Fifty years ago, the great Clemente made Hall of Fame history

There was no doubt that Roberto Clemente was bound for the Hall of Fame when he stepped off the field on Oct. 11, 1972, at Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati -- the day the Reds eliminated his Pirates in Game 5 of that year’s National League Championship Series. Less than two weeks earlier, on Sept. 30, the last day of the regular season, the Puerto Rican-born outfielder had notched his 3,000th career hit with a double. Only 10 other men before him had reached that number, and as the 11th, Clemente was guaranteed a plaque in Cooperstown.

His other credentials were also overwhelming: In 18 Major League seasons, all of them with Pittsburgh, Clemente had also clobbered 240 home runs, driven in 1,305 runs, won 12 consecutive Gold Gloves in right field from 1961-72 (tied with Willie Mays for the most by an outfielder) and been named the 1966 National League MVP.

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He finished 1972 with a .317 career regular-season batting average. And numbers like his 255 career assists in right field -- a National League record since at least 1900 -- and lifetime .973 fielding percentage (a rudimentary measure compared to today’s next-level metrics) hardly do justice to his powerful, accurate throwing arm and spectacular, acrobatic catches.

Considering that Clemente was also a 15-time All-Star, a four-time National League batting champion, a two-time World Series champion and the 1971 World Series MVP, his path to being a first-ballot Hall of Famer was as clear as any has ever been.

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What no one knew at the time, of course, was that Oct. 11, 1972, would mark Clemente’s final game on a Major League field. On Dec. 31 of that year, the 38-year-old chartered a plane from his native Puerto Rico to personally deliver supplies to the victims of an earthquake that struck near Managua, the capital of Nicaragua, on Dec. 23. The aircraft crashed in the ocean shortly after takeoff, claiming the lives of everyone on board.

On Jan. 2, 1973, while the search for Clemente was underway (his body was never found), the Baseball Writers’ Association of America (BBWAA) reached out to its Hall of Fame voting members to urge them to waive the five-year waiting period for eligibility, which had been established in 1954, and elect the late outfielder right away.

In a statement, then-BBWAA president Joe Heiling said, “We feel that Clemente, like Sandy Koufax and Stan Musial, would be a first-ballot inductee, so why wait?”

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On Jan. 3, the Hall of Fame’s eligibility rules were modified to allow for immediate consideration of any candidate who passed away while active or before the five-year waiting period was up. But while Clemente’s Hall of Fame credentials were not in question, not everyone agreed with the idea.

Citing the possibility that waiving the five-year waiting period for Clemente could open the door for less-obvious candidates to be enshrined in moments of intense emotion down the road, on Jan. 5, Richard Dozer of the Chicago Tribune wrote, “I submit that Roberto Clemente, one of the most deserving Hall of Fame candidates of our time, would not have wanted to pioneer anything that had the least chance of someday watering down the greatest of all baseball honors.”

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He added: “And on the human side, I feel that the enshrinement of Clemente in 1978, instead of under a deluge of tears now from his loved ones, would have far greater impact -- if only for his children’s sake.”

Two days later, Bob Broeg, sports editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, expressed similar sentiments in a column. “To steamroll Roberto into the Hall of Fame,” Broeg wrote, “is really a disservice to a proud person who liked to feel he was the best in life, not in death.

“Besides, the customary five-year cooling off period between the end of a player’s career and his eligibility for the Hall of Fame would be particularly appropriate in Clemente’s case. Five years from now, all of us could benefit anew from the reminder of the compassion and consideration of the outstanding athlete and humanitarian who died on a mission of mercy to the helpless and hopeless of Managua.”

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Dozer, Broeg and those who agreed with them, however, were in the minority. Once the BBWAA decision was made to waive the five-year waiting period for Clemente, the next order of business was deciding how that vote would take place; ballots for that year’s election had been mailed out in late December. So the vote for Clemente was conducted via a special “yes or no” ballot.

The results of the special election were announced on March 20, 1973, in St. Petersburg, Fla., with Vera, Clemente’s widow and the mother of his three sons, in attendance. Clemente received 93 percent of the 424 votes -- at the time, the largest number of Hall of Fame ballots that had ever been cast. Of those 424 voters, 393 had voted yes, two had abstained and 29 had voted no -- not because they didn’t believe Clemente was worthy of induction, but because like Dozer and Broeg, they were opposed to waiving the five-year wait period.

Having surpassed the 75 percent of votes required for election, Clemente thus became the first Latin American-born player elected to the Hall of Fame. The unprecedented move can only be compared to the BBWAA’s decision to elect Yankees first baseman Lou Gehrig by acclamation at the Winter Meetings in 1939, after the Iron Horse was forced to retire from baseball that year when he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

“By that point, everyone knew that Clemente was going to go into the Hall of Fame,” says Adrian Burgos Jr., professor of history at the University of Illinois who specializes in minority participation in U.S. sports and author of the book Playing America's Game: Baseball, Latinos, and the Color Line. “We just didn't know how many more seasons he would even play. … Latinos took great pride in knowing that they were going to go into the Hall of Fame, and it hadn't been done before, by a Latino, by an Afro-Latino. And so he becomes the first, and it was something that was celebrated with solemnity.”

Clemente, of course, was not necessarily the first Latin American-born player worthy of induction. In later years, the Hall of Fame’s Special Committees on the Negro Leagues voted to enshrine three Afro-Cuban players who had been barred from playing in the American and National Leagues because of their race: Martín Dihigo, Cristóbal Torriente and José Méndez. We are left to wonder if Clemente would have been the first Latino in the Hall of Fame had figures like Dihigo, Torriente and Méndez been allowed to play in the American or National Leagues, or if their candidacies had been considered sooner.

The same day that results of the special election for Clemente were made public, Major League Baseball also renamed the Commissioner's Award, a trophy awarded each year starting in 1971 to a ballplayer of high reputation, as the Roberto Clemente Award, in recognition of the selflessness the man known as “the Great One” displayed during his life and in his final act in service of others.

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On Aug. 6, 1973, Clemente was inducted into the Hall of Fame alongside pitcher Warren Spahn, umpire and executive Billy Evans, first baseman George Kelly and pitcher Mickey Welch -- the latter three voted in by the Hall of Fame's Veterans Committee -- and outfielder Monte Irvin, who was elected by a Special Committee on the Negro Leagues. That Clemente was inducted alongside Irvin was tragically poetic; Irvin, who had played winter ball for the Senadores de San Juan in Puerto Rico, had been Clemente’s childhood hero.

“This is Roberto’s final honor,” Vera Clemente said in her speech on her husband’s behalf. “And if he were here he would say to our people in Puerto Rico, to our people in Pittsburgh and to all his fans around the United States: Thank you.”