Milton Richman on Roberto Clemente

“I say Roberto Clemente won that game for Pittsburgh. Simply by being Roberto Clemente and running out a ground ball the way he always has since the day he began playing ball 30 years ago. I had only one thought watching Clemente run down to first base. I wondered what Alex Johnson was thinking while watching the whole thing on TV.”

“From a personal standpoint, I have known Clemente since he came up to the Pirates 17 years ago and the thing he did that impressed me most in the Series against the Orioles wasn't that he hit .414 or got off those excellent throws, but that he got up and chased the ball when he kicked it into distant left centerfield after falling down trying for a backhanded shoestringer on Mark Belanger's triple in the first game. "Swoboda would've had it!" said a newspaperman I know. Seriously, though, what impressed me so much about Clemente's get-up-and-go-after- it sequence is this was so typical of his performance. He'd do the same thing in the second game of a series with San Diego as he was doing now in the second game of a series with Baltimore.”

“One more thing for the record: Babe Ruth was far and away the best ballplayer I have ever seen. Closest to him for home run hitting alone, in my book anyway, were Jimmy Foxx, Johnny Mize, and Harmon Killebrew. Hank Aaron would rate in my top half-dozen, along with Joe Dimaggio, Willie Mays, Stan Musial, and Roberto Clemente.”