December 31, 1972: Roberto Clemente Is Killed

December 31, 1972, 50 years ago: Roberto Clemente is killed in a plane crash, trying to get relief supplies from his native Puerto Rico to earthquake-ravaged Nicaragua.

Eight days earlier -- the same day as the football play known as the "Immaculate Reception" -- an earthquake measuring 6.3 on the Richter scale struck the Nicaraguan capital of Managua.

As with the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, there were fires started, and the city's firefighting equipment was damaged. Between the initial quake and the fires, the disaster killed about 11,000 people, and left about 300,000 of the city's 1 million or so people homeless. The city's top 4 hospitals were destroyed, and there were food shortages.

The world responded with relief, but the country's right-wing dictator, Anastasio Somoza Debayle -- my autocorrect poignantly tried to turn that into "Debacle" -- had it distributed according to his own purposes, much like an old-style American city "machine politician."

Enter Roberto Clemente. The right fielder for the Pittsburgh Pirates had just completed his 18th major league season. At age 38, he showed no signs of slowing down. That season, he batted .312, helped the Pirates win their 3rd straight National League Eastern Division title, was named to his 15th All-Star game, was awarded his 12th Gold Glove, and collected his 3,000th career hit. 

He had won 4 NL batting titles, was named the NL's Most Valuable Player in 1966, and had helped the Pirates win the World Series in 1960 and 1971, being named the Series MVP in the ladder. 

He was not the first black Hispanic player in the major leagues, but, at this point, he was easily the greatest. Indeed, like actor-comedian Jackie Gleason was, and hockey star Wayne Gretzky later would be, he was nicknamed "The Great One." He was a point of pride for baseball fans all over Latin America, not just in his native Puerto Rico.

Already heavily involved in charities all over Latin America, Clemente had visited Managua only a few weeks before the earthquake. He organized three planeloads of relief supplies, but heard they had all been diverted by the Somoza government. He decided to accompany the fourth light himself, to make sure that it didn't happen again.

The plane was a McDonnell-Douglas cargo plane, a DC-7. This particular plane was a bad choice, as it had a history of mechanical problems. On December 31, 1972, New Year's Eve, it was loaded up at Isla Verde International Airport outside the Puerto Rican capital of San Juan.

A DC-7, similar to the Clemente relief plane

Between cargo, and regular supplies like fuel, the plane ended up 4,200 pounds over its recommended limit. The plane took off at 9:20 PM, for a 4-hour flight from San Juan to Managua -- meaning the New Year of 1973 would have begun for them in midflight.

But within 3 minutes, the pilot, Jerry Hill, realized he couldn't get the plane high enough due to the weight, and told the San Juan control tower that he had begun to turn around. Just afterward, one of the plane's four engines exploded, and it crashed into the Atlantic Ocean. 

Although most pieces of the plane were found, Hill was a the only one of the five people on board whose body was found. There is no grand memorial for Roberto Clemente at any cemetery: He still lies somewhere off the coast of his homeland. He left behind a wife and three sons.

For baseball fans, January 1, 1973 did not present a "Happy New Year." The Pirates retired Clemente's Number 21, and wore that number on their sleeves all season long. It would be the only season from 1970 to 1975 that they didn't win the NL East title. On March 20, a special election was held for the Baseball Hall of Fame, and the five-year waiting period after a player's last game was waived, making Clemente eligible. He was elected with nearly 93 percent of the vote.

The Pirates dedicated a statue of him outside Three Rivers Stadium. When they moved to the adjacent PNC Park in 2001, the statue went with them, and the neighboring 6th Street Bridge connecting the North Side with downtown Pittsburgh was renamed the Roberto Clemente Bridge.

An arena that was nearly ready to open in San Juan at the time of his death was named the Roberto Clemente Coliseum. The San Juan Airport is now named for longtime Governor Luis Muñoz Marín, as is my parent's former junior high school in Newark, as their old neighborhood is now mostly Hispanic. Newark and New York City have also named schools after Clemente. New York City named a park across from the Bronx apartment building where Hank Greenberg grew up after a member of the Hall of Fame -- not Greenberg, but, reflecting that this neighborhood is now mostly Puerto Rican, Clemente.

