Free Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero by David Maraniss

he disappeared again. Amoros was shipped down from Brooklyn, just as Dink Carroll had predicted, and Gino Cimoli was battling for more playing time, and veterans Dick Whitman and Jack Dempsey Cassini elbowed for playing time—and suddenly the outfield was loaded and Clemente became the odd man out.There was talk then and later about the racial politics of the situation. Some have asserted that the reason the Dodgers refused to protect Clemente, the bonus baby, by keeping him on the major league club all year, was that the team already had reached its limit of black players. The Dodgers had Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, and Junior Gilliam starting in the field, and Don Newcombe and Joe Black on the mound. There was a large dose of truth to the suspicion that unstated quotas existed then, but another baseball reality had a bearing on the story. Sandy Amoros, the black Cuban, was indisputably ahead of Clemente on the Brooklyn ladder after his outstanding year in Triple-A ball. It was Amoros, more than Clemente, who suffered because of the implicit quota, since he was more likely to be the fourth black in the Dodgers lineup. The first injustice was his demotion, and from there followed the outfield shuffling in Montreal that made less room for Clemente.
    The reasons Clemente would not get much playing time in Montreal were also a mix of baseball practicality on the field level and duplicity from above. Who knows how much he would have played had he been white and not a bonus baby? If they were not huge talents, Whitman and Cassini were seasoned vets with a little major league experience. Whitman, then thirty-three, had played for the Dodgers after the war, and spent four years with the 83rd Infantry Division, winning a Bronze Star and Purple Heart in the Battle of theBulge. Nothing in the International League scared him. Cimoli could get hot for a few days and carry the club. Montreal had a first-place tradition, an expectation of success, and even if the Royals were a minor league team, winning was at least equal in priority to the development of raw prospects.
    Any urge the Brooklyn organization felt to develop Clemente was overtaken by two seemingly contradictory notions that nonetheless each worked against the young bonus baby. The Dodgers wanted to hide him, but they also sensed that hiding him was impossible and whatever they did with him would only be to the benefit of some other team that drafted him. Their reasoning was illogical, their actions halfhearted, but the orders were to play him only occasionally. Max Macon, the manager, denied that he was being told whom to play, but few took that claim at face value. Glenn Cox, a pitcher on the team, said players always know about other players, and it was obvious to all of them that Clemente was something special and deserved more time. “Macon had orders, and that was that,” said Bob Watt, who served as road secretary for the Royals. “Whenever we’d spot a scout in the stands, that would be the end of Clemente for that day. He never had the chance to show what he could do.” The thinking in Brooklyn, Buzzie Bavasi acknowledged later, went like this: “Since we were going to lose him anyhow in the draft, why should we spend so much time developing him for somebody else? We used other players and Clemente went in only on defense in the late innings or played sparingly.”
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    Clemente and Chico Fernández, the Cuban shortstop, lived in a rooming house a few blocks down Delormier Avenue from the stadium, the same place where Walter Alston had stayed the year before. Neither of them had a car, but they could walk to work, and got around town on the streetcar that ran up and down the avenue. Their rooms were in the French half of town, and the widow who ran the house spoke neither Spanish nor English. Her daughter was just starting to learn English and knew less than Clemente, who had studied English in high school but rarely used it in Puerto