Visit Pittsburgh's Clemente Museum today!

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I now know Roberto Clemente’s social security number. It is 194 30 6624.

The knowledge isn’t tempting me to commit fraud. And of all the crimes I could commit, stealing the great Clemente’s identity for even one day would be one of the most heinous.

I’m so unworthy.

And, besides, I already have relevant numbers to more soulful fun than any ill-gotten loot could bestow. The numbers are: 3339 Penn Ave., Pittsburgh; 412 621-1268; info@clementemuseum.com; clementemuseum.com.

It’s the address to one of the coolest places in Pittsburgh and one of the most secret. The museum’s been there 10 years and is thriving with near-zero local publicity or support.

That ought to change. It’s a true treasure.

Every Pirate fans should for $20 each book an appointment for the 90-minute guided tour of The Clemente Museum, the great museum about The Great One.

When a buddy said he’d scheduled an appointment-only tour for the museum I suspected it would be in some guy’s basement.

And I was right.

But, oh, what a basement.

The Clemente Museum is located in the once-dilapidated Engine House 25 that once serviced the Lawrenceville neighborhood. A fire pole is still present in the cavernous bays that once housed the horse-drawn fire trucks and is now the museum’s main gallery.

Confounding to me is the identity and occupation of this treasure’s driving force. He’s Duane Rieder and he’s a photographer. He’s painstakingly preserved and curated a wealth of Clemente and MLB memorabilia that draws sports luminaries from around the world.

For a writer, one who used to brusquely order lollygagging photographers around, the fact upends the natural order.

Reider lives and works in a studio above the museum.

I don’t know whether Rieder ever hobnobs with scruffy writers — Rick, our guide, was his affable surrogate — but I do know he does rub elbows with sports royalty. Bob Costas, Dan Marino, Alex Rodriguez, Albert Pujols, Ichiro Suzuki and countless MLB Hall of Famers are recent guests. Widow Vera Clemente and her family are supporters.

Eddie Vedder is such a fan he wore the “21” shirt he bought there on stage throughout Pearl Jam’s ’16 summer tour.

All come to learn about the man who by all rights will have his number 21 retired, an MLB tribute that now belongs exclusively to Jackie Robinson and 42.

The artifacts are lavishly displayed and include rare contracts, awards, tributes, candid photos and, yes, his social security card.

So, sure, it’s a great place for baseball fans. But why would I be so eager to take my wife or anyone whose interest in sports runs at milder temps?

The Clemente Museum is also one of the city’s best wine bars.

It’s “Arriba!” Made popular by legendary Pirate broadcaster Bob Prince, the Spanish word is an expression of emphatic approval Prince used when Clemente did something incredible.

Its tasting cellar, cigar room, and street-level bar are as unique and engaging as any in Southwestern Pennsylvania. It’s great for parties, receptions and fundraisers.

Many luminaries become members by ordering $12,000 kegs of their own wine.

Mario Lemieux (second only to Roberto in Pittsburgh sports legends) is a supporter, as are Penguins Pascal Dupuis, Kris Letang and Marc-Andre Fleury.

In fact, there’s more evidence of Canadian-born Penguin support of the Clemente Museum than there is of any by the current Pirate ownership.

I can’t state it as fact, but I believe I’m correct in saying Bob Nutting’s never been to the Clemente Museum.

I asked about this and Rick grudgingly said the Pirates have said MLB standards prevent promotion of the museum’s existence, as if spotlighting the life of Roberto Clemente would degrade, not elevate baseball.

If I knew the Spanish word for bull crap I’d be emphatically broadcasting it right now.

As I said, I have no intention of using Roberto’s social security number to steal his identity. It’s illegal and no good could come from it.

I’ll instead urge a man as resourceful and talented as Rieder to steal Bob Nutting’s.

It would give us Pirate fans plenty of reasons to shout, “Arriba!”

Related …

Roberto Clement, Mr. 3,000

Speaking in Virginia, hoping to hit a Clemente

Pittsburgh for the holidays: Why go anywhere else?

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The AAA declared Thanksgiving the busiest travel weekend since 2007 with the bulk of tourists heading to Las Vegas.

I heard that and thought, man, the only explanation I can figure is the holiday flights to Pittsburgh were all booked up.

I’m one of those Pittsburghers who can’t understand why anyone anywhere would ever want to go any place else. We’re scattered all over the world.

We reside elsewhere, but we live — truly live — right in Pittsburgh. It’s where we reflexively go for fun.

We’ve always made a big deal of enjoying part of the holidays in the city, just an hour west of our Latrobe home.

