The 12-year-old had hit home runs before, with his first having been so memorable, in the way it smashed the back windshield of a truck parked beyond the left-field fence. But the home run that he hit in San Juan, well, this one would really stick with him.
He had been climbing up the levels of competition, playing against better and older kids, and in order to play in the San Juan, Puerto Rico, tournament, he had to make one of the first significant journeys of his life. And the fact that the tournament was named for Roberto Clemente, the longtime Pittsburgh Pirates star, really meant a lot to him. The 12-year-old already had a sense of how much Clemente had meant to others -- not only for the way he played baseball, but for how giving he was and how much he cared, which is why he was on the relief plane that crashed on New Year's Eve in 1972.
One of Clemente's closest friends had been Manny Sanguillen, the catcher with the Pirates who was 28 years old at the time Clemente died. Biographers have detailed how in the aftermath of the accident that would take Clemente's life, Sanguillen had gone into the waters where the plane had gone down and looked for signs of his friend. When he saw sharks, Sanguillen was deeply saddened.
It made sense that Sanguillen would be at the Clemente baseball tournament in 1999 to see the 12-year-old hit the home run, and Sanguillen reacted the way he always does -- with loud joy. He chortled happily about the home run, and mentioned to the 12-year-old that the pitcher would never throw him another fastball. Nope, Sanguillen said, from then on, the 12-year-old would see nothing but curveballs, words that the kid would long remember.
Years later, a young man walked up to Sanguillen and reminded the former catcher of that tournament in San Juan, and how he had hit a home run and how Sanguillen had joked about how he would see nothing but curveballs thereafter. Sanguillen didn't remember that moment, specifically, and he didn't recall the 12-year-old playing in the Roberto Clemente tournament. But by then, Sanguillen -- a beloved member of the Pirates' family -- was well aware of the young man.