Stuff You Should Know - The Amazing Roberto Clemente

Episode Date: November 3, 2020

Roberto Clemente was what’s called a “complete” baseball player – he could hit, run and, man could he throw, so it’s no surprise he was made a Hall of Famer. But he was also a humanitarian, a civil rights icon, and a fiercely proud son of Puerto Rico. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Step You Should Know, a production of iHeart radios, How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast, I'm Josh Clark, there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant over there and Jerry too, gotta mention Jerry.

And this is Stuff, You Should Know. I'm surprised you picked this topic. Why? I just, I don't recognize you as a baseball guy. Oh man, probably the first thing I was ever truly into was baseball cards, like getting the newest edition of like the Beckett's Price Guide was like one of my, like the highlights of my month whenever.

Really? Yeah, for a few years I was super into baseball cards. What's funny is like, I would still, I'd watch baseball here or there, but it was baseball cards in particular I really cared about. But yeah.

So you didn't really watch baseball? No, not really. Interesting. But I really loved baseball cards. Like I wasn't like, ooh, I hate baseball, but I love baseball cards. I wasn't like complicated and complex like that. It was just, I didn't watch,

I liked baseball cards more than I liked baseball itself. That's all. I gotcha. Were you a Roberto Clemente fan? Well, I mean, he was playing his final years when I was being born, so I was not a fan, but I grew up, obviously a Braves fan, but in the mid 1970s when I first started

being a baseball fan, the Pittsburgh Pirates had a couple of really good teams, and he was not long gone before those years, so his aura was still sort of ever present when I first started watching baseball and the Pirates when they had those great awful stove top flat caps. Oh, I love those things, but yeah, on their own, just as an article of fashion, they're horrid,

but they were so unique and different too, you know? Yeah, I mean, they rank among the worst uniforms, but they're just very 70s. So yeah, they are super 70s, I think is why I love them. I mean, I think they were a throwback to the old, old days, so that was the original version, but yeah, I don't think they invented those caps. I think some of the early baseball caps

might've been flat like that. I might be wrong though. I did not know that. I think the Astros had the best 70s uniform of all though. They rank as one of the worst too. Oh, you're crazy. You have terrible taste in the 70s. I'm just talking about if you look up articles

like worst baseball uniforms ever, those are the ones that are listed. Okay, well then you're not crazy, but whoever's writing those articles is crazy. Yeah, I assume you're talking about the orange shooting star in stripes. Yeah, with like red and blue, it's very pretty. Okay, okay, so anyway, we're not talking about fashion

or uniforms or anything like that, although this is not at all surprising that we even started on this. We're talking about one particular player who wore that funny-looking pirate's hat, Roberto Clemente, who was Chuck. He actually never wore that hat, so. Well, then what are we even doing here?

That came along after him. What's the point of even doing this episode then if he never wore that hat? I'm just trying to keep Pittsburgh people from emailing us. No, I appreciate that, Chuck, I appreciate it. So we are talking about a Pittsburgh pirate, Roberto Clemente, and I knew, I knew of him, I was aware of him,

I knew that he's one of the all-time greats. I hadn't seen many plays of his, but you can't be into baseball and not know about Roberto Clemente, but I definitely didn't know nearly as much about him as I do now, thanks to this help from Ruse, who apparently was raised a Pittsburgh Pirates fan, so he had plenty of good things to say

about Roberto Clemente. Yeah, I think maybe we should tick off a few of these career stats, just to give you an idea of who we're talking about here. Lifetime batting average of 317, which if you don't know anything about baseball and you think a success rate of 30% is terrible, it is in almost everything else in life,

but in baseball, that means you're a Hall of Famer. That's how hard it is to hit a baseball. Right, I was gonna say it really goes to show how difficult hitting baseballs in the major leagues are. Yeah, you hit three out of 10 and you're great. I think I've said that before on the show, but he got 12 gold gloves in the right field, led the league in batting,

the National League that is four different times, two World Series championships, MVP 1966, MVP of the World Series in 71, where he batted 414, which is just crazy good. I think 16-time All-Star, just really just an amazing career and obviously instant Hall of Fame career. Yeah, and he was really well known for his arm. Like he would throw people out at home from right field,