We have our traditions. We enjoy visiting the Carnegie Museum of Art’s Hall of Architecture and its themed Christmas trees, the Nationality Rooms at the University of Pittsburgh’s Cathedral of Learning and ice skating around the Christmas tree at the jewel-like rink at PPG Square.

This year we decided to make it all an even bigger deal.

We seized a gracious opportunity to spend two nights at the Omni William Penn, the Mellon Square landmark that is this year is celebrating 100th year.

I’d never stayed there, but Mick Jagger has.

I without fail include mention of the grand hotel every time I’m tasked with doing a why-Pittsburgh-is-great travel feature. Happens about once a year.

Like many iconic hotels, the William Penn has a plush presidential suite. But unlike many of those, this one includes actual presidential history. Ten Commanders-in-Chief from Teddy Roosevelt to Barack Obama have stayed there, as have Michael Jackson and the Dalai Lama, who happened to stay in the same suite the very night after Jagger checked out.

It’d be a neat historical trinket to learn the staff reported either Sir Mick or His Holiness was suspected of stealing towels and that each tried to blame it on the other.

I had a great time just sitting in the lobby trying to discern any slight differences in the three lobby chandeliers. 

I’d read each of the 500-pound fixtures glitters with precisely 1,754 individual crystal prisms identical to the others. The count may be accurate. I’ll never know. I kept getting distracted by the glittering ice cubes in my glass of bourbon and losing count.

There were five of those.

The beauty of staying right in Pittsburgh is having all of Pittsburgh right there.

We enjoyed the 2016 WPXI Holiday Parade, visited the PPG Place Wintergarden and its annual Gingerbread House extravaganza, cruised around the fountain at the point, and enjoyed the free holiday film shorts presentation at the Harris Theater on Liberty Ave.

Our dining and drinking options included The Carlton, NOLA, The Original Oyster House, and the famous eggs benedict in The Terrace Room at the William Penn. 

I can’t write about Pittsburgh as a tourist destination without recollecting an indelible anecdote from 2009 when the Penguins won their third Stanley Cup.

I was having lunch in a Latrobe bar when the news began showing clips of all the happy South Side mayhem instigated by the victory. Fans were going nuts outside Jack’s saloon on Carson St..

My wistful buddy said, “You know, just one time I’d like to go down there and see what that’s like. It looks like so much fun.”

He’d lived in Latrobe for 50 years and a genuine Pittsburgh whoop-it-up was still on his bucket list.

I set down my fork, wiped my mouth with my napkin and said, “Let’s go. We can zoom in, have some giggles and be back by dinner.”

He declined my dare, but a week later we had a designated driver and a van full of rowdies and enjoyed a day-long frolic.

I’m dumbfounded by anyone who doesn’t in these tenuous times do all they can to add more Christmas zing to their lives. Our weekend included a few atypical upgrades, but most of it was still fun for free.

And it was all marvelous.

Vegas for the holidays?

Why gamble when there’s a sure thing right down the street?

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Random thoughts on Letterman, "Survivor" & my weenie ways

• When I heard there was a deadly brawl involving three Texas biker gangs I instinctively knew the man in the picture at least was safe.

• I’m happy David Letterman seems happy to be retiring. Last night’s adios Top Ten list was wonderful. I watched him when he was a morning show sensation way back in 1980. I’d never seen anything like it. And I was in college when he was revolutionary. We’d never miss it. He was as influential to our juvenile humor as “Mad” magazine had once been. The vintage clips he’d been playing the last month recall his brilliance. I think over the years Dave just got professionally fatigued at his inability to beat Jay in the ratings and it was like he stopped trying. I eventually became a solid Leno viewer for reasons that have nothing to do with perceived cool or fealty to the hip coastal critics. Jay made me laugh more.

• If those Letterman thoughts leave you thinking I’m a weenie, well, join the club. I was deemed “weenie” more times last night than the guy who drives the Oscar Meyer-mobile. Why? Last night, I skipped a big cigar smoker at DiSalvo’s Station in favor of staying in to watch the “Survivor” finale. I’ll bet I received 20 texts disparaging my taste, my intellect and my manhood. It was almost as bad as the time I ducked out on a drunken weekend in Athens, Ohio, to slink home to watch “The Muppet’s Most Wanted” movie with my family.

• My friends think I spend too much time with my family. My family thinks I spend too much time with cigar-smoking louts. I’m at a point in my life where every decision I make is bound to make at least half of the people who know and love me think I’m a perfect jackass. 

