The Western Pennsylvania Sports Museum will use the All-Star Game to highlight the final years of Roberto Clemente's career. More than 40 action and off-field images of Clemente from 1969 to 1972 are on exhibit in "Roberto Clemente -- Photographs by Les Banos," displaying the work of the former Pirates team photographer.

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More than 40 of Banos' black-and-white photographs of Clemente, freshly printed by Lawrenceville photographer Duane Rieder, are on view as the highlight of the museum's "Summer Of Baseball" roster of activities surrounding the July 11 All-Star game. Some of the images have never been seen by the public. "Summer of Baseball" also includes public programs there July 7-11 by the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

The museum, part of the Senator John Heinz Pittsburgh Regional History Center in the Strip District, also will be gathering Clemente-related memorabilia from locally-owned private collections to put on display.

"You really get a sense of Clemente's personality and grace and the dignity with which he carried himself," Anne Madarasz, the center's museum division director and the exhibit's curator, told the Post-Gazette. "There's something special about him as a man beyond his athletic talent. When great men like Clemente die in a tragic way, there's a sense of wanting to be closer to them, and you can see some of his character in the photographs. There's a real thoughtfulness and beauty to them that you don't see in a lot of sports photography."

Banos, a native of Hungary, joined the Pirates in 1969 as a still and motion picture photographer, producing team portraits, candid shots and coaching films. Along the way, he and Clemente developed a friendship that went beyond the playing fields and locker rooms, bonded in part, Banos thinks, by their immigrant backgrounds. Banos, who received an award from the Hungarian government, principally for hiding people from the Nazis during World War II, would have been on Clemente's ill-fated humanitarian flight to Nicaragua, but instead a professional conflict kept him in Pittsburgh.

The Smithsonian Institution had planned a traveling exhibit about Clemente, Madarasz said, but when it was unable to fully fund it, produced the online exhibit, "Beyond Baseball: The Life of Roberto Clemente." The bilingual exhibit is available online now (www.robertoclemente.si.edu ) and will be featured in a computer kiosk within the photography exhibition. It includes games and activities for children and a teacher's resource area with free downloadable curriculum guides.

In David Maraniss' new biography, "Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero," Banos describes Clemente with a photographer's eye: "He was a sculpture. He could have posed for Greek statues," he said. "What you saw with him was archaeology. He was a perfect model. Not an ounce of extra fat. All the right muscle. A perfect figure for a man of any age."

? Cooperstown will come to Pittsburgh from July 7 to 11 when the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum brings a series of public programs on baseball history. All-Star memorabilia from years past will be on display. A hands-on activity will show how baseball uniforms and equipment have changed through the years, and actor Greg Kinney will assume the role of baseball legends Clemente, Josh Gibson and Willie Stargell in theater-style performances.

?Finally, the sports museum will be involved in the dedication of state historical markers at the remaining portion of the Forbes Field wall in Oakland July 7, and at the site of the Hill District's former Greenlee Field, where the Negro League's Pittsburgh Crawfords played, Aug. 11.