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

him. Clemente talked about going back to Puerto Rico. Fernández said it would be a big mistake. Neither of them could sleep much. They were both consumed by baseball. If Fernández wasn’t hitting, his mind raced with worries about his slump. If he was hitting, he stayed awake yearning for his next time at bat. In his mind’s eye, he practiced swinging from his new stance, over and over, the low crouch he had developed during the winter in Cuba. Clemente just wanted to get in the lineup.
    After a mediocre first month, the Royals started to look formidable again by late May. A full complement of veterans bolstered the lineup, led at the plate by Amoros and slugger Rocky Nelson, who had been dropped by the Cleveland Indians. Delormier Downs, with its short porch in right, was made for the stocky left-handed slugger, who had cracked a record thirty-four homers in 1953. To strengthen the pitchingstaff, Ed Roebuck and Tom Lasorda had been sent down from Brooklyn, and Joe Black, struggling with the Dodgers, was also on his way. Lasorda had lost his spot on the big club when the Dodgers activated another bonus baby who, unlike Clemente, they kept on the twenty-five-man major league roster and did not try to hide in Canada. He was a left-handed pitcher named Sandy Koufax. Clemente was the team ghost, so deep in the dugout that he couldn’t even get in a good scrap when the Sugar Kings arrived in Montreal for their first five-game visit.
    Havana was stocked with Cuban players and managed by the Cuban Regie Otero. They had a fine time during the series razzing the two Cubans on the Royals, Fernández and Amoros, who played with many of them back home during the winter. A constant stream of profanity flew back and forth in Spanish, all of it beyond the comprehension of the International League umpires. Midway through the game on Thursday, May 27, Amoros was at the plate and made a half-swing at a pitch, which the umpire called a ball. Otero rushed from his dugout, furious, claiming that Amoros had gone around far enough for a swinging strike. After what was described as a “far from complimentary” exchange of suggestions between the batter and opposing manager, tempers remained edgy the rest of the game.
    When it was over, according to Dink Carroll’s reconstruction of the confrontation in his Gazette column, the Sugar Kings had to walk through the Royals dugout on their way to the clubhouse. As Mike Guerra, Havana’s catcher, passed the Royals, he noticed that Macon and Rocky Nelson were standing sentinel in front of Amoros.
    “What are you doing, trying to protect him?” Guerra asked.
    “Why don’t you mind your own business,” Macon responded.
    Guerra answered with a kick to Macon’s shins.
    Macon smacked Guerra in the nose, and they wrestled until they were separated. Later, as the Sugar Kings were loading for the trip back to their hotel, Guerra and manager Otero stood outside the bus, waiting to confront Macon again, but he slipped out a stadium door.
    Ten days later, the Royals undertook their first trip to Havana. As part of the agreement that Sugar Kings owner Roberto Maduro had struck to gain his franchise, the seven other teams paid their own wayto Richmond, the league’s southernmost city on the mainland, and the Sugar Kings subsidized their flights from there. The schedule was drawn so that teams played a series against the Virginians on the way to Cuba. Late on the Saturday night of June 5, tired and famished, the Royals caught a bus from Parker Field out to the airport in Richmond. Frustrated to discover that the airport restaurant was already closed, Macon divided the team into two groups to scrounge for food at nearby roadside diners. But the four Royals with dark skin, Clemente, Amoros, Fernández, and Joe Black (he had joined the team that week), were denied service at the diners, so Macon picked up sandwiches and milk for them. After several delays, the charter flight left for Miami at 1:45 in the