from the outfield, he could throw without a bounce. He could throw all the way in and beat a runner to third or to home, which is just amazing. And it was one of the things that really got people excited about him and watching him play. But like if you look at just his stats, especially taken individually,

like he was a great player and one of the all-time greats, but statistically speaking, it doesn't necessarily show up. Like there's plenty of people who have better stats. But one of the things that made Roberto Clemente such an amazing baseball player is he was one of the true, what are called complete players or a five tool player where he could run,

he could throw, he could bat, he could field and like I keep forgetting what the fifth one is, but he could sell crackerjacks in the stand like nobody's business as well. You got an actual baseball guy on the other end of the call here, you know. Who?

Me. Oh, okay. Well, Mr. Baseball guy, if it's not selling crackerjacks, what's the fifth tool? Use me at your disposal. It's a hit for power and hit for average. So there's two hitings. That's the, oh, well, whoever knows that.

Nobody knows that. You can't just use the same thing twice and call it five tools. Well, no, you can because a lot of players can have a big boomstick, but they bat like 230. But if you can hit for average and hit for power, that's a big, big deal.

And if you can make the most exciting play in baseball to me, which is a right field to third base assist, then I mean, there's nothing more thrilling to me. It's really amazing to see for sure. It definitely is. More than even home plate for some reason, probably because it's further. One of the other things

that I think people loved about Roberto Clemente, and I think that made him such a true baseball player in a lot of people's eyes, at least in mine, but he was very well known for going after pitches that other people would have taken as a ball. Clear balls, well, high and outside, high and inside, low and whatever. And he would go after them

and he would hit them a lot of the time, which is one reason why his batting average was so high because he would go after those pitches that other people would just let go by. And then in hitting them, he would send them into places where you wouldn't expect him being a right-handed batter to hit, so he could get to base pretty frequently too.

He also was a fast runner, but he ran like he was out of his mind completely. Yeah, it's pretty fun to see him run. He would hit pitch outs, which if you, like I said, if you don't know baseball, a pitch out is when there's somebody on first base and the catcher signals to the pitcher right before they throw, the gown first is gonna steal second.

So they throw it completely out of the strike zone so that the catcher can stand up and catch it to make the throw to second. And that's called a pitch out. It's not even a real pitch. And he would swing and hit pitch outs, which is... That's awesome. No one does that, it's unheard of, it's crazy.

Yeah, that is crazy. So suffice to say that Roberto Clemente is one of the great baseball players of all time because he had it all. But it was also, it turns out, a really great human being in a lot of ways too. He was an activist for civil rights during the civil rights era.

And he was also a humanitarian, as we'll see. Like he really cared about other people and especially the plight of people who were less fortunate than him because he had came from less fortunate circumstances to begin with and he never forgot it. Like he was genuinely one of those guys who never let his fame get to his head.

And the ways that he let his fame get to his head was in, say, animosity toward the sporting press or saying like, you guys aren't giving me enough credit for being what a great player I am. That was separate, that was different. When it came to people outside of baseball, just everyday people, he was friends with those people throughout his whole career and life.

So, yes, and that is why Major League Baseball has honored him with the Roberto Clemente Award every year, which is given to the player that they feel best represents the humanitarian and philanthropic side of the game or outside the game, rather. So, quite an honor to have an award named after you. So, I think we should take a break and then maybe go back to the beginning

where and when he was born right after this. That's it for this week. We'll see you next week. I'm David Lasher and I'll see you next week. Have fun. On the podcast, HeyDude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses

and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64?

Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s.

Listen to, hey dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation?

If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so, my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me.

Yep, we know that Michael. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Uh-huh. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Oh, just stop now. If so, tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen,

so we'll never, ever have to say bye-bye-bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Alrighty, so Clemente was born in Puerto Rico. He's born in a little town called Carolina, or Carolina. And it was sugarcane territory, sugarcane plantations. And his dad, he was actually born Roberto Clemente Walker. His mother's maiden name was Walker, and his father's name was Clemente.

So he used both until he got into baseball. And he was born in the middle of the Great Depression, the youngest of seven kids. Very tough way to be born into life. It was, but I mean, like, if you're, you know, if you come from a farming family, it makes sense, you know. Oh, to have a lot of kids? Yeah. Sure.

