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father. He used a dime for the bus and fifteen cents for a ticket. His goal was to get there early enough to watch Monte Irvin glide through the throng outside on the way to play. “I never had enough nerve, I didn’t want to even look at him straight in the face,” Clemente remembered. “But whenhe passed by I would turn around and look at him because I idolized him.” Just by being there, hanging around, as shy as he was, Clemente eventually struck up a friendship with Irvin. And Irvin made sure that his young fan got in to watch the game, even without a ticket. “I used to give him my suit bag to carry into the stadium so he could get in for free,” Irvin recalled. From a seat in the bleachers, Clemente studied everything about his hero: how he looked in a uniform, how he walked, how he ran, how he hit, and especially how he threw. More than half a century later, still trim, dignified, white-haired, Irvin could bring back that mentoring relationship in his mind’s eye. “Yeah, I taught Roberto how to throw,” Irvin said. “Of course, he quickly surpassed me.”
    By the time he was fifteen, Clemente was starring at shortstop in a softball league on a team sponsored by Sello Rojo, a rice-packaging firm. He was fast, had a gun for an arm, and surprising power for a lanky teenager. Sello Rojo (Red Seal) was coached by Roberto Marín, a rice salesman who became his baseball guardian. By the next year Clemente was also playing hardball, mostly outfield, for the Juncos Mules, a top amateur team in Carolina, and occasionally participated in track and field events at Julio Vizcarrando Coronado High School, running the 440 meters and throwing the javelin. The javelin, though he threw it only a few times, became an iconic symbol in the mythology of Clemente. It represented his heroic nature, since the javelin is associated with Olympian feats. On a more practical level it served to further explain his strong throwing arm.
    Marín’s former wife, Maria Isabel Cáceres, taught history and physical education at the high school and also watched out for Clemente.Cáceres developed a friendship with her student that deepened over the years, but her early impressions stayed with her. During the first day of class, when she invited students to choose seats, Roberto settled inconspicuously in the back row. He spoke quietly when called upon, not looking up. But “despite his shyness,” she later wrote, “and the sadness around his eyes, there was something poignantly appealing about him.”
    While Cáceres noticed the sadness in Roberto’s eyes, Marín focused on his baseball skills. As a bird-dog scout for Santurce, hepassed the word to the owner of the Cangrejeros, Pedrin Zorrilla, known affectionately as the Big Crab. Zorrilla had grown up in Manatí, to the west of San Juan, and still spent much time there. He was always on the move around the island, looking for a ball game, searching for talent. In the fall of 1952, Marín told him that the next time the Juncos came to play Manatí, there was a kid that Zorrilla had to look at for his professional club.Zorrilla scribbled the name on a card and stuck it in his pocket. A few days later, he was in the stands watching a game. First he saw a Juncos player smack a line shot against the fence 345 feet away and fly around first and make a perfect slide into second. Later in the game, as he was talking with friends in the stands, he took notice when the same player sprinted back to the fence, grabbed a drive in deep center field, and made a perfect throw to second to double-up a runner.
    “That boy, I must have his name,” Zorrilla said.
    “Roberto Clemente,” came the answer.
    “Clemente?” Zorrilla fished into his shirt pocket and pulled out the card. It was the name he had written down at Roberto Marín’s suggestion.
    When the 1952 season began on October 15, the youngest Cangrejero, freshly signed by the Big Crab, was Roberto Clemente, barely eighteen and still in high