I saw this mural all summer long, on my way back from IronPigs' games. It's on the side of a barbershop called Sports Cuts. I guess the owner is from Puerto Rico. The mural features four or five athletes, but the only one I recognize is Clemente, and he jumped out immediately. I learned this autumn while working my way through Roberto Clemente, the Passion and the Grace of Baseball's Last Hero, by David Maraniss, that Clemente's boyhood nickname was Momen. I also learned that the same things sometimes said nowadays about Latino players were being said when Clemente played, that the New York media hype machine has not changed a bit in the decades since the Pittsburgh Pirates won with Clemente, and that Clemente's death, at age 38, was a senseless tragedy. The plane that he was on should never have been allowed to leave the ground but in the end there were too many holes in the system to prevent its flight.
As complex and charismastic as Roberto Clemente was, the Maraniss biography was a slog to finish. It made me think about what biography writing will become in this age of Facebook, YouTube, etc. One thing that was fascinating, however, about the book was the relationships that Clemente made with young fans, getting to know them, inviting them and their families to games on the road and to stay with him and his family during the offseason in Puerto Rico. Some of those stories were the best of all. They pointed up just how much baseball has changed.