• I wonder if it bothers virtuoso banjo players that to most Americans the most accomplished banjo players in America are named Steve Martin and Kermit The Frog.

• I don’t know why I feel compelled to be honest with my buddies when I’m doing something I know will earn their disdain. None of them would have known if I’d have said I was skipping the monthly debauch to speak to the International Gay Bowlers Organization. At least I don’t think any of them would have known. Maybe some of them are secretly afraid to come out and publicly admit they bowl. 

• In fact, the IGBO is meeting in Pittsburgh Nov. 10-16 and I have sent them a proposal about addressing their group. I recently shelled out $250 to partner with Visit Pittsburgh, the city’s tourism bureau, to take advantage of the marketing muscle behind all the conventions that come to this popular destination. I attended an introductory gathering Tuesday and was very pleased by the warmth of the informative greeting. The people are great, plus now I have access to calendars and contacts of every convention coming to town. It promises to be very beneficial.

• Still, I’m having trouble believing I’ll ever be successful as a public speaker until my mustache makes up its mind what color it wants to be. Many men my age have what is known as a salt ’n’ pepper mustache. I do, too. But their’s look good because the salt and pepper is all mixed up in one shaker. Mine is salt on one side, pepper on the other — two shakers on opposite ends of the table. I have to think it’s very distracting for anyone trying to suss out what I have to say in a public forum.

• I’m doing a random list today, in part, because I need to get ready for tonight when again I’ll be Word Master for the Greensburg Rotary’s Ninth Annual Spelling Bee at Greensburg Salem Middle School. It’s a role I assumed for last year’s bee, which nearly ended in controversy when a student incorrectly spelled the word “Pennsylvania.” How does a Pennsylvanian misspell Pennsylvania? He forgets to start with “capital P.” Luckily, the judges deemed the word’s inclusion too sneaky and gave the kid another chance. But having a role — even a non-judging one — in a spelling bee is nerve-wracking. If you can’t make it to the school tonight, I advise you to check out the excellent 2006 movie, “Akeelah and the Bee.” It is to spelling bee movies what “Rocky” is to boxing flicks. You’ll love it.

• Other bona fide groups coming to Pittsburgh for conventions in the next few months include: the American Guild of Organists, the Barbershop Harmony Society, the American Massage Therapy Association, the National Association of Black Accountants, and The Amalgamated Association of Blonde Blind Bloggers.

• I made that last one up.

• So how was “Survivor?” It was outstanding. If everybody in America was as good as their jobs as host Jeff Probst is as his, the nation would be a juggernaut. Still, I like to reflect how the show is the exact same age as our oldest daughter, Josie, who will be 15 in September. The physical and cerebral changes in J-Ro are stunning. Yet, Jeff Probst hasn’t changed even a little bit. Neither have any of his lines.

• Wanna know what you’re playing for?

• Frontrunner for @8Days2Amish Tweet of the Month: “Too many people who mistakenly believe they have the world on a string realize too late what they’re actually holding is a lit fuse.”

• If I were less concerned about your time and how busy you are, I would include the following lines at the bottom of each and every post: Thank you. You taking the time to read and, I hope, enjoy my blog means the world me. I hope you’ll continue and refer it to friends whenever it’s worthy.

• I’ve had some people say I should do more of these round-ups because it would make blogging so much easier. But who said it ought to be easy? There’d be no point in blogging for free if you didn’t at least aspire to greatness every single time you sat down to type. Soothing mediocrity is our most addictive painkiller.

• Even if I never accrue a single speaking engagement through my Visit Pittsburgh partnership, I’ll guarantee you this: I’ll make back the $250 in free drinks and hors d’oeuvres in six months flat.

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My fears of public speaking

I used to be very comfortable speaking in public. Did it all the time. In fact, I was a regular guest on Pittsburgh morning radio and on a popular panel TV show.

I’ve taught college classes, have spoken to writers’ groups and once addressed more than 200 people at a Manhattan awards ceremony where I was a guest of honor for a series of stories I wrote about people struggling with dystonia.

That’s why recent anxieties about public speaking left me unnerved.

Because I’m intending to do a lot more of it.

On its face, that last statement will alarm my family and my friends at the bar, my core demographics and the ones who think I never shut up.

They fail to understand a key difference between public speaking and drunken babbling.

Public speaking requires some wit, monetary incentive and an alert audience eager for entertainment or information.

For me to babble drunkenly, all I need is booze and people with ears who prefer hearing me incoherently yap at the tavern to being home and hearing a sober spouse complain about their shortcomings.