And plus you have a lot of people to play with as you're growing up, too. That is very true. So his father was actually a foreman on a sugarcane plantation. And his mom was a huge influence in his life. I get the impression slightly more of an influence than his father was even. But one of the things that she had hoped for her son was that he would become, he would study engineering. I'm not sure why, but she wanted him to become an engineer.

And he said, yeah, I really like playing baseball. Like to the point where he and his brothers and his friends would make baseballs out of whatever was handy. Like they would put like stones in a sock. They would wad up paper, tape, whatever they could get their hands on and use whatever they could for a bat. And they would play baseball. And then as they got a little older and started to start playing in school,

they had actual equipment to play with and they would just play constantly. I read he had 10 home runs once in a game that started at 11 a.m. and ended after six because they just kept playing and playing and playing. Like that's all he wanted to do was play baseball. And one of the reasons why is because he was really, really good at it from a very young age. Yeah, I think the, I have a theory about Caribbean players that they develop so well because so many of them don't have the right gear growing up. And especially back then, because if you're out there with a broomstick and a bottle cap,

imagine what that does for your hand-eye coordination to when you have like a real barrel of a baseball bat and a baseball. Like it's no wonder that he could hit anything if you're growing up hitting bottle caps. And this wasn't just him. So many Dominican and Puerto Rican and Cuban and now just all over the place and the Caribbean players are coming up. And they, I think they make do with less as children. And that really, really hones their skills in ways that in it, you know,

there's a baseball problem in America period. Like that far, far fewer kids are growing up playing baseball now. And there's far fewer American baseball players now as a result. So one other reason Chuck, he was super into baseball was because the whole island of Puerto Rico was into baseball at the time. Like it had been exported a couple of decades before he was born from Cuba to Puerto Rico. And then also by the time he was playing, the Puerto Rican baseball leagues had really developed into something substantial and they played their season in the winter.

So if you were an American ball player, you could play in your off season down in the Caribbean, specifically in Puerto Rico, among other places. But Puerto Rico is a really attractive place to play because they were so into it. There were so many teams and so many good players already down there. But one of the, yeah, but one of the ways that it developed was from especially Negro league players making their way down there in the off season to play. I believe Roberto Clemente actually played a season with Willie Mays himself. And Willie Mays had just led the New York Giants to win the World Series.

And a couple of months later, he was down in Puerto Rico playing during the winter leagues because that's just what you did when you really wanted to play baseball. You go down to the Caribbean in the wintertime. Yeah, it's something that still happens and it's mainly what you see now as players, younger players play winter ball in Puerto Rico to just hone their skills and to get better. It's not something you see a lot of veterans doing. That's why it's pretty remarkable and I think shows the love of his country in the game that Clemente played winter ball like every year through his career.

Yeah, one of the reasons I saw that he did that was because he knew that most of the people who lived in Puerto Rico wouldn't be able to afford to go up to the States to watch him play. And he wanted for them to be able to see him play. So he played every year. Another thing, it was like you were saying some of those younger players hone their skills down there. He kept his skills honed by playing winter ball. Like he kept his swing loose and he didn't fall out of shape ever because he played baseball basically year round for 18 or 20 years.

Yeah, so by the time he hits 14, he's recruited to play softball, which is a little weird, but it was a competitive softball team and then eventually an amateur baseball team and was making I think like 40 bucks a week at 17 playing amateur baseball in Puerto Rico. And this was a time where you didn't have baseball scouts combing the Caribbean for the next new young talent. It was a very new idea to go to the Caribbean to find players. And not a lot of teams, I mean, most teams were doing it a little bit, but they didn't have the robust scouting programs down there like they do now. And they sent the Dodgers, the Brooklyn Dodgers, who very famously broke the color barrier with Jackie Robinson in 47, sent a scout named

