Roberto & Me (3 page)

FLIP'S FAN CLUB IS IN A STRIP MALL ON SHELBYVILLE ROAD
. It's the place to go in Louisville if you want sports cards and memorabilia. Coach Valentini opened the store after he retired. Flip is the kind of guy who can never sit around and do nothing all day. He has to be busy all the time. That's the way I want to be when I retire someday.

The bell on the door jangled when I walked in. Flip's is a tiny little place, with cards and stuff jammed all over. Flip is not what you'd call a neat freak. And I doubt that the store makes much money for him. Not many kids are serious card collectors like me. But running the store gives Flip something to do when he's not coaching our team. Baseball has always been his life.

Flip was reading the newspaper when I came in. He's really old, and it shows. The little hair he has is
pure white, and some of it grows out of his ears and nose. Me and the other guys on our team always tell him that he should trim that stuff because it grosses us out, but Flip says he hardly has any hair so he's not going to cut off what he's still got left.

“Hey, Stosh,” he said when I came in, “I was just readin' an article about quantum physics.”

“That's funny, Flip,” I said.

“No, for real,” he replied. “They figured out how to teleport a photon almost 90 miles.”

“What's a photon?” I asked.

“How should I know?” Flip said. “Somethin' to do with dark energy and traversable wormholes, it says here. A bunch of mumbo jumbo, if you ask me. But it says that if humans ever figure out how to travel through time, when we disappear, there'll be a rush of air into the vacuum left behind. Yeah, and it says that papers are gonna fly around, and moisture will condense out of the air into clouds.”

“I better watch out,” I told him. “I don't want it to rain in my living room.”

Flip laughed. Besides my mom and dad, he's one of the few people who knows about my “special gift.”

“What can I do fer ya today, Stosh? Or are ya just here for my scintillatin' company and good looks?”

“I'm looking for a Roberto Clemente card, Flip,” I told him. “You don't have one, do you?”

“Ah,” he said, “Clemente. The Great One, they used to call him. Plannin' a little trip to New Year's Eve, 1972, I'm guessing?”

“Well, it doesn't have to be that exact date,” I said. “As long as I can get to Roberto before he gets on that plane that killed him. I'm gonna try to talk him out of going and save his life.”

“A noble mission,” Flip told me. “A tip of the hat to you, my boy. Hey, here's a trivia question about Clemente: Why did he choose the number 21 for his uniform?”

“No clue,” I replied.

“Because there are 21 letters in his full name: Roberto Clemente Walker. You could look it up.”

Flip pulled out one of his thick baseball books and started flipping through the pages until he found the entry for Roberto Clemente.

“Look at Clemente just as a hitter,” Flip told me. “He won the National League batting title four times.
Four
times! When he died, only ten other players in history had reached 3,000 hits. He played in 14 World Series games and got a hit in each one. Nobody with more than 12 World Series games can say that. And even though Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, and Hank Aaron were way more famous, Clemente had a higher lifetime batting average than any of 'em.”

“I know he was a great hitter,” I said.

“He was even better defensively,” Flip told me. “He won 12 straight Gold Glove Awards.”

“Okay, so the guy could play the field,” I said.

“Plus, he was a 12-time All-Star,” Flip continued. “He was the 1966 National League Most Valuable Player and the 1971 World Series MVP, and he led
the Pirates to two World Championships: in 1960 and 1971. Stosh, Clemente may have been the best all-around player in the game since Honus Wagner. He was also on the Pirates, of course.”

I had no idea how great he was.
Pittsburgh Pirates

“Did you ever see him play?” I asked.

“Oh, yeah,” Flip said, “plenty of times. I used to drive an hour and a half to Crosley Field in Cincinnati just to see him when the Pirates came to play the Reds. Late sixties, early seventies. But the thing with Clemente was this, Stosh: He was more than just statistics. It wasn't just numbers with the guy.
He played with a passion and intensity that nobody else had. I mean, there was somethin' almost…
royal
about him.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“It's hard to put into words,” he said. “You'd have to see it with your own eyes. Oh, yeah, I guess you
will
see it with your own eyes, won't ya?”

“Hopefully,” I said. “That is, if you have a Clemente card.”

Flip closed the book and started rooting around the store. He had to look in every drawer, cabinet, and file. Fortunately, there weren't any other customers around.

“Hmmm, this is interesting,” Flip said as he leafed through a dog-eared file. “Did you know that seven major-league players died in plane crashes?”

Flip loves this baseball trivia stuff. I think he'd be happy if he just spent the whole day learning more trivia. I glanced at the clock on the wall. Soon I would have to be heading home for dinner.

“There was Clemente, of course,” Flip continued, “and Thurman Munson, the Yankee catcher. His plane crashed in 1979. Cory Lidle, also with the Yankees, in 2006. Ken Hubbs, the second baseman of the Cubs, in 1964. Two guys died in 1956: Charlie Peete of the Cardinals and Tom Gastall of the Orioles. I remember them. And way back in 1925, the Cincinnati pitcher Marvin Goodwin died in a small plane crash. Well, I guess it had to be a small plane. They didn't have any big planes back then. I mean, the
Wright brothers only flew in their airplane in, what, 1903 or something?”