On December 31, 1985, 13 years later, another New Year's Eve would be struck by air travel tragedy, as the crash outside Dallas of another McDonnell-Douglas plane with a troubled history, this one an old DC-3, killed seven people including early rock and roll star Ricky Nelson. 

*

December 31, 1972 was a Sunday. It was the off-season for baseball. The NFL played its Conference Championship Games:

* Although the Miami Dolphins had an undefeated regular season, the Pittsburgh Steelers hosted the AFC Championship Game at Three Rivers Stadium, because the NFL was still using a rotating system for hosting the title game, not home field advantage.

Eight days after the franchise's 1st-ever Playoff win, on the Franco Harris "Immaculate Reception," the Steelers led 10-7 in the 3rd quarter. But the Dolphins came from behind to win, 21-17.

* The Washington Redskins dominated the defending NFL Champions, the Dallas Cowboys, 26-3 at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium. Head coach George Allen led his veteran "Over-the-Hill Gang" to the team's 1st Playoff win in 30 years. 

But the Dolphins would complete the perfect season by beating the Redskins in Super Bowl VII, 2 weeks later at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

November 25, 1986, The Iran-Contra Scandal

November 25, 1986, 30 years ago: Of all the scandals in the Presidency of Ronald Reagan, what already should have been the biggest one gets a lot bigger.

On November 3, 1 day before the midterm Congressional elections, Ash-Shiraa (Arabic for "The Sail"), a magazine based in the Middle Eastern nation of Lebanon, reported that the American government had secretly been selling weapons to Iran, in order to secure the release of 7 American hostages held in Lebanon by pro-Iranian groups.

And if this had been the extent of Reagan's involvement, it would have been bad enough, an impeachable offense. This was not the extent of it.

On November 4, the Democratic Party gained 8 seats in the U.S. Senate, enough to take control for the 1st time in 6 years. That was actually more seats than they gained in the House of Representatives, 5, but they already had control there. For the last 2 years of Reagan's 2nd term -- regardless of whether he finishes it -- Congress will be fully under Democratic control, making it more willing to investigate any misdeeds for which he and his men were responsible.

On November 25, U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese, who had worked with Reagan since the beginning of his tenure as Governor of California in 1967, publicly admitted that profits from weapons sales to Iran were made available to assist the Contras, a right-wing paramilitary group looking to overthrow the Communist government of Nicaragua.

This was prohibited by the Boland Amendment to the War Powers Act of 1973. Eddie Boland was a Democratic Congressman from Massachusetts, and he wanted to outlaw such assistance, because people from his district, aid workers in Nicaragua, had been killed by the Contras. It was unanimously passed by Congress in 1982, and Reagan himself had signed it into law.

Therefore, if it could be proven that Reagan had authorized the "Contra" part of what had now become known as "The Iran-Contra Affair," he needed to be impeached by the House, and convicted and removed from office by the Senate. This was just 12 years after Richard Nixon resigned the Presidency, rather than face that likelihood over the Watergate scandal, and many of the major players in Congress in 1974 were still there at this point, so it was fresh in people's memory. 

Also on the 25th, former U.S. Navy Admiral John Poindexter, Reagan's National Security Adviser, up to his neck in the scandal, resigned. One of his aides, Oliver North, a Lieutenant Colonel still on active duty with the U.S. Marine Corps, was discovered to have shredded documents relating to the funding of the Contras, and Reagan flat-out fired him.

An actor before going into politics, Reagan made 69 films between 1937 and 1964, 4 with his 1st wife, Jane Wyman, and 1 with his 2nd wife and eventual First Lady, then billed as Nancy Davis. In 2 of his films, he, a former football player at NCAA Division III Eureka College in Illinois, played sports legends: Notre Dame back George Gipp in Knute Rockne, All-American in 1940; and St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Grover Cleveland Alexander (a man named for a President) in The Winning Team in 1952.

But there was no role he played better than "President Reagan." Parodying a commercial for pain reliever that debuted during his 1st term, "I'm not a doctor, but... " I said, "Ronald Reagan isn't a great President, but he plays one on TV." And no matter what bad things happened on his watch, nothing seemed to stick with him, earning him the nickname "The Teflon President," and nothing seemed to faze him.