Al Campanus who went down to Puerto Rico, saw a 19-year-old Roberto Clemente in 1954 and said, this guy is a five-tool dynamo and we need to get him up here as fast as we can. And it wasn't, I mean, that was actually kind of insightful of him because it wasn't readily obvious, especially very early in his career, when he was playing with the, what are they called, the Kengraheros, the Krabbers, that he was just going to be one of the all-time greats because he swung at lots of pitches that other people wouldn't have swung at. He ran like he was crazy. He was still finding his skills, but to be able to see how great he was going to be at that young stage, I mean, that's a credit to that. What's his name, Campanus? His

eye for talent. Yeah. Yeah, and he went on to be a lifelong baseball executive. I think retired in shame for some like racial statements he made, but long-time baseball guy. But the Dodgers got Clemente, and there was a thing, there was a rule back then from 1947 to 1965 that they got rid of in 65 for a very good reason. It was a little bit weird if you're a baseball fan today because it's so different now, but the rule was that if you were a player that was signed for more than $4,000 as a signing bonus, then you had to be on a Major League Baseball roster for two full seasons. And if you weren't, then you would become part of the rookie draft. And Clemente was signed for, I think, $10,000. And I'm not sure why they signed him for that much.

Maybe he wouldn't have gone for less, but it was not a great move because this meant that the Dodgers had to either take him to the Major Leagues for two full seasons, which was not a good call because most players in baseball start out in the Minor Leagues. In fact, all do. No one makes that jump straight to the Major Leagues, even if it's just like a cursory half-season or so. But that's even really rare. But they kept him in the Minor Leagues, and their plan was to hide him. And literally, he would go like two months between starts because they wanted to get those two seasons out of the way. Because after those two years, you could send someone to the Minor Leagues. But it didn't work. People saw him play. And even though he didn't get to play much,

and the Pittsburgh Pirates really homed in on him right away. So yeah, the Pittsburgh Pirates were led, I think their GM was Branch Rickey, who was the guy who had scouted Jackie Robinson and got him onto the Dodgers. Now he worked for the Pirates. So he ended up getting his hands on Roberto Clemente and brought him to the Pirates. And so apparently when they found out, or when Clemente found out that he had been drafted by the Pirates, he was down in Puerto Rico. And he said later on that he didn't really know where Pittsburgh was. He had been excited to play for New York because there's a big Puerto Rican community in New York. And all of a sudden, he's sent off to Pittsburgh, doesn't know where it is, and doesn't really know

anybody. So this is kind of his entree into America. But it actually was even rougher than that. Because first he started out, I guess on Pittsburgh's minor league team, or that's what it was, it was in spring training down in Fort Myers Beach, Florida. And he came face to face with the stark reality of basically Jim Crow South in the 50s, first thing when he got to America. And he was one of the reasons I said earlier, he was a civil rights activist, because he did not take very kindly to that and bristled and railed against it from the outset. Yeah, he didn't have any frame of reference for this. Like he came from Puerto Rico, where this wasn't a thing. He was of African descent. So to Americans, he was a black man.

To him, he was Puerto Rican. He was caught between two worlds and didn't understand why he had to stay in a different hotel or eat in a different restaurant than his white teammates. And so this really upset him. And what upset him even as much was how his other black teammates on the team understood it and just basically had to take it, because they were afraid if they caused a ruckus that they would be sent back down to the minors. And he was just like, you shouldn't be deferential, like what is going on in this country? And he would speak to the sporting press about this stuff. And the sporting press either would just ignore his comments about that, or actually, yes, they would ignore his comments about that. And they would just talk about whatever he said

about the game. But then to kind of heap this sense that he was an outsider and an outsider that wasn't respected, because he was looked down upon because of his race and his origin, they would quote him phonetically in the press. So when he said, you know, he said, there was a headline that famously said like, I get a hit. I feel good. But they spelled it out like I get heat. H E E T is how they spelled hit. I feel good. That was a headline in the Pittsburgh newspapers after a really big game. And he found that extremely demeaning. And it actually really kind of framed the way that he felt about America. Yeah, it framed how he felt about America. And don't forget, like Puerto Rico was, you know, by this time, it was an American territory had

been for quite a while. So people in Puerto Rico had long considered themselves American. People in America didn't consider Puerto Ricans. They considered them ethnic. And Roberto Clemente was treated just like any other person from Puerto Rico, which was not very well back then. Yeah, so his reputation started to develop as a loner. It's very moody player. The pirates were a really bad team. I don't think we mentioned that at the time. Just terrible, like one of the worst teams in baseball. He didn't catch on in his first few years there either. I think in his first five seasons, he only hit over 300 one time. And a lot of this was due to injury. He had a car accident that hurt his back. So his back was all jacked up for a while. He had other,

