Sandy Koufax on Roberto Clemente
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“I started using it a while back, mostly as a waste pitch. I got ahead of Bob Clemente and decided to go with the slider, and he knocked it out of the park.”
“I was experimenting with a slider Tuesday night. After Roberto knocked it over the 406-foot mark in left field, I gave up on the pitch.”
“I'm the wrong guy to ask because everything I throw up there he hits. Maybe I should roll the ball to the plate against him.”
“Doesn't matter what I throw Clemente, he hits. He hit two home runs off me last year that I still remember. One at Forbes Field, the other in Los Angeles. I can't remember anybody hitting a longer homer off me than Clemente did Sunday on the ball that reached the center field light tower.”
“There’s only one way to classify Bob Clemente and that’s as the strangest hitter in all baseball. Figure him out one way and he’ll kill you another. You can be having your best day against everybody else and he’ll treat you as though you had nothing. It’s so hard to say what he’s going to hit or what should be thrown to him. He’s very strong and is extremely quick with his hands. You look at him swinging sometimes on his front foot, sometimes on his rear, sometimes with both feet off the ground, and you’re inclined to think, ‘This guy can’t hit the ball.’ That’s the biggest mistake you can make and I’ve made a few of them against him.”
“The longest ball I ever saw hit to the opposite field was hit off me by Clemente at the Los Angeles Coliseum in 1961. It was a fastball on the outside corner, and he drove it out of the park – not just over the fence, he knocked it way out. I didn’t think a right-handed batter could hit it out of the field just at that point but Clemente did.”
“What makes Bob the kind of hitter I don’t want to see at bat with runners on is that he’s liable to hit anything. He could hit a pitchout for a home run. A lot of pitchers will try to jam him, but if you try that you’ve got to get it way inside. You can’t throw him two of the same pitches in a row. He may look terrible on the first and hit the darnedest shot you’ll ever see on the next.1 You wonder if he’s looking for you to repeat the pitch in the same place, but I hardly think so.2 He’s so unorthodox you just can’t figure out a way to pitch to him.”
“Even when I brought my record up to 5-4 by getting a win in Pittsburgh, I was hit very hard and knocked out of the box in the eighth inning. Roberto Clemente hit an outside fastball that was still rising when it hit against the light tower in left center field, 450 feet away from home plate. And on a 1-2 pitch at that."”
“But there is no such thing as a good pitch to Clemente. Ask me how to pitch Clemente and I’ll tell you with complete confidence, "How do I know?" Roberto can hit any pitch, anywhere, at any time. He'll hit pitchouts, he'll hit brushback pitches. He'll hit high inside pitches deep to the opposite field, which would be ridiculous even if he didn't do it with both feet off the ground.”
“I try to keep the ball away from Clemente, but I got this one right down the middle and he hit it pretty good.”
“Clemente, Mays, Aaron. Koufax didn't worry too much. Perhaps he didn't have too much to worry about, but free from worry, he was able to concentrate more. "The good hitters are going to hit you," he explained. "You can't get 'em out all the time. And they're not the guys you have to get out to win. Maybe there are two good ones on each team and they're going to get two hits each. That's only four hits, so you must keep the others under wraps. They're the one who beat you." Koufax placed Roberto Clemente, Willie Mays and Hank Aaron in one category as hitters. "Mays always told me how hard it was to get a hit off me and every time I looked up, he was on second base. Yet, even with Mays, I had an idea what to do. When I pitched to Clemente and Aaron, I had no idea. They seemed to hit everything."”
“In addition to his great arm, Roberto Clemente could possibly be a great billiard master if he put his mind to it. I've never seen him play a wall off the wall and be in bad position. Now, he catches balls off irregular walls, he's always in the right place, and he has made some of the longest singles look pretty futile when base-runners try to go for two.”
“The best way to pitch him is to roll the ball.”
“Mays was the best player I ever saw. Aaron was the best hitter. But that raises the question of where you put Clemente – with Willie, with Henry? He’s right there.”
“I also threw the slider a couple of times. I threw the slider to Hank Aaron and Roberto Clemente, because I figured if it worked on those two great hitters, then I had something there. So I threw it to Aaron and almost hit him in the face. He reached out to get it, and it came right at him. And I threw it to Clemente. You may remember that in Forbes Field in Pittsburgh, there was a light tower by where they used to park the batting cage. Halfway up. there was a bunch of transformers. Well, Clemente hit it off a transformer. I said, "Well, maybe I don't have a slider," and I gave it up.So, I never came up with a third pitch.”