But I have a new book coming out and I plan on reaching out to every civic group in Western Pennsylvania who’ll be interested in hearing how a guy who can’t help himself is now a self-help author -- you can check out the still-evolving website, www.UseAllTheCrayons.com.

So the stakes are high. 

I want every appearance to be polished and entertaining, an oratorical home run.

It wasn’t last week on a Michigan radio show, which I’m regarding as more of a foul out. I’m friends with Michael Patrick Shiels, host of a lively program syndicated on 10 different stations across the state. Recent guests include Mitt Romney, Capt. Chesley Sullenberger and me.

Michael couldn’t have been more generous with his introduction. I remember listening and thinking, wow, this guy’s gonna be good -- and I’ll bet he’s handsome, too. It was so flattering that when he started asking me live questions about my book I responded with dumbfounded silence.

I kept waiting for the brilliant man he’d introduced to speak up and say something intelligent.

That guy was a no-show.

I was so choppy and awkward I’m convinced my old friend won’t have me on again until I heroically land a packed jumbo jet liner on the Hudson River.

The result? I had just one guy get in touch after the show asking me to send him a free copy of the book, which I happily did for reasons stated here.

It shook my confidence.

That’s why I felt relief the other night at a gathering of about 100 international journalists and Pittsburgh big shots when the microphone seemed to safely pass me by.

The Pittsburgh Regional Alliance and Visit Pittsburgh brought these distinguished journalists from as far as Spain and Germany to Pittsburgh to learn why the only color becoming more dominant than Black 'n' Gold is green.

The David L. Lawrence Convention Center, Consol Energy Center, and other dazzling new downtown structures have embraced green technologies in ways that are being hailed around the globe. Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens is unveiling the new Center for Sustainable Landscapes, which ingeniously produces all its own renewable energy and waters its lush gardens solely on water captured and treated on site.

It’s is among the greenest buildings on earth, quite a feat considering it earns the designation over thousands of other places that have an advantage of starting out being called “green” houses.

And I’m busting with pride that Pittsburgh is its home.

I just didn’t want to have to say it through an amplifier at the Monday evening reception.

We were on the spectacular 12th floor porch of the Reed Smith building, adjacent to the new Fairmont Hotel in the heart of Pittsburgh’s Golden Triangle. I was standing with fellow freelance writer Chris O’Toole, the kind of journalist I want to be when I grow up (I’ll be 50 in February so any day now)

Her credentials include bylines in many of the world’s most prestigious publications. She’s poised, classy and beloved by all.

My most impressive credential at the time was I was standing next to her.

The MC, Pittsburgh TV personality Bill Flanagan, concluded his chipper opening remarks and asked each of the visiting journalists to introduce themselves and offer a little background. Happily, he and the mic passed right by Chris and I.

I felt a huge surge of relief. I wouldn’t have to address the crowd.

And what a distinguished group it was. It included a reporter for The New York Times and representatives from many other renown publications who’ve been rejecting my inferior work for years.

I joked to Chris it was a good thing they passed us by because all I’d have to say is, “I’m Chris Rodell and I need more wine!”

And that was true. When the wine is free, I could just stand there and drink myself into a giddy little puddle. Free from concerns about having to speak, I was having a splendid time.

That’s why I almost dropped my glass when Flanagan said, “And, finally, we’d like to introduce two outstanding local journalists, Chris O’Toole and Chris Rodell!”

If we’d have just been about four stories lower, I’d have jumped off the building and made a run for it.

I don’t recall a single word she said, but I’m sure it was brilliant.

And I don’t recall a single word I said either, which is a pity because it, too, was apparently brilliant.

I was the last speaker, the clean-up hitter. As fate had it, mine were the valedictory remarks of the evening and I somehow pulled it off.

The reaction couldn’t have been better. Prominent Pittsburghers kept coming up to me to thank me for my heartfelt gush. Fellow reporters sought my acquaintance. 

I tried to think of why the results of these two episodes of public speaking differed so widely; one a failure, the other a success.

For one, I was prepared and had a list of talking points at the ready.

For the other, it was completely extemporaneous. 

After careful consideration, I blame the apparent sobriety of Michigan residents who listen to the radio at 8:30 a.m. Tough crowd.

It wasn’t like that on that scenic Pittsburgh porch. 

You see, I wasn’t the only guy there enjoying lots of free wine.

The results have me considering altering my business model for selling my book. To heck with rubber chicken dinner talks before Western Pennsylvania civic groups.

Napa Valley, here I come!