you know, injuries along the way. And he would, he wasn't shy about talking about it. He would complain to the manager, complain to the press about his injuries. And this baseball still kind of this way, or most sports are actually is you kind of don't take that stuff public. You don't want to be seen as someone who either fakes injury because they don't want to play or who just who complains about it too much. So he didn't have the best reputation early on because a lot of this stuff. Yeah, I know. He was thought to be a complainer, a hypochondriac, moody, abrasive, egotistical. And that was something that like, that's indisputable is the egotistical part, because he knew that he was playing better than he was getting credit for. And it ticked him off

because he knew the reason he wasn't getting credit for it was because he didn't act the way that the white sporting press expected him to act. And they, they didn't like him for it. So they didn't really give him any, any credit. They actually withheld credit that was definitely due him for the way he was playing. But like you said, I mean, it took a few years for him to start to catch on. But even after he did, which first began in the 1960 World Series, when the pirates went from, I don't know if they went from worst to first, but it was pretty close to something like that. He was, he was passed over as the World Series MVP. I think like a lefty relief pitcher got more votes than he did, despite him being one of the clear heroes of that series. And he

really was not happy about that. And it really kind of created this, this lifelong animosity with the sporting press that had already been brewing. But that one to him showed that they were basically working against him at that point. Yeah. And I think 1960 was a pretty bittersweet year because it was his breakout year. If this stat is right, Dave says his average never dropped below 300. Yeah. Then that means he, that means he was hitting 300 in game one, which is pretty remarkable. Yeah. To start out that hot and to maintain it over the course of a year. Right. But if you didn't playing winter ball in the Caribbean, just a couple of weeks before that, it would make sense, you know? Yeah. And he, you know, they won the World Series,

which is a big, big deal in Pittsburgh, but he didn't feel like he was getting his due, like you said. So he didn't go off and celebrate with his fans. He kind of went off to himself. He was happy, but it said, the quote was, I'm happy, but not, but unconcerned with all the fanfare is what a reporter said. And he just wanted to get back home to Puerto Rico so he could use his World Series bonus money to buy a house for his mother. Yeah. And he was loved there. So, you know, he wanted to get back to where he was cherished and he did. When he went back to Puerto Rico, he was a national hero and the press like followed him everywhere he went and the kids loved him. And he bought a big Cadillac and mentored all the kids. So it's not like he went back like,

like Elvis and just sort of lived high on the hog. Like he did go back a hero, but he really, really got involved with the community right away. Yeah. He kept playing. He would mentor little kids who were learning to play sports. And that actually became one of his dreams is he wanted to make enough money and get big enough to build a sports complex, a sports city or ciudad deportes. Not bad. If I can pat myself on the back for that one, where kids could learn to play, but also, you know, like you didn't have much of a role model. It's the kind of place you could find a role model too. And not just play baseball, but also play maybe basketball or whatever sports you wanted to play. And I think that that was at the very least on his mind back

then, if not like one of his stated goals in his life by the time 1960 rolled around, he went back home. Yeah, absolutely. He got married in 64 to Vera Zabala. And she was from his hometown. They're in Puerto Rico. They had three kids. And he was very insistent that all his kids be born in Puerto Rico, which they were. And I think one of his sons, I think junior even played baseball and then ended up being an announcer. I don't think, I mean, obviously he was, he never achieved like what his father did, but it's pretty imagined tough to grow up the child of Roberto Clemente. It's kind of like being Michael Jordan's son or whatever, you know. Yeah. So he had Roberto Jr. There's also Luis Roberto and Roberto Enrique. Those are his three

son's names. Kind of like George Pullman. So by the time, so 1960, it's like you said that was his breakout year. He got married in 1964. And when he was down there in Puerto Rico, one thing I want to say that I saw that a lot of people kind of overlook is he played winter ball almost every year. But there was one year, I believe in 1958, where he didn't play winter ball. And instead, he enlisted in the U.S. Marines reserves. And that's how he spent the winter. And he ended up spending the next six years as a Marine reserve, which is something that very frequently gets overlooked, especially from Americans who really don't think of Puerto Rico as, you know, a territory or 51st state. Like he became a U.S. Marine while he was an up-and-coming baseball star. And then

even after he was a baseball star, he remained a Marine until apparently one time, I think the 1964 World Series coincided with a training exercise. And the Marines were like, you're honorably discharged. Go play the World Series. Yeah, but he's in the Marine Sports Hall of Fame, which I didn't even know was a thing. Oh, no, I didn't either. But it makes sense. I think he's the only player in there. That's right. No, that's not true.

