Clemente's Friend Won't Give Up Hope

PITTSBURGH -- The friendship Phil Dorsey enjoyed with baseball great Roberto Clemente still haunts him, and he says although it's been a year since Clemente disappeared he hasn't given up hope. "I still have hope. They haven't found the body, and I still believe there's a chance I'll see him again," said Dorsey, who befriended Clemente when the outfielder first joined the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball club. "We were closer than brothers -- as close as two people can be, I guess," said Dorsey, whose mementoes include one of Clemente's uniforms. "That's why I'm going to sit around this New Year's Eve and try to ease through it," said the city postal worker the other day. "It's been a hard year, and this (the anniversary of Clemente's apparent death) brings back all the memories." Clemente and three other men were aboard an airplane that fell into the Atlantic Ocean last New Year's Eve while on a mercy mission to Nicaragua, where an earthquake had left thousands without food or medicine.

Dorsey said Clemente was in the habit of calling him on the telephone at Least once a week during the Christmas season. "And sometimes when the phone rings I get the feeling it's him," said Dorsey. Pirate catcher Manny Sanguillen, a fellow Latin and another close friend of Clemente, telephoned Dorsey recently, and for a second, Dorsey said, "I thought it was Roberto's voice. That would be a miracle, but I believe it's possible." Only the pilot's body was recovered from the waters.

Since the crash, more than $400,000 has been raised in Clemente's honor in the United States alone. The money will go to the victims of the Nicaragua tragedy and help build a sports complex for underprivileged youngsters in Puerto Rico. "Roberto never expected to live to be an old man, and it used to worry him because there were so many things he wanted to accomplish," Dorsey recalled. "That's why the greatest tribute anyone could pay him would be to carry through with the work he started."

[source: ap]