Today is the 48th anniversary of Roberto Clemente’s final regular-season at-bat, a fourth-inning double giving him 3,000 hits in his career.
He made his major league debut in April 1955. What’s interesting is that in 1958, he enlisted as a reservist in the Marines. He served until 1964.
If not for his Marines stint, we may not know of Clemente. In 1954, he was hit by a drunk driver. He injured his back in the accident, which caused lasting pain and discomfort. The physical fitness requirements of the Marines strengthened his back to the point that his pain went away.
Clemente died on December 31, 1972. He was traveling to Nicaragua to deliver relief supplies after an earthquake there. His plane crashed on take-off due to mechanical problems. His remains were never recovered. He was 38.
The Baseball Writers’ Association of America waived the five-year waiting period for Hall of Fame induction. Clemente entered the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1973.
This is the box score from that 3,000th hit game. Only 13,000+ people attended. The game lasted two hours, ten minutes. The Pirates were the defending champions and clinched the division by 11 games. Why was nobody there for Clemente’s potential hit!?
That was 48 years ago today.
Forty-eight years before that, in 1924, the Washington Senators played the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park in Boston. Five-thousand people attended a game that lasted one hour, fifteen minutes. It featured three sacrifices, three stolen bases, and three pick-offs. The Sox won 13-1. There were no home runs in the game.
Curiosity has me sucked into history…
Les Banos was a close friend of Clemente. He was the team photographer for the Pirates and planned to join Clemente on the humanitarian mission.
On December 23, 1972, Franco Harris caught a deflected pass for a touchdown, sending the Steelers to the AFC Championship game on December 31. Banos was also the Steelers photographer, so he canceled the trip with Clemente to attend the football game.
Banos was Hungarian. when the Nazis invaded Hungary, he was placed in the Hungarian SS, where he served as a spy for the Allies. Read more about Banos here.
