Jim O'Friel has two poems about Roberto Clemente in the Baseball Hall of Fame at his home in Cranberry Twp on Friday January 4, 2019.

CRANBERRY TWP — Jim O’Friel remembers the first time he saw his hero.

It was 1955, and a 12-year-old O’Friel was sitting with his mother watching the Pittsburgh Pirates. It was an era when televised games were few and O’Friel relished the opportunity to watch his favorite team play.

Then, the young rookie strode onto the screen and up to home plate, the black and white broadcast illuminating O’Friel’s living room. He doesn’t remember what happened during the at-bat, but he remembers the first impression he had of the man.

“Just from my perception of how he stood at the plate, how he swung the bat, how he handled himself, I said, ‘Mom, this guy is going to be a superstar someday,’” O’Friel recalled.

That was the first time O’Friel saw Roberto Clemente, but it wasn’t the last. Over the next few decades, O’Friel would take every chance he could to see the Puerto Rican-born player who would go on to fulfill young O’Friel’s prophecy.

Now 75, O’Friel has never forgotten Clemente’s life, even penning poems for the baseball star after his death in a plane crash in 1972. Copies of those poems are now housed in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., capping a lifetime of admiration for O’Friel.

This is an excerpt — learn more about O’Friel and read a few of his poems about Clemente in Sunday’s Butler Eagle.