Sometimes you CAN judge a book by its cover!

Here’s one I never saw coming.

Sitting at work one day, I got a call from a man identifying himself as Kal Wagenheim, who said he had a question for me.

As a reporter, usually I ask the questions, so I was intrigued.

Wagenheim said he was a former New York Times reporter who now writes about the Caribbean and sports biographies. He called my home first, and my wife game him my work number.

He told me that he wrote one of the first biographies about Roberto Clemente published after his death in that plane crash bringing relief supplies to earthquake victims.

As I’m sure Wagenheim will affirm, reporters are somewhat skeptical people, and I confess to searching for him on Amazon as we spoke. And sure enough, there were books about Clemente, Babe Ruth and Puerto Rico, written by him.

Now I was really, really intrigued.

He told me that there is a group of Clemente fans who gather in New York every year on the birthday of the Hall of Famer, to discuss his life and legacy. He said that people in the group enjoyed his book from 1973, but it has been out of print for a while. The group was hoping he could issue an updated version, and found an interested publisher.

“Now, what does this have to do with you, you’re wondering,” he accurately stated.
Wagenheim said he was searching for a photograph for the book, and searched “Clemente” and “Hall of Fame” on Google, and saw a photo of a Clemente statue he liked.

He contacted the Baseball Hall of Fame for permission to use the photo, and the nice folks in the baseball library looked at it and said it wasn’t one from their archives.

“It’s from a blog,” he told me, retelling the conversation. “You have to contact the author, someone who goes by ‘Mets Guy in Michigan.’”

Wagenheim said he looked around the blog for a while and found my name – which I don’t really hide – and looked me up based on what he could find on the site.

He told me he liked the angle and lighting in the photo and asked for my permission to use it.

Naturally, I was honored.

We talked for a little while about growing up in New York and working for newspapers, and I had a wonderful time. It’s not like I get too many opportunities to pick the brain of a New York Times reporter who loves baseball.

I remembered the photo and the statue, which I wrote about several months before. It was taken during a glorious weekend. Will and I had our baseball card column in the Flint Journal, and the editors allowed me to apply for credentials to cover the 1994 All-Star Game FanFest in Pittsburgh.

It was my first time attending such an event, which is a fantastic celebration of all things baseball. Of course, there was a cloud hovering over the game at the time, with the strike looming. But it also was just before Ken Burns’ epic “Baseball” documentary.

Burns hosted journalists for breakfast to discuss the project, and former players attended. I sat with Joe Black, who starred for the Brooklyn Dodgers and also in the Negro Leagues. I knew he also played for the Baltimore Elite Giants of the Negro Leagues – and that the name was pronounced e-LIGHT. Black told me I was the first white guy he ever heard pronounce it correctly. Buck O’Neill also attended the breakfast, and walked to every table to introduce himself.

Part of the All-Star Game’s festivities was the unveiling of the statue, and it’s pretty special. Roberto is depicted just after a swing, dropping the bat and headed to first base. The base of the statue contains containers of dirt from three fields where Clemente played -- —Santurce Field in Puerto Rico, Forbes Field, and Three Rivers Stadium.

I took a walk from the convention center to Three Rivers and caught the statue in late-afternoon light. I’m hardly a great photographer, but as my kids will tell you, I believe in quality through quantity, and a statue will never groan when you say, “Just one more.”

I though the shot was marred by some people walking in the background. But it is kind of nice.

I e-mailed the photo to Wagenheim, and then heard from the folks at Markus Wiener Publishers , who asked if I could scan it again and send them a higher resolution photo, which was easy.

I’ve since learned that Wagenheim also writes plays and screenplays in addition to writing and translating books, which is impressive because I sometimes struggle to write in one language, much less two.

This week a package arrived, with “Clemente! The Enduring Legacy,” written across the front, superimposed over a full-bleed version of my photo. The graphics folks were able to remove the people in the background.

I get a photo credit inside the cover, but more special is a nice note from my new friend, Kal.

Baseball Place No. 36: Joe Jackson statue; Alternative Place No. 36A: Roberto Clemente statue

Joe Jackson might have been banished from baseball, but folks in his hometown of Greenville, S.C. are still proud of the White Sox slugger.

Banned rightly or wrongly for his role in the 1919 Black Sox scandal, Jackson played semi-pro ball for several years under assumed names before returning home to Greenville in 1929.

He opened a liquor store, running it until he died in 1951.

Greenville remembers Jackson in several ways, and Josh Pahigian takes us there for spot No. 36 in his “101 Baseball Places to See Before You Strike Out.”

There’s the Shoeless Joe Jackson Memorial Ballpark on the site where he played his first semi-pro game.

Not far away, at West End Market has a bronze statue of Jackson, showing him after taking a swing.

It’s an interesting statue. Doug Young sculpted it in the lobby of the Greenville City Hall in 2002 while folks looked on, and the base is made of bricks from old Comiskey Park, where the White Sox played.

Bricks that make up the base of the statue came from old Comiskey Park.

I’ve never been to South Carolina, and the Field of Dreams site is as close as I’ve been to a Joe Jackson memorial.

But I have seen an interesting statue of a great hitter that includes remnants of former stomping grounds. That would be:

Alternate spot No. 36A: Roberto Clemente statue, Pittsburgh



Clemente is an undisputed hero both in Pittsburgh, where his Hall-of-Fame career played out, and his homeland of Puerto Rico.

I was in Pittsburgh for the All-Star Game FanFest in July, 1994 in the days after the 12-foot bronze statue was unveiled.

Created by Susan Wagner, the statue shows Clemente coming out of a swing, about to drop his bat.

Here’s where things get really cool. The base of statues is a baseball diamond, and each of the bases contains dirt from three of the fields where the legend played: Forbes Field, Three Rivers Stadium and Santurce Field in Carolina, Puerto Rico.

Pittsburgh was one of our stops for BaseballTruth.com Executive Game V, first checking out what remains of Forbes, then taking in a game at PNC Park. We parked across the river, then walked across the river on a neat yellow bridge, named after Clemente.

And on the other side, I was happy to see Wagner’s statue, moved from Three Rivers when the Bucs moved to their beautiful new yard.

Scott and Will crossing the Roberto Clemente Bridge in 2005.