Don Drysdale on Roberto Clemente

“I was so drugged up at times that I couldn’t see the scoreboard from the mound. I was a walking drugstore. I had to cover one eye, like a drunk driver does when he wants to see the road. Roberto Clemente hit a line drive back through the box that could have killed me. I never saw it. I still haven’t seen it. I was that fuzzy, that blurred. But I heard it. Did I ever hear it. And I felt it, too. After I escaped being hit, I felt a little sensation on the left side of my neck – like I had a mosquito sitting there, waiting to bite it. I brushed the area with my hand and looked down and my hand was dripping with blood. Clemente’s drive had taken the skin right off the edge of my ear. How’s that for a gentle reminder that you’ve about had it?”

“My book on pitching to Clemente was that you wanted to drive him back off the plate. When he started falling away, make sure he kept falling away, and then go down and away with him. But establish enough in here where you try and take that left shoulder and make it follow that left leg. If you don’t, look out.”