ST. PETERSBURG, Fla.- Eleven weeks after he was killed on a mercy mission, Roberto Clemente was voted into baseball's Hall of Fame today in an extraordinary special election. The longtime outfielder for the Pittsburgh Pirates and folk hero in Puerto Rico thereby became the first Latin-American player picked for the museum at Cooperstown, N.Y. He also became the first player in baseball history to be elected in a special mail poll without the normal five-year wait, though Lou Gehrig of the New York Yankees was chosen by acclamation in 1939 when fatally ill.Clemente made it by receiving 93 per cent of the 424 ballots cast. They were asked to decide on his immediate election with these results: 393 voted yes, two abstained and 29 voted no-most of them explaining that they simply opposed waiving the five-year rule. The results were announced at a brief and solemn ceremony here in the heart of baseball's spring training area on the West Coast of Florida. It was one year after Clemente had opened his 18th season in the major leagues and 79 days after he was lost in a plane crash into the sea off San Juan while taking relief supplies from Puerto Rico to victims of Nicaragua's earthquake.
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