I saw Roberto Clemente play only once. It was the summer of 1972 at bland, cookie cutter, more-concrete-than-thou Three Rivers Stadium against the Dodgers. I went to the game because I was working near Pittsburgh but primarily to be able to say I saw Clemente—other than on TV. He had had a fabulous World Series the fall before as the Pirates beat the Baltimore Orioles with Brooks Robinson and four twenty-game winners. But in '72, he was pushing thirty-eight and missing a lot of games with nagging injuries.

There were no offensive fireworks from Clemente that day. None of that arms-churning-galloping-into-third-for–a-triple stuff. His biggest moment was a throw from right field to hold a runner at second. Freezing him at second, actually, since not even the dumbest rookie  would dare run on a guy with rocket launcher for an arm. To give the paying fans something to take home, Clemente roared over and cut off a shot down the right field line, scooping and spinning and delivering a throw to third so dead-on perfect, I still say the Pirates's third baseman never raised—or lowered—his glove. The ball,a long white blur, took one low skip and buried itself right there. Amazing. It was exactly the combination of grace, precision, and strength that gives sports fans their primal, borderline sexual thrill.

American Experience, PBS's venerable and ever-reliable documentary series, delivers its take on Clemente tonight at 8 on TPT ch. 2 (with six re-runs through the end of the month.) Filmmaker Bernardo Ruiz (a native of Mexico and a contributor to PBS's P.O.V. documentary series), is most interested in Clemente's status among and importance to Hispanics. He suggests it was not coincidence that their ascendance in American culture occurred through the years Clemente was celebrated as one of the two or three greatest players in the game. (He was the first Latino inducted into the Hall of Fame.)

The screener copy PBS sent out was in brutal shape, so I'm not even vouching for the narration, which at times sounds like someone who has just been introduced to a baseball. But the film's interest in Clemente's remarkable athletic skills is a distant second to Ruiz's portrait of a dirt-poor kid toughing out some very lonely years amid the smug, knucklehead racism of Happy Days America before exploding as bona fide cultural leader . . . and, this is the important part . . . a man who understood what he meant to "his people" and what was expected of him. (On the film's website, Ruiz says he wasn't able to find any photographs of the day Martin Luther King spent with Clemente in Puerto Rico.)

George Will pops up with some typically salient things to say about what pre-Latino baseball and pre-Vietnam America expected out of their sports stars. (Think: Gary Cooper). And a few old geezers from the Pittsburgh press corps reminisce about their interaction with Clemente, which wasn't always good. Along with being lonely in his early years, the man was plenty bright. Bright enough in fact not to be amused by published jokes about his broken English. (Like any of the writers could speak Spanish.)

The mystery to this film is why there isn't more footage of Clemente being interviewed in Puerto Rico or by the Hispanic media, who deified him. Ruiz quotes others saying that where the average jock compliments "the great bunch of guys" for whatever happened, Clemente "preferred to talk about life." He must have been interviewed at length at some point in his career? Strangely, the film offers very few words from the subject himself.

As every fan knows, Clemente died on New Year's Eve 1972 when the plane he had chartered to deliver emergency supplies to earthquake victims in Nicaragua crashed into the Caribbean. As Will explains, where so many sports idols live the great bulk of their life as "former athletes." Clemente's dramatic, heroic death has left him suspended in amber.

When Hollywood comes up with a special effects program that can turn your average matinee-idol but athletically prissy actor into a believable sports hero—in order that the director doesn't have to do the usual lame peekaboo editing shtick to cover up the leading man throwing off the wrong foot—, there is a great feature film in Clemente. But to do it right, to capture the essential talent that catapulted Clemente to his status, you have to give the audience the sensation of what it must have been like to run, throw, and play with the balletic abandon of the real deal.