Time Machine Talk
Who are you going back to see?
If you’re a regular reader of this newsletter, you know it covers baseball history from roughly 1985-94. Those dates were not randomly chosen. They cover the period from when I first started watching baseball to the end of my childhood, more or less. I turned fifteen in 1994, and my priorities were in the midst of being rearranged. I still loved baseball, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t take a back seat to many other interests around that time.
Over the nearly three decades that followed, baseball has waxed and waned in my life. The Royals’ runs to the 2014 and 2015 World Series were definite highlights, but numerous 100-loss seasons from the team I follow took a toll as well. I’ve gotten married twice, had three sons, buried too many family members and friends, moved more times than I can count, and experienced numerous other ups and downs in life that I don’t have time to recount here.
Baseball has never gone away though. Through it all, I’ve found time to go to the park, and in the last decade or so, as I’ve watched my sons embrace the game to various degrees, the sport has experienced a kind of renaissance in terms of its importance in my life. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.
Baseball (and I think this is true of all sports) never matters as much to us as it does when we’re kids, free of so much of the other crap that weighs on us and demands our attention as we get older. That’s why I chose to write about baseball from the mid-80’s to the mid-90’s. It wasn’t just to indulge my nostalgia, though that was certainly part of it. I enjoy talking about the modern game too, but no period made as much of an impression on me as it did during the years of my youth. Baseball was far more than a game to me then, and at the same time it was just that, a game in its purest form, unspoiled by any of the trappings of the outside world.
On the whole, I believe these weekly trips down memory lane have been a great success. I’ve produced a lot of work that I’m very proud of, and I’ve had a blast diving into my memories of the game and researching the history to make sure I’m not remembering something wrong. And it’s given me a chance to connect with many of you and discuss all sorts of baseball topics. (Usually on social media. For whatever reason, most of you don’t really feel the comments section on Substack.)
Naturally, our golden ages and childhoods don’t always sync up. And baseball has such a rich history that a lot of it often falls outside our combined eras of choice. Nor does it stop moving forward. Each year brings a new season into the record book.
But I don’t want to talk about the “future” today. I want to go back even further into the past. Baseball fans have a lot of standby conversation topics they can pull out at any given moment, and one of my favorites is this: If you could go back in time and see any baseball player in history, who would you pick?
For the purposes of clarification, let me state that I’m talking only about players who predate you entirely. I get it, I’d love to go back in time and watch George Brett again. Hell, I could even cheat a bit and say I want to see Brett’s run at .400 in 1980, or watch him as part of the 1977 Royals, who set the franchise record with 102 wins and lost in heartbreaking fashion to the Yankees in the ALCS. But I’m not going to. Those moments do predate me, but I got to see Brett in action for nearly a decade, including the 1985 championship run, so that will have to suffice. This has to be a guy you never even had the chance to watch.
The question can be tortuous for seamheads. With over a hundred-and-fifty years of history, there is no shortage of appealing options, and there isn’t a wrong answer. Nor would it surprise me if most people’s answers changed on a daily basis, depending on their mood.
For me, the answer is easy. Don’t get me wrong. There are so many great players I would love to go back and watch for just one game. If I had a fully functioning time machine, I’d be bouncing around from Ruth and Gehrig, to Mays and Mantle, Koufax and Gibson, Shoeless Joe and Ty Cobb, DiMaggio and Jackie Robinson. I could go on and on, you get the idea. But if you’re telling me I only have one trip, I know exactly who I’d pick. I’ve known since I was a little kid.
Roberto Clemente was one of the greatest players in baseball history, and unlike a lot of superstars in any field, much less professional sports, he might have been an even better human being. He died in 1972, seven years before I was born, in a plane crash while flying to deliver supplies and medical aid to victims of an earthquake in Nicaragua. Based on his humanitarian activities, of which that was just the tip of the iceberg, and his incredible career achievements, the Hall of Fame waived the traditional five-year waiting period and inducted him immediately.
Clemente is the perfect example of an all-around great player. Or, on second thought, maybe he isn’t. What I mean is, most great all-around players don’t do any one thing “great.” But they do a little bit of everything, and they do it extremely well, and when you put it all together it equates to greatness, and is arguably more valuable than someone who is great at one aspect of the game but may be subpar in others. Clemente, on the other hand, was legitimately great at each aspect of the game.