Iran-Contra fazed Ronald Reagan. He was now approaching his 76th birthday, and, for the first time, he looked tired. The familiar smile was seen less often. There were times, especially during press conferences, where not only was his famed ability to verbally fence with, and disarm, reporters gone, but he looked like, as had often been said of boxers who had taken a beating, he didn't even know where he was.

After bad performances in his debates with Walter Mondale during the 1984 election, people began to joke that Reagan, by that point the oldest President in American history, had Alzheimer's disease. Now, it looked like it was no longer a joke. Indeed, in 1994, he revealed that he now had it, but wouldn't admit to having had it while still President.

Howard Baker, the former Senate Majority Leader from Tennessee who had been one of Reagan's competitors for the 1980 Republican nomination for President, and had been a member of the Senate Select Committee investigating Watergate, was brought in as his new White House Chief of Staff, to get the White House running properly again, and also to calm his old friends in Congress down.

By early May, when hearings were underway, it became clear that, unlike with Nixon, nobody was going to "flip" on Reagan. There would be no John Dean, only "G. Gordon Liddys." No Articles of Impeachment were ever drawn up against him. If he was still alive on January 20, 1989, the end of his 2nd term, he was going to serve it out.

He did, leaving office just short of turning 78. (The current President, Joe Biden, has broken his record. Despite attacks by Republicans, his mind is still sharp.) Reagan admitted to having Alzheimer's in 1994, stepped out of public life, and died in 2004, at age 93, at the time the oldest former President ever.

In 1998, with Reagan and most of the people associated with his Administration still alive, PBS aired a documentary as part of its series The American Experience: The Presidents. Nancy was not interviewed, but his children were: Sons Michael and Ronald, and daughters Maureen and Patti (who uses her mother's maiden name as her last name, Davis).

Meese was interviewed, but while he resigned as Attorney General due to his apparent role in the Wedtech scandal, he has never been indicted for any crimes, and he appears not to have committed any of the crimes connected to Iran-Contra. The major figures involved in Iran-Contra were not interviewed: Not Poindexter, not North, not Fawn Hall, the secretary he ordered to do the document shredding.

One exception was Robert C. "Bud" McFarlane, Poindexter's predecessor as National Security Adviser. In his interview, he said that, on July 18, 1985, while Reagan was hospitalized for cancer surgery, he presented the President with the plan of the arms sales to Iran and the redirection of the profits to the Contras, and that Reagan -- possibly compromised due to the drugs he was being prescribed -- approved it.

This contradicted what McFarlane had said in his testimony before Congress. He had already pleaded guilty to withholding information from Congress, and was sentenced to 2 years' probation -- no jail time. Reagan's Vice President and successor as President, George H.W. Bush, made McFarlane the beneficiary of one of his "Christmas Pardons" on December 24, 1992.

If McFarlane had told Congress the truth in the Spring of 1987, Reagan could well have been impeached and removed by the end of the calendar year. Bush would have had a full year as an incumbent under his belt as he ran for President in 1988, but would have had to do a lot more defending of himself, his people, and the Republican Party in general than he actually ended up having to do. And, instead of winning in a landslide, he might have lost.

McFarlane is still alive, age 79. Lots of people were convicted in connection with Iran-Contra. Thanks to Bush, few of them really paid for it. Reagan got away with it completely.

(UPDATE: McFarlane died on May 12, 2022, at 84.)

Yankees Dandy on Independence Day; Alexis Argüello, 1952-2009

So how about today's game? A little weird: The anniversary of America's independence, yet the Yankees started a Chinese pitcher, got a home run from a Japanese slugger, got the usual scoreless 9th inning from their Panamanian closer, and Jorge Posada hit the game-winning single in the 12th -- he's born and raised in Puerto Rico, and is thus an American citizen, but his parents were Cuban emigres, so he counts as "international."

Four hours of baseball, and Michael Kay wasn't complaining about the length of the game -- this is progress.