Surely there's other. But the rock was in there. Should we take a break? Probably. All right, we'll take a break and talk a little bit more about the game of Roberto Clemente right after this. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade

ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing.

Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me.

Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular, and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention, because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it.

So I rounded up some friends and we dove in, and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too.

Listen to Skyline Drive and the I Heart Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, Chuck. So we have already said that he was a five-tool player, a complete player. And I mean, you, I think, have an understanding of what made his play so amazing. So what made his play so amazing? I'm laying on my baseball resource. Well, I mean, he was built for the game.

He never lifted weights in his life, but he was sort of a perfectly chiseled specimen of a baseball player, very, very handsome, which has nothing to do with being a good baseball player. But thought I'd throw that in. It moves those crackerjacks. It sure does. So he was just very fluid. Aside from his base running, like you mentioned earlier, it was kind of crazy. I think one sports reporter said it looked more like he was fleeing than running.

You'd have to see him run. He just, all of his limbs were kind of just swinging. And it wasn't the most graceful run, which is weird because he was a very fluid and graceful player. And those five tools, he was known most for his outfield arm. And I think he led the league in outfield assists five or six years in a row, or maybe not in a row, but five or six seasons. And he was fearless.

He was sort of like Willie Mays, and that he would go after these outfield hits with reckless abandon, like just run right into the wall to try and get a home run ball going over. Or, like I said, throwing out those players from right field to third base, which is just a very, very tough thing to do. And this was like before padded walls, or at the very least, they didn't have them in a lot of the places he played, because he would get like stitches or, you know, really mess up his shoulder or something like that. And don't forget, he's also playing through a spinal injury from that car wreck.

And yet this guy's throwing like people out at third base from right field, or running for an infield grand slam. I mean, just doing crazy stuff, despite these chronic injuries that he's been accumulating. And I've read somewhere that he credits his mother with his arm. He threw, he was a javelin thrower in high school. And that really kind of helps you develop all of the same muscles that you need to throw something like a baseball from right field to third base or home. But he still said, yeah, it's through the javelin that definitely surely helped.

But I got my arm from my mom. She can throw from second base to home plate with something on it still when it gets there. So he said he got his arm from his mom, which I thought was pretty sweet. Nice, I love it. And, you know, off the field is why he got the award named after him. He would mentor, you know, because he was one of the first Latin American stars, he would mentor anybody that came through, especially through the Pirates. Especially through the Pirates organization, but he would reach out to players on other

teams that were from the Caribbean to try and pave their way a little more smoothly. When he would go to different cities, he would go to visit kids in the hospital. Basically every city they visited, he would mentor these players. He would, this great, great story about the friendship he developed. This is a good find by Dave about Carol Brizavec, I'm not sure how you pronounce it. But she was a Phillies fan and a teenager and was hanging out after a game looking for autographs and saw a little crowd around Clemente, but didn't really know who he was because he was playing for the Pirates.

And she was taking Spanish in high school, so after she got her signature, she kind of let out a very shy, muchas gracias. And he just lit up and started talking to her in Spanish and she was, she was like, oh, I don't understand, so he switched to English and they ended up talking and talking and talking in the parking lot such that he and his fellow teammate that were there missed the bus back to the airport. And so her dad had to drive them and he was a big time Phillies fan and if you know anything about Phillies fans, he was probably not happy about this, but he had to drive two Pittsburgh

