By Larry Katz
On New Year’s Eve, 1972, a plane carrying baseball legend Roberto Clemente crashed off the coast of Puerto Rico. When his Pittsburgh Pirates teammate Manny Sanguillen heard the news, he sprang into action. Sanguillen spent days diving into churning, shark-infested Atlantic waters searching for his friend and mentor.
It wasn’t until nearly 50 years later that Dawn Carroll first learned the details of Clemente’s death and Sanguillen’s bravery. She felt compelled to honor the two men and their friendship in the best way she knew how: writing a song. Carroll is a designer and the founder of the Over My Shoulder Foundation, an organization she started with Grammy-winning singer Patti Austin to encourage and celebrate mentoring. She is not into sports. She knew nothing about Roberto Clemente except his name. But the story of his death and Sanguillen’s actions made her a fan of both men. “It’s the most heartwrenching story” she said.
How Carroll became aware of Clemente and Sanguillen’s tale is a story itself.
In January, 2020, Patti Austin performed at the Cabot Theater in Beverly, Massachusetts, as part of the venue’s 100th birthday celebration and to celebrate National Mentoring Month. Carroll began talking and thinking about how many other historic theaters across the United States were in need of restoration and wondered if she could create a mentoring concert tour that would help save these architectural gems.
As the pandemic took hold, Carroll had time for a deep dive into the history of early 20th century American theaters and stumbled upon the National Negro Opera Company house in Pittsburgh.
The National Negro Opera Company house is not a theater, but a grand Queen Anne-style manor built in 1894. Years later it was bought by a wealthy Black businessman who wished it to become a center for Black culture. Classical musician Mary Caldwell Dawson established her National Negro Opera Company there in the 1940s and the house became a gathering place, and sometime residence for Black entertainers and celebrities. Duke Ellington, Lena Horne, Cab Calloway, Count Basie and sports figures including boxer Joe Louis and members of Pittsburgh’s professional sports teams—including Roberto Clemente-were among those who found a safe haven there.
In 2020 the house rated No. 11 on the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s list of most endangered places. Carroll decided to try and enlist her musician friends and design clients in the ongoing efforts to save the house as she became fascinated by the stories of those who found refuge there.
With the idea of “if these walls could talk” she started writing songs about the amazing lives of some of those who had passed through the National Negro Opera House.
None of these lives were more amazing-and tragic-than that of Roberto Clemente.
Clemente arrived in Pittsburgh as a rookie outfielder in 1955, just seven years after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in major league baseball. Clemente was a Black, Spanishspeaking Puerto Rican who was forced to face ethnic and racial tensions on and off the field. Choosing to downplay these obstacles (“I don’t believe in color” he said at the time). He went on to have a spectacular career: all-star for 13 seasons, National League’s Most Valuable Player in 1966, four-time National League batting leader, Gold Glove winner for 12 consecutive seasons, and the Most Valuable Player in the 1971 World Series.
What Clemente did when he wasn’t playing baseball was just as impressive: he would spend much of his off-season engaged in charity work. So he was acting entirely in character when he organized a relief air-lift to aid victims of the devastating earthquake that struck Managua, Nicaragua on Dec. 23, 1972. Clemente arranged for three flights to deliver emergency supplies, only to discover that their contents had been stolen by corrupt Nicaraguan officials.
Clemente decided he would personally accompany a fourth flight from Puerto Rico to Nicaragua to ensure the aid reached those in need.
Manny Sanguillen, the catcher for Clemente’s championship 1971 Pirates, was in Puerto Rico at the time playing winter ball. Clemente had taken him under his wing when the Panamanian Sanguillen first arrived in Pittsburgh in 1967 and the two had become close friends. Sanguillen had spent the week helping Clemente raise money for the relief effort. Now Clemente wanted him to fly to Nicaragua with him. Sanguillen agreed but fate intervened. Sanguillen lost his car keys and missed the flight. He was asleep that night when a friend awakened him with the news that Clemente’s plane had fallen into the Atlantic off the coast of Puerto Rico shortly after takeoff.
A devastated Sanguillen traveled to Pinones on Puerto Rico’s northeast coast to join the search effort, ignoring Pirates General Manager Joe Brown who told him not to go. Despite his lack of diving experience, Sanguillen spent days scouring the nearby reefs looking for his friend. “Manny dove from dawn till midnight”, Pirates pitcher Steve Blass recalled in an interview. On January 4, 1973, a memorial service was held for Clemente. Sanguillen was the only member of the Pirates not to attend—he was still searching the reefs for his friend.
Clemente’s body was never found. He was 38 years old.
Dawn Carroll wanted to commemorate the bond between the two men in song. She took her lyrics to her frequent collaborator, veteran Boston guitarist, singer and songwriter Jon Butcher and explained the song’s genesis in tragedy. But Butcher found more than grief and sadness in the story of Roberto and Manny. He set Carroll’s lyrics to music to create a rousing musical celebration that re-tells a tale of deep love and enduring friendship that still resonates a half-century later.
With the 50th anniversary of that doomed flight approaching, Clemente is still very present in Sanguillen’s thoughts (as you can see in the 77-year-old’s Twitter account, @TheRealSangy35). When Dawn Carroll reached out to tell him that she had written a song to pay tribute to his friendship with Clemente, Sanguillen gave her his blessing.
“I was telling Manny how I never had a friend like him”, Carroll said, “someone who would risk his life to find me. I wished that I had a friend who would dive into shark-infested waters to search for me. And you know what he said?”
“‘Now you do’”.