“So, do you think you might have a Clemente card?” I asked, trying to get Flip back on the subject.

“Hey, look at this, Stosh,” Flip said excitedly. “Two of these guys were teammates! Clemente and Munson both played winter ball in Puerto Rico for the San Juan Senators one year. And they both died in plane crashes. Ain't that somethin'?”

It was something, but it wasn't something that would help me get a Roberto Clemente card. Flip and I just about turned the store upside down. He even looked in his safe, where he keeps his more valuable cards. No Clemente. It was almost as if Flip had a card for every player in the history of baseball
except for
Roberto Clemente.

He did come across a newspaper clipping about the plane crash that killed Clemente and said I could have it. I stuck it in my backpack. If I ever did find Clemente, I would be able to show him the clipping and hopefully talk him out of getting on the plane.

“Gee, I'm sorry, Stosh,” Flip finally said. “It looks like I can't help you on this one after all.”

“It's okay, Flip.”

Well, we tried, anyway. Maybe I could find a Clemente card somewhere else. They aren't that rare. I'd just have to keep my eyes open.

E
B
AY! OF COURSE
!

As I rode my bike home from Flip's, I figured I'd see if I could find a Roberto Clemente card on eBay. I get a lot of cool stuff that way. One time I got a 1951 Bobby Thomson card on eBay for 11 cents. Sweet!

When I got on the computer, there was an email from my dad:

 

STILL COMING OVER TODAY AT 5?

 

Shoot! I forgot! Mom was working until midnight, and I was supposed to have dinner with my dad. I looked at the clock. Quarter to five. eBay would have to wait. I rushed back out the door and rode my bike over to Dad's place.

My dad lives in a little apartment on the other side of Louisville. I see him once or twice a week. It's
not any big “custody” arrangement. We just kind of worked it out together.

Sometimes I wish I didn't have to go see my father. But then, sometimes I wish I didn't have to see my mom. They're parents, right? I bet sometimes they'd rather not see me either.

When I was little, my dad taught me how to play ball, and he got me into card collecting too. But a while back, he was involved in a car crash that left him paralyzed. So playing ball is out. We pretty much watch TV, eat pizza, and play video games together. Stuff he can do. It's okay. He loves video games almost as much as he loves baseball.

“What's the word on the street, Butch?” my dad asked when I came to the door. He always calls me Butch.

We covered the usual ground—school, Mom, girls, and stuff like that—until we got around to the thing we talk about the most: baseball. He told me that his boyhood hero was Thurman Munson, who was a catcher for the Yankees in the seventies. I remembered that Munson was one of those seven players who died in plane crashes. My dad had no idea that Clemente and Munson were teammates for a season in Puerto Rico. I like telling him something about baseball that he doesn't know.

“Did you ever see Roberto Clemente play?” I asked.

It seems like when you mention Clemente to grown-ups, they go on and on about how great he was
or what a humanitarian he was. But not my dad.

“Oh, yeah, I saw him play a lot when I was a little kid,” he told me. “I
hated
Clemente.”

“Why?” I asked.

“'Cause I'm a Yankee fan,” he replied.

Dad told me that one of his first memories was watching the Yankees play the Pirates in the 1960 World Series. Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris were on the Yankees back then, and the Yanks were favored to wipe the floor with the Pirates. But after six games, the two teams were all tied up. The winner of Game 7 would be the World Champion.

“It was the bottom of the eighth,” my dad told me. “The Yankees were ahead, 7–5. It was looking good. There were two outs and two on when Clemente came up.”

“And he hit a homer?” I asked.

“Nah,” Dad said, “he hit this weak grounder between the pitcher and first base. Shoulda been an easy third out. But Clemente beat it out. The
next
guy hit a homer, and Pittsburgh went ahead, 9–7.”

“Was that how it ended?” I asked.

“Nope,” Dad continued. “The Yankees scored two runs in the top of the ninth to tie the game. But Bill Mazeroski led off the bottom of the ninth for the Pirates and hit a solo homer to end it. I'll tell you, that broke a lot of hearts in New York. The Yankees outscored the Pirates 55 to 27, but they lost the Series.”

“It's not fair to blame that on Clemente,” I said. “The pitcher or the first baseman should have made
the play on him to end the inning. If you were gonna hate anybody, it should have been Mazeroski. He was the guy who hit the home run to win it.”

“Oh, I hated him too,” Dad said. “Hey, what did I know? I was a kid. I wasn't gonna blame my own team for losing.”

“Clemente was a great player, Dad.”

“I know, I know,” my father said. “Wait a minute. Don't tell me. Let me guess. You're gonna go back in time and save Clemente, aren't you? You're gonna try to talk him out of getting on that plane.”

“How did you know?”