Pirates to the airport and he and his daughter struck up a real genuine lifelong friendship. Right, and like she was a little sister figure to him, so was her mom as well. He kind of adopted them both as sisters because he had had a sister. He had one sister out of his siblings and she had died in an accident when he was young. And so this girl just kind of struck him in just the right way and her mom as well. And so he adopted basically her whole family. He had them out to, I think, the next away game in New York that they played. He invited the whole family out, put them up in the Pirates Hotel, took them out to dinner

afterward and then as their friendship continued, he and his wife had a little Carol down for Christmas in Puerto Rico one year. So yeah, this is like just this random girl. He wasn't even a Pittsburgh Pirates fan and he became basically lifelong friends with her in her family. Yeah, and I think it really speaks to the man he was because it was a time in America where just to hear an American girl say, much as gracias, it seems very throwaway today because so many people have learned Spanish and it's taught in all the schools. But back then it was a big deal that this little girl said two words of Spanish to him

and that was all it took and just a really, really very pure sweet story. I love it. Yeah, and the fact that he was out there signing autographs is apparently pretty standard for him too. He was known to be like the kind of guy who he stuck around to sign every autograph that was asked of him of all the kids. So he was a pretty good guy and so that's what makes it kind of rewarding then that he finally started to get the recognition that he had long sought, that he felt like he definitely deserved. And one of the other things too is it's easy to point to Roberto Clemente and be like, look at how

eotistical the guy was. He knew he was a great player and he wanted respect for it. To him, he represented Puerto Rico and the Puerto Rican people and he wanted respect not just for himself but for them as well. Like if he could gain respect, other Puerto Rican people would gain respect by proxy. And so I think that's why that was one of the reasons why it was so important to him, not just because he wanted adulation and respect. He wanted it for all Puerto Ricans as well and he was like a vessel for that kind of thing. So finally, when it finally came around in 1966, he actually started to loosen up.

He became known as Les Moody. He bonded with his players a little more because he played all 18 seasons in the Pirates. He was a pirate through and through. But he became, he was voted as the National League MVP in 1966. And apparently that was a huge turning point for him and his relationship with America and baseball. Yeah, it was a big deal. And in 1971 is when he went to a second World Series. Great, great World Series. The year I was born, I remember it well. They were the underdog against the Orioles who were a really, really good team at the time. And it went to a seventh game just like that Yankees game did. And he hit in all seven games,

hit safely in all seven games, which is a really huge accomplishment. And hit a fourth inning home run in Game 7 that gave them the lead, basically the go-ahead home run. And they ended up winning that World Series. He was named MVP, like I said earlier, after batting 414 in the series and batting 341 for the season. And this time, he was really, really involved in the celebration. And like you said, since 66 had warmed to baseball, to the writers a little bit more and definitely to his teammates. Right. So it was like a really great way to end the career. And that wasn't the end of his career. He played another season, the 1972 season. And the Pirates got all the way to the NL East Conference. I think they made it past.

They made it, I don't remember who they made it past, but they faced the Reds and lost to the Reds for the NL title to move on to the World Series. But they got pretty far, is pretty respectable season. And in that season, he got his last hit. He had 3,000 hits on the nose. He was only the 11th player in baseball history to reach that milestone. And he was the first Latin American player to reach that milestone, which was a huge accomplishment for him as well. But there's also something really great about it, just such an even number, 3,000 hits. And he got that 3,000th hit in the regular season. They didn't make it to the World Series that year, but he went back down to Puerto Rico basically immediately after the season to go play Winter

Ball again. That's right. He had the distinction of managing an All-Star team down there in the amateur baseball World Series tournament, which was held in Nicaragua that year. And he really, really fell for the people of Nicaragua. And very tragically in December of that year, a big earthquake struck, killed 7,000 people and left about a quarter of a million homeless. And he really wanted to get involved. His heart was broken. He had met so many great people in Nicaragua and wanted to get involved and help them out and organized, personally organized, organized a relief mission there, raising $150,000 by going door to door to purchase food, 26 tons of food and clothing and medicine. He gets the word that their president there,

who was corrupt, was like so often happens in those situations commandeering the supplies and they weren't getting to the people. So he said, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to get a plane and I'm going to fly a shipment of supplies down there myself. And so he boarded a DC7 on December 31st in the years of 1972 to do just that, right? Yeah, he did. And it turned out, unfortunately, that that highly successful campaign, the drive that he spearheaded that produced 26 tons of supplies. Well, 26 tons was way too much for the DC7 that he charted. And the engines were taxed from the outset. It took off from Puerto Rico and started flying out over the ocean and the engines actually blew up. And they tried to turn the plane around while it was on fire and

