupies an office overlooking a preserved piece of Forbes Field--the outfield wall at the 436-foot mark--reminding him every day of Clemente's many heroics.

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Yet, there also is considerable empirical evidence to support our point of view. Clemente was the classic five-tool player, one who could "hit, hit for power, ran, throw, and field." The only dimension for which there is any question was his ability to hit for power. His 240 career round-trippers (certainly a more-than-respectable total), still is nowhere near the power numbers put up by some of the game's all-time great slugging outfielders--Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Frank Robinson, and Mickey Mantle are Clemente contemporaries that immediately come to mind. Roberto reached the 20-homer plateau four times, topping out at 29 in his MVP season of 1966, and he did reach the double digit mark in home runs the last 13 years of his career. However, all Pirates players in the "Forbes Field" era should earn a pass in the power department because the erstwhile home ballpark of the Bucs had dimensions of 462 feet to center and 360 and 376 down the lines in left and right, respectively. (Yes, the old Yankee Stadium had its renowned Death Valley, but it was a mere 301 feet down the line in left and 296 to the foul pole in fight. Moreover, the outfield wall at those junctures was less than four feet high.) Forbes' dimensions militated against being a home run hitter, Ralph Kiner and Willie Stargell notwithstanding. Stargell, incidentally, had his home run numbers catapult upon moving to the Pirates' more reasonably proportioned Three Rivers Stadium (since replaced by PNC Park).

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Clemente's statistics, the home run numbers aside, may not have earned him the title of "best player ever," but Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post writer David Maraniss (one should say here, parenthetically, that you may infer the greatness of an athlete roughly by who is his main biographer), in his...