I Found Another Reason that I Always Liked Manny Sanguillen

Even though I was a Cub fan I always liked Manny Sanguillen as a player.  I was never on the Pirates as a kid and I only played catcher one time in 10 years.  And that was in practice!  The curse of being a lefty I guess.  That's okay because I doubt that I would have liked being a catcher.

Sanguillen hit .296 in 13 years, 12 with the Pirates.  After the 1976 he was traded to the A's for Chuck Tanner, their manager.  After the 1980 season he was traded to the Indians but they released him in February.   Baseball-Reference.com lists the most similar player to Sanguillen as Thurman Munson.  That says a lot for Sanguillen who played on two World Series winners with the Pirates.

On this day in 1972 Roberto Clemente died in a plane crash.  The plane was carrying urgently-needed supplies to victims of an earthquake in Nicaragua.  Clemente boarded the plane from San Juan, P.R. because he feared profiteers were trying to intercept the humanitarian aid.  The plane crashed soon after takeoff.

Clemente was a native of Puerto Rico and Sanguillen was from Panama.  I'd forgotten a bit of my Central American geography, so here is a map.  

Sanguillen was the only Pirate not to attend a memorial service for Clemente.  Why?  He was in Central America helping to search for victims of the crash.  Clemente was never found.

This was really big news in the pre-ESPN days.  I was never awake for the 10:00 pm news so the morning paper was how I got most of my news.

More about legal issues that followed : Legal Issues After the Crash