“If I could do what you can do, that's what I would do,” Dad said. “It's a no-brainer.”

“I just have one problem,” I told my dad. “I don't have a Roberto Clemente card. Flip thought he might have one, but he couldn't find it.”

My dad wrinkled up his forehead for a moment, and then he snapped his fingers.

“I think I have one,” he said.

“Really?”

My dad laughed, then wheeled himself into his bedroom, where he keeps the stuff he collects. My dad sold most of his valuable baseball cards a while ago and switched over to collecting autographed baseballs. But he kept a shoe box full of cards he didn't think anybody would buy.

The value of a baseball card depends partly on its condition. A card that has marks or creases isn't worth nearly as much as the same card in mint
condition. Dad pulled a shoe box out of his closet that was labeled
POOR
.

“It must be in here,” he said, flipping through the cards in the box. “I remember it.”

“It's okay, Dad,” I told him. “I should be able to find one on eBay.”

“Aha!” he said as he pulled out a card.

Well, it was a Clemente card, all right. I could make out the
CLE
and the
TE
. The rest was hard to read because the card was filled with holes.

The Roberto Clemente card, before it was destroyed. Note the first name. As recently as the sixties, some Americans were still uncomfortable with Spanish names.
The Topps Company, Inc.

“What happened to it?” I asked.

“Me and my friends used it as a dartboard,” my father said. “After that World Series, we really hated the Pirates.”

“You messed up Clemente good,” I told him.

“You should've seen what we did to Mazeroski,” he said.

I didn't touch the card. If it really did work and I held it in my hand, I knew what would happen. I would get that tingling sensation in my fingertips. It would move up my arm and across my body, and the next thing I knew I would be in the year…

Actually, I didn't know where I would be. The Clemente card was so beat up, you couldn't even see the year on the back of it. But it didn't matter. If the card was printed any year before Clemente died, I would be able to warn him not to get on the plane.

“Do you think a card in this condition will still work?” I asked.

“Beats me,” Dad said. “You're the one who has the power. Give it a shot. Keep the card. It's worth pennies. Happy birthday.”

We both laughed as he carefully slid the junky card into a plastic holder.

I looked at the Clemente card closely. It may not be worth more than a few pennies in the baseball card market. But it could be worth a lot more. If I could convince Roberto Clemente not to get on that plane, he might still be alive today. I stashed the card in my backpack.

“Hey, speaking of birthday presents…” my dad said as he pulled a wrapped package out of his closet.

My dad hasn't worked since his accident, and he doesn't have a lot of money. His presents are usually stuff he picks up at the dollar store. I wasn't expecting much when I tore off the wrapping paper. So I was totally blown away when I saw that my present was the new Nintendo portable video game system.

“Dad!” I exclaimed. “Where'd you get the money for this?”

“Your mother chipped in on it,” he replied. “It's from both of us.”

I thanked him about a million times. After we had some pizza and tried out the video game system, I figured it was time to leave. My dad gets tired early, and my mom doesn't like me riding my bike home late at night.

“Hey, I got a brainstorm,” Dad said as I picked up my stuff to go. “As long as you're going back in time to see Clemente, how about doing your old man a little favor while you're there?”

Uh-oh. I was afraid he was going to ask me to do something. He usually does. My dad is always cooking up some get-rich-quick scheme for me to pull off for him. Like, he'll give me money to deposit in the bank fifty years ago so he can collect the interest. Or he'll assign me to buy up baseball cards in the past so he can sell them at today's prices. It's so annoying.

“Dad, we talked about this,” I said. “I'm not gonna
do some borderline illegal thing to make money. Forget about it.”

“No, no, nothin' like that,” Dad said. “All I want you to do is stop Clemente from getting that cheap infield hit in the 1960 World Series.”

“Dad!”

“You could rewrite baseball history, Butch!” he exclaimed. “You could win the World Series for the Yankees!”

I didn't like the idea. It sounded wrong. How could I even do that, anyway? And if I was going to change history, it would have to be for a more important reason.

“Haven't the Yankees won the World Series
enough
times?” I asked.

“Ah, I guess you're right,” Dad said with a sigh. “But what about this? You said Clemente and Thurman Munson were teammates one year, right? And they both died in plane crashes. Well, while you're talking Clemente out of getting on his plane, how about telling him to talk Munson out of getting on
his
plane?”

“Dad…”

“Think of it as saving two birds with one stone,” he said. “Nothin' wrong with that, is there?”

My father looked at the portable video game system that he had just given me. Then he looked at me again.

“I'll see what I can do,” I told him.

That's what my mom always says to me when she
doesn't want to make any promises.
I'll see what I can do.

“Fair enough,” Dad said, reaching up to hug me. “Oh, one last thing before you go. Remember how you said your only problem was that you didn't have a Clemente card?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I think you might have another problem,” Dad said. “You're gonna have a tough time convincing Clemente not to get on that plane.”

“Why?”

“Because Roberto Clemente didn't speak English.”