Is Kobe Bryant the Roberto Clemente of his generation?
You feel like you know them, almost like they are a part of your family.
Some of the regular people gathered outside the Staples Center in Los Angeles to honor the late Los Angeles Lakers great Kobe Bryant seemed to feel that way.
The tragedy of Bryant’s death was amplified by the death of the others in the helicopter, including his daughter Gianna, along with John Altobelli, the head baseball coach at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa, his wife, Keri, and their daughter Alyssa, and Christina Mauser, a basketball coach at the school Gianna attended, and Sarah Chester and her daughter Payton, a teammate of Gianna’s, and helicopter pilot Ara Zobayan.
The fans in Los Angeles outside the Staples Center understood the impact of the tragedy on so many families, and sympathized with them, prayed for them, but they were there for Kobe.
These weren’t Bryant’s famous fellow athletes, former teammates or the many celebrities who actually knew him.
They were fans.
But when a player like Bryant spends his entire career in one city, as Bryant did, his ongoing public presence by way of television, radio and newspapers works its way into the private lives of those who live in the city. He becomes one of them. So Bryant’s fans went to the basketball arena.
They felt compelled to visit the place that was Bryant’s professional home and their home away from home.
It can be difficult for some to people to relate to fans expressing that kind of kinship with a professional athlete. Not me.
I grew up in a steel mill town north of Pittsburgh at a time when the kids in my neighborhood knew the Pirates’ baseball team lineup better than they knew the saints and apostles.
First and foremost among them was Roberto Clemente.
He was a part of the team my entire young life, dying on New Year’s Eve 1972 when the plane he was on, which was overloaded with aid for earthquake victims in Nicaragua, crashed into the ocean.
The news of his death knocked the wind out of the entire community. It was less the loss of a celebrity athlete and more the death of a family member.
There was no cable TV. No 24-hour news networks. No ESPN. No social media. There was a game of the week on television and the rest of the season on radio. When it came to the hometown team, your guys were your guys.
The first number requested by players on every team I was a part of was Clemente’s “21.”
He was a 12-time all-star. He won 12
Gold Gloves. He was a League MVP. He helped lead his team to two World Series championships.
More importantly, he was a loving husband, father and son. And a humanitarian.
I’ve heard those same things said of Bryant.
After the Pirates won the World Series in 1971, Clemente was named the Most Valuable Player. In a postgame interview Clemente said it was the proudest moment of his life. He said he wanted to ask for the “blessing” of his parents, who were watching in Puerto Rico, and spoke directly to them in Spanish.
My mother and my steelworker father watched that interview and wept. Not just because the Pirates had won, but because the MVP, the great Clemente, sought his parents’ blessing. When he died, they wept again. They didn’t know him, but in a way that only happens in certain cities with certain athletes, they him.