Chien-Ming Wang? Five innings, four of them very strong -- this is progress. His ERA, once 34.50 for the season, down to 10.06 coming into the game and 9.14 afterward -- this, sad to say, is progress. Had to leave the game in the 6th with a "strained shoulder" -- not progress. Hearing the term "strained shoulder," Kay said, "That is not good to hear. David Cone, broadcasting the game with him, and knowing all too well the pain of the human shoulder, especially for a pitcher, said, "No, it's not," as if he was announcing the recession-forced layoff of 50,000 employees.

Taking a lead on Roy Halladay, one of the biggest Yankee Killers in recent memory -- good. Giving them back the lead -- bad.

Having to go to Mariano in the 9th of a tie game -- not good. Phil Coke pitching a scoreless 11th and Brett Tomko pitching a scoreless 12th to become the winning pitcher -- this is very good.

The Yankees blowing opportunities in the 9th, 10 and 11th -- not good. The Yankees winning in the 12th? Verrrry good.

Phil Hughes isn't just the second-best reliever on the Yankees, I think we can now say he's the second-best reliever in New York.

Attendance was over 46,000. Once again, every seat is sold -- except for the insanely expensive ones. Are you listening, Lonn Trost?

And the Red Sox bullpen collapsed again -- against Seattle? These are not the '01 Mariners or even the '95 M's. This is not good for the Sox, but cry me a Charles River, Papelbum!

A very nice 4th of July for the Yankees, on the 70th Anniversary of Lou Gehrig Day.

Quick, Met fans: When was Tom Seaver Day? Don't look it up on the Internet -- that's cheating. I want to see if you know it off the top of your head.

You don't remember, do you? I had to look it up. I remember him walking to the mound and bowing to each "side" of the stadim, but I didn't remember the date: It was July 24, 1988.

*

Alexis Argüello died 3 days ago. He was shot in the heart. There are those saying it was a suicide attempt. Others are saying he was killed by the government of his native Nicaragua.

He was born on April 19, 1952, in his nation's capital, Managua. Known as El Cabellero del Ring (The Gentleman of the Ring) and El Flaco Explosivo (The Explosive Thin One), he rose through the featherweight boxing ranks to challenge for the title in 1974. He lost, to retiring Champion Ernesto Marcel. But Marcel's retirement opened the door for another challenge, and, by the end of the year, Argüello had been crowned Champion.

He defended the Featherweight Championship of the World 16 times, including 3 times at Madison Square Garden. In 1978, he moved up in weight class, and won the Super Featherweight title. He defended this 15 times, including twice at The Garden. He moved up again in 1981, and took the Lightweight title, defending it 5 times.

He tried to move up again, challenging Aaron Pryor for the Light Welterweight title at the Orange Bowl in Miami on November 12, 1982. The Ring magazine would declare this the Fight of the Decade, featuring possibly the 2 best fighters in the world at the time, pound-for-pound -- Sugar Ray Leonard was then inactive, but Larry Holmes and Marvelous Marvin Hagler were very much in position to dispute it. Argüello walked into the ring with a career record of 83-5, but Pryor knocked him out in the 14th round. He fought Pryor again the next year, in Las Vegas, but lost again. They remained friends for the rest of Argüello's life.

Argüello returned to Nicaragua, and fought alongside the right-wing Contras against the Communist government of Daniel Ortega. After a brief comeback in the mid-1990s, he retired with a record of 88-8. He then went into politics, switching sides to Ortega's Sandinistas, who had returned to power after being defeated in earlier free elections.

He was elected Managua's Vice-Mayor in 2004 and its Mayor in 2008. He also became a breeder of cats, and wrote articles on the subject that were published in magazines. He seemed to have become a renaissance man, living up to his image as a "gentleman of the ring."

Those who believe he was assassinated suggested that he was becoming disenchanted with the Sandinistas, and was planning to announce he was leaving them. Maybe he was killed in order to silence him. We may never know for sure. But he certainly doesn't sound like someone who would have taken his own life.

Alexis Argüello, one of the very best boxers of my lifetime, was only 57 years old. I'm convinced he had a lot more to say -- on many subjects.

UPDATE: Argüello was buried at Cementerio Jardines del Recuerdo in Managua.