He wasn’t a burner and didn’t steal many bases. That might have been the weakest part of his game, but it definitely wasn’t a weakness. He was still fast enough to leg out plenty of doubles and triples, and to run down the ball in right field. And when he got to it, he had a cannon for an arm. Do yourself favor and find a highlight reel of his on YouTube. I’m willing to bet that there are some devoted exclusively to him gunning out runners from the outfield.
Clemente was never going to challenge Ruth’s homerun record alongside Hank Aaron, but he hit with plenty of pop without sacrificing average or on-base percentage. He knew how to adjust as a situational hitter and approach each at-bat with the correct strategy for the situation. His baseball IQ was through the roof, but while he played with a competitive zeal, he never lost his childlike love for the game. Even though I’ve only seen him in highlight packages, his joy in playing a game he never took for granted is apparent.
My favorite players have always been complete players. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate pitchers, sluggers, speedsters, and defensive wizards as much as the next guy, but the players I hold in the highest regard are those who bring everything to the table. A lot of that has to do with growing up watching George Brett (and to a lesser degree, Willie Wilson). Griffey and pre-steroid Bonds were two of my favorites. So it’s no surprise that Clemente is my favorite player from baseball history. Check out his career stats:
He also won two World Series (1960, 1971), an NL MVP (how did he only win one?), was the World Series MVP in 1971, played in 15 All-Star Games, won 12 consecutive Gold Gloves, and batted over .300 in thirteen seasons. Not only that, but he was also the first Caribbean-born/Latin American player to start as a position player in the World Series and win a league or Fall Classic MVP. You can find players with better stats in each individual category, but good luck finding a better overall resume.
None of this explains why he matters so much to me, a white Irish-Catholic kid who grew up rooting for the Royals in rural Kansas and was born nearly a decade after he died. Some of you will understand this and some of you won’t. That’s okay. It’s hard to explain, but I’ll tell you why I love Roberto Clemente so much.
I had this book when I was a kid. I don’t remember the title and I don’t know who wrote it. I don’t even know who gave it to me. Probably a family friend who picked up on my love of baseball at a young age. The book has long since disappeared, but it made good use of its time in my house and left an impression.
It was a biography of Roberto Clemente, and it wasn’t a kids book. Whoever gave it to me probably didn’t have kids of their own, or they would have considered different reading levels. I don’t even think I could read when I first opened it up, and even if I had started on See Spot Run, I definitely wasn’t far enough along to read this three-hundred-page tome intended for adults.
But like many biographies, it had a large section in the middle devoted entirely to glossy photos. They were even in color. This was long before YouTube or the internet, so I didn’t have easy access to Clemente highlights. But when I later saw them on TV or maybe the occasional baseball highlight VHS, I was fully prepared to understand what I was seeing. I must have flipped through those photos a thousand times when I was a kid. If it was a rainy day and I couldn’t go outside to play, I’d find a cozy spot and leaf through the Clemente book. Looking for inspiration before I hit the diamond myself in little league? Crack open the Clemente book again. Looking to impress a friend with my baseball knowledge? Go straight to the Clemente book. Or if I was simply bored with time on my hands, what better way to kill some time than by geeking out over the guy I quickly came to believe was the best baseball player ever.
Eventually, I learned to read well enough to tackle the actual text. I’m not sure I ever read it straight through, but I jumped around and read each chapter out of order. I’m not sure why. I got the gist of it though, and none of it changed my mind that this guy was the G.O.A.T. I still get a little thrill whenever I see a photo of him and recognize it as one of the pictures from that long-lost book.
Clemente was everything I ever wanted to be as both a baseball player and human being, and while I know I’ve fallen short on both accounts, I take some solace in knowing that he set the bar so high. Each year, the Roberto Clemente Award is given to the player “who best exemplifies the game of baseball, sportsmanship, community involvement, and the individual’s contribution to his team.”
I’m simply going to crib those words for my conclusion, because I can’t come up with a more fitting summation of his legacy than that.
As always, thank you for reading Powder Blue Nostalgia. I’ve only got one question for you and you know what it is. Who are you going back in time to watch? Let us know in the comments below!
I'd take Willie Mays, but Clemente is certainly a worthy candidate. And hey, their careers overlap almost perfectly, so maybe I get two for the price of one!
Excellent use of language and inspiration with your way back machine Patrick. Really enjoyed going back to the "70's" and remembering about the time frame of Roberto & the Pirates. He was a great player and human being. It's a shame that his life was cut short.
As far as a player I would like to see play the game, it would be Shoeless Joe Jackson. He was born in Greenville SC, so we have a nice museum next to our ballpark in his old home where he died. Love your stories...