Sport: Requiem for Roberto

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It was another long, sleepless winter for Roberto Clemente. A national hero in Puerto Rico, the Pittsburgh Pirates' 38-year-old rightfielder once explained that his home near San Juan was "like a museum—people flocking down the street, ringing our bell day and night, walking through our rooms."

Then there were the endless demands for public appearances that "I just couldn't say no to." Among other charitable projects, Clemente last week led Puerto Rico's efforts to aid earthquake victims in Managua, Nicaragua, a city where he had coached and played with Puerto Rican teams during the offseason. Not satisfied with merely lending his name to the mercy mission, Clemente insisted on going along to Managua to see that some 26 tons of food and $150,000 in relief money were properly distributed.

Minutes after takeoff from San Juan international airport, the cargo plane developed engine trouble and crashed into heavy seas one mile off the coast.

Rescue boats and helicopters combed the crash area, but by dawn only bits of debris had been recovered. Clemente, three crew members and another passenger had perished. Governor-elect Rafael Hernandez Colon immediately canceled the formal ball that was to have followed his inauguration last week, and three days of mourning were declared. "Roberto died serving his fellow man," Colon said. "Our youth loses an idol. Our people lose one of their glories."

Blistering .414. And baseball loses one of its few genuine superstars. In 18 storied seasons, Clemente was named the National League's Most Valuable Player once (1966), led the league in hitting four times, won a dozen Golden Glove awards for fielding and was elected to the league's All-Star team twelve times. His lifetime batting average of .317 was the highest among all active players. His finest hour came in the 1971 World Series when, with a blistering .414 average at bat and assorted marvels afield, he all but singlehanded defeated the favored Baltimore Orioles. Such seasoned managers as Dick Williams of the Oakland A's and Harry Walker of the Houston Astros say the same thing: Roberto Walker Clemente was "the greatest ballplayer I ever saw."

He was also one of the quirkiest.

Widely regarded as an unreconstructed hypochondriac, he had headaches, cramps, insomnia and a nervous stomach from worrying—largely about his headaches, cramps, insomnia and stomach. Though some of his ailments, such as slipped discs, bone chips, blood clots, pulled muscles and malaria, were undoubtedly for real, Pirate fans came to expect and even revel in the complaints of "Mr. Aches and Pains." It was almost axiomatic that the worse Roberto said he felt, the better he played. "If Clemente can walk," the New York Mets' Tommy Agee said before the 1972 season, "he can hit." Hit he did, registering a .300-plus average for the 13th time in his career. His last hit in his last regular season game—a ringing double to deep left center field—was the 3,000th of his career, a feat equaled by only ten other players in the history of the major leagues.