Writing a compelling biography of a famous major league baseball player from Puerto Rico who died at age 38 in an airplane crash while transporting relief items to Nicaraguan earthquake victims is difficult.
The sports star at issue is Roberto Clemente (1934-1972), who played right field for the Pittsburgh Pirates from February through October year after year, and frequently played winter baseball in his Puerto Rican homeland.
Why is it difficult? For lots of reasons, some general, some specific to Clemente:
It is frequently futile to seek the true character of a sports hero because they are, sad to say, often shallow.
Sports heroes are sometimes so thoroughly mythologized that almost nobody willing to talk knows the real person, and lots of fans are content to stick with the mythology.
Although Clemente spoke some English, he expressed himself more eloquently in Spanish, a language not native to his biographer.
Many of the sources most conversant with the real Clemente are either dead, or alive but forgetful.
Because of Clemente’s mercy mission that led to his death, he has already been canonized, so to speak, and who wants to punch holes in the saga of a saint?
Despite the obstacles, David Maraniss has written a compelling biography. Those who know Maraniss’ previous books will understand why the journalist-author has been able to overcome the odds. As both a Washington Post reporter and as a book author, Maraniss is among the best of the past 25 years. Maraniss’ previous biographies – of Bill Clinton, Al Gore and Vince Lombardi – sparkled. Another book – “They Marched Into Sunlight: War and Peace, Vietnam and America, October 1967” – is one of the strongest nonfiction narratives tying together the Southeast Asia war and the dissent across the United States ever published or likely to be published.
As a biographer, Maraniss simultaneously captures Clemente the baseball star, Clemente the family man, Clemente the civil rights pioneer, Clemente the humanitarian and Clemente the occasional diva. A major weakness of the contemporary biographical craft is reductionism – relying on one explanation (such as greed, vanity or lust) to illuminate all aspects of a subject’s character. Trouble is, reductionism is almost always intellectually dishonest, and sometimes the hallmark of a lazy biographer. Maraniss never comes close to descending into that pit.
Although Puerto Rican, not African-American, Clemente, with his dark skin, suffered racial prejudice across the United States during his entire career. Professional baseball player Jackie Robinson broke the major league baseball color barrier a few years before Clemente set foot on the mainland, but that did little to make Clemente’s life easy. Sure, Clemente sometimes lashed out in anger. But more often, he acted constructively, learning the teachings of Martin Luther King Jr. and enrolling in King’s civil rights reform efforts.
In addition to overcoming the dark-skin prejudice, Clemente had to labor to shatter the stereotype that Latino-born baseball players are lazy or showoffs. Clemente never exhibited laziness, Maraniss says. Instead, he always hustled on the field, and he played through numerous injuries. As for the showoff label, well, Clemente played with flair and made everything look so easy because of his awesome physique, attention to healthy habits and desire to succeed.
Maraniss places a great deal of the blame where it belongs, on sportswriters for newspapers and magazines who disseminated negative stereotypes without considering the damage caused. Maraniss names names, to the point where the now-deceased sportswriters ought to be disturbed in their graves and those still alive should publicly apologize.
At the end of the book, Maraniss demonstrates his talent as an investigative reporter. He finds and explains the evidence that the airplane chartered by Clemente to fly relief supplies to Nicaragua on the final day of 1972 never should have been licensed. The plane’s owner and pilot both should have been banned from flying years earlier.
Clemente’s skeleton is somewhere beneath the ocean waters surrounding Puerto Rico. Divers never recovered his body. Maraniss’ biography will need to substitute as a worthy memorial.
Steve Weinberg is a biographer in Columbia, Mo.
