Sport: Matador from Texas

Around the walled ring at Xajay bull-breeding ranch in Queretaro, Mexico this week, cowhands watched critically as a young American in blue jeans and baseball cap whirled his scarlet cape in a long veronica, smoothly led the charging young practice heifer past him, its horns coming within inches of his legs. Though still a little stiff from a goring received in a fight a month ago, Baron Clements Jr., 20, of Kilgore, Texas shows signs of becoming the best U.S.-born matador in the alien art of bullfighting since the heyday of Brooklyn's Sidney Franklin 25 years ago.

In his first public appearance at Villa Acuna, Mexico two months ago, Clements was a sensation. The judges awarded him two ears from his first bull, two ears and a tail from his second. Wrote a critic for El Redondel, Mexico City's bullfight weekly: "The gentleman of the bullring, with a face as impassive as a sphinx, withstood stoically the angry charges of the brave bull. With the tragic rhythm of the bullfight, not moving an inch and employing grace as well as mathematical precision, Clements killed his enemy with one thrust of the estoque [sword]. It was a classical kill, the likes of which we had not seen in a long time."

Who Ever Heard? Baron Clements saw his first bullfight when he was ten, and "right then I decided that what I wanted to do most was fight bulls." Writing in the sixth grade on his life's ambition, he drew an F-minus and a stern note from his teacher: "Baron, I expect you to stay in this afternoon and write a reasonable theme. Who ever heard of people these days being bullfighters."

After graduation from Kilgore High School (where he was a star quarterback), Clements went to Spain to study under Tutor Franklin, trained for more than two years on a rigorous daily schedule that began at 5 a.m. with a three-hour session at a slaughterhouse, where he practiced killing bulls. In Spain he acquired a matador's long sideburns and a sense of tragic ritual that contrasts oddly with his Texas drawl and quick grin. His father, a welding-company owner, backed him all the way, spent $25,000 on his training. "I told that knucklehead I'd go with him to the last drop of blood," says Baron Clements Sr., "and I will."

First Blood. Young Clements' blooding came in his second performance. In Nuevo Laredo, before an Easter-week crowd, a bull slashed at him, and the horn pierced his groin, requiring seven stitches. Baron never faltered. "Can you go on?" asked Franklin fearfully. "Sure," he replied, and forthwith dispatched the bull. But Clements felt that he had failed the spectators. "The people expected perfection," he says. "They have a full right to expect it, and I expect them to expect it, and I intend to give it. When I don't give it, I expect them to be disappointed.

"Working a bull feels natural to me," he explains. "It's as natural as driving a car. Dominating a huge, powerful animal gives me the greatest feeling in the world. You can compare a bullfight to a Shakespearean tragedy. Someone always gets killed, sometimes a torero and almost always the bull, and I can't see a thing in the world funny about it..That's what I like about it—the drama. You can taste it when you're in there with a good bull."