fly back. And they made it, I think, a mile from the coast before the plane broke up and fell into the ocean. And all five people on board were killed, including Roberto Clemente, who again was overseeing personally humanitarian mission to Nicaragua to help people who are victims of an earthquake. And that's how he lost his life at age 38. Yeah, just brutal, brutal end to his story. People search for his body. You know, people on the beach held daily vigils, hoping that he would somehow be found alive and rescued. But, you know, obviously, nobody survived that crash. His body was never even recovered. And a few months after the crash, he was inducted into the Hall of Fame. One of only two times it's happened. The other was Luke Garrick, where you don't have to wait

that mandatory five-year period after the end of your career. And in fact, I think his set the precedent now that if you had been deceased for six months, you were eligible for Hall of Fame Induction, and he was just the second one. And then they created that award in his honor. Clemente award. Which is for humanitarian baseball players. So that's a huge honor in and of itself. I think you said that he got like 12 Golden Glove or Gold Glove awards for fielding. His last winner, maybe his 13th, his wife accepted on his behalf the following April after he died. And Vera dedicated herself to seeing through his dreams and actually organized and got that sports city in Puerto Rico built. And it's still there today, as a matter of fact.

She's amazing. Yeah. She really continued his work. And I hate that phrase, behind every great man is a great woman, because it's really beside every great man is a great woman. And that was definitely the case with Vera. And she was a lifetime humanitarian and philanthropist as well, which is amazing. Yeah. One of the great things about Roberto Clemente is he's the kind of guy you can name a school after and feel pretty good about it. And as a result, there's in the round the world, there's 40 public schools, two hospitals, and more than 200 parks and ball fields named after them. And I think now there's at least 41 public schools because this past September in Orange County, Florida, Stonewall Jackson Middle

School was renamed Roberto Clemente Middle School. Yeah. Well, that's about appropriate for our times. Yeah, it's pretty great. So now there's 41 schools named after Roberto Clemente. So if you have a school and you're like, who can we name this after? You could do a lot worse than Roberto Clemente. And people still probably complained about that. Who cares? Who cares? Eventually, Chuck, you just have to say, I don't care that you're complaining. Yeah, because you're in the wrong. That's right. So you got anything else about Roberto Clemente? Nothing else. Go watch YouTube videos of him. It's amazing. Yeah, there's, yeah, just say, just type in like Roberto Clemente throw from right field or home run. He's had some amazing

home runs. Yeah, it's just fun to watch. Plus, you're right. He was pretty easy on the eyes, especially as far as baseball players go. You know, a lot of them are horribly ugly. That's right. Ba-ba-boom. Since I said that, it's time for a listener mail, don't you think? I think so. This is called Eddie Van Halen. You know, we lost Eddie Van Halen recently. It was very tough for me, but we got an emailer from Australia that says I jinxed it. Hey guys, I'm writing in because I was just listening to the political polling episode and Chuck mentioned he was having a break from internet news and he was only looking at something that brings me joy like old Led Zeppelin and Van Halen YouTube videos cut to a couple of weeks

later in the tragic news of Eddie Van Halen passing. Like it's some weird twisted way of the universe saying, oh, you found something that brings you joy in 2020. I'll fix that. I don't believe in that stuff, but it was fairly ironic. But truth be told, I can usually be found watching old Van Halen videos. So I know I'm making light of the death of someone. Oh, I don't think you really are Matt. That would have been a massive influences in a lot of lives. But in these times, we need to find a laugh wherever we can. Anyway, I love the podcast. Can't wait for you to touch on some Australian topics, hint, hint, all the best. And that is Matt from Melbourne. Oh, and you even said it, right, Chuck? Thank God.

And that tracks you, Matt. Yeah, I'm sure Jimmy Page is like, Chuck, stop watching videos of me, okay? Well, if you want to be like Matt from Melbourne, who is awesome just for being from Melbourne, because we've been to Melbourne and Melbourne is a pretty great place. Wonderful. You can send us an email, send it off to stuffpodcast.iHeartRadio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and

choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help and a different hot sexy teen crush boy band or each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never,

ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.