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Steve Blass holds up a picture of Roberto Clemente, Bill Virdon and Willie Stargell.
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‘The Clemente symbol’: Steve Blass remembers Vera Clemente

Jason Mackey/Post-Gazette

‘The Clemente symbol’: Steve Blass remembers Vera Clemente

Steve Blass can still remember the flight to his first and only All-Star Game — at Atlanta Stadium in 1972. On his way there, he and his wife, Karen, were invited out to dinner by Roberto and Vera Clemente.

Immediately, Blass was floored.

“Just to casually be invited out to dinner with Mr. and Mrs. Roberto Clemente, that’s pretty slick,” Blass said late Saturday night. “That doesn’t happen often.”

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Vera Clemente died on Saturday at age 81. As soon as Blass heard the news, that story came rushing back to his head, dining at Underground Atlanta with two people that Blass called “a movie-star-handsome couple.”

Vera Clemente, center, with her sons Roberto Enrique, left, and Luis Clemente at the Pittsburgh Metropolitan Hispanic Chamber of Commerce annual gala at the Westin Convention Center in Downtown Pittsburgh Sept. 19, 2015.
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“Going to an All-Star Game, which he was a veteran of, and including us, those kinds of things as still a relatively young player make you feel like a million bucks,” Blass said.

So Blass went?

“You’re damn right we did,” he said. “And we paid our half.”

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Blass said he saw Vera Clemente this season when Roberto Clemente’s widow made what would be her final trip to PNC Park.

Of course, he made sure to say hello.

“She never failed to be anything but gracious and the perfect complement to Roberto,” Blass said.

“I always thought, ‘What a handsome couple, a great couple. A superstar and a lady that could’ve been a movie actress.’ ”

Vera Clemente made it her mission to preserve her late husband’s legacy. She was instrumental in the building of the Roberto Clemente Sports City in their native Puerto Rico and continued to serve as an ambassador to Major League Baseball.

Along with Roberto’s three sons — Roberto Jr., Luis and Enrique — Vera Clemente was an extension of the iconic Pirates right fielder, one who’s larger than life.

And she did it better than anyone could’ve ever expected, Blass said.

“After he died, she was the Clemente symbol,” Blass said. “When you saw her, everything about the whole Clemente family comes to you.

“Whenever I would see her, I would get the flashbacks of him and how they both handled themselves with dignity. That couple had a presence.”

There’s a movement around Major League Baseball these days to possibly have Clemente’s No. 21 retired, similar to Jackie Robinson’s No. 42.

Blass would not mind if that happened, but he also doesn’t view it as essential to preserving his former teammate’s legacy.

“I don’t have to have it retired because I have everything about him in my head,” Blass said. “If they do it, I’m fine; I’ve got no problem with it. But I don’t feel the need to campaign for it because I have so much of Roberto inside me. That’s plenty for me.”

Jason Mackey: jmackey@post-gazette.com and Twitter @JMackeyPG.

First Published: November 17, 2019, 5:29 a.m.

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