He had to contend with the bigotry in the Triple-I League, too. At one park when he swung his bat in the on-deck circle, a white fan yelled, “Hey, Sambo, out of the way.” Roseboro glared at him. “Cool it, nigger, and move your ass,” the white man said. “Or I’ll come and kick it.” Roseboro didn’t move, but he didn’t stand up for himself either. Each time something like that happened, he experienced a little death inside.
His immediate concern was molding himself into a catcher. He asked Ray Perry, the Cedar Rapids Raiders player-manager, for help. Perry obliged. He had been a minor league star who likely would have made it to the majors if it hadn’t been for World War II and a broken leg afterward. Perry reminded Roseboro of his high school coach Bud Plank, a master of the fundamentals. Perry had Johnny show up two hours before the other players and work with him on blocking pitches, fielding bunts, catching pop-ups, and throwing to the bases. Roseboro had been lazy about his training in the past, but he worked hard with Perry and was a fast learner. Perry knew when to chew out his catcher and when to put an arm around his shoulder. Over 55 games Roseboro’s batting suffered—he hit only .235—but he gained more confidence in his defense.
With regard to his game off the field, Johnny had made some fumbling attempts at dating women but finally met someone he felt comfortable with on a visit to his brother, Jim, who was playing football at Ohio State. Jeri Fraime was quiet, tall, and pretty and enjoyed being around Johnny. His parents liked her, and her mom liked him (Jeri’s parents were divorced). They went to Buckeye football games in the fall and wrote to one another when Roseboro headed south to play winter ball in Venezuela.
Buzzie Bavasi, the Dodgers general manager, wanted Roseboro to work on his catching skills with a team in the Gulf city of Maracaibo. The manager of the Venezuela team, Clay Bryant, who was working his way up the Dodgers coaching ranks, told Bavasi he didn’t want an inexperienced catcher on his team. Bavasi read between the lines that Bryant didn’t want a black player. The general manager told Bryant, “Either you take Roseboro or you come home.” Bryant acquiesced and gave Roseboro a fair chance. Johnny didn’t find out about Bryant’s resistance until years later.
Playing in Venezuela was different than bivouacking on an American base in Germany; this meant immersing himself into a foreign culture where he did not speak the language or understand the customs. The music was different, the food was different, and the fans were different. They yelled at Roseboro and his teammates, cussed at them, and spat at them. Much like the Latin players who had headed north to play baseball in the United States, Roseboro felt alienated and often afraid in Venezuela.
Johnny sought out the company of other Americans, with whom he felt a comfortable familiarity, befriending his teammate, center fielder Don Demeter, and Earl Battey, who caught for the team across the bay. He won over Bryant, a tough man nicknamed “Tiger.” For all of his prickliness, Bryant became another mentor to Roseboro as a former pitcher able to show him some useful aspects of the catching trade. Roseboro ended up leading the league in homers and stolen bases, unusual for a catcher but not surprising for Roseboro given his speed. When he returned to North America that spring, he made the leap to the Dodgers’ Triple-A team in the International League, the Montreal Royals, for the 1956 season. He was 22 and moving up.
The white folks of Ashland embraced their native son’s success. “Ashland can certainly be proud of the fact that young John has progressed as rapidly as he has,” wrote an Ashland Times-Gazette staffer who hadn’t even seen him play. “John still has his big days ahead of him. And we’ll all be waiting for them anxiously and with anticipation.”
When Montreal played in Columbus, which also had a team in the International League, Johnny spent time with Jeri, who lived there. One day when they were window shopping downtown, they paused outside a jewelry store. Soon they were inside looking at engagement rings. They set a date for August, when the Royals would be back for a weekend series. The night before his wedding day, a foul tip struck Roseboro in the family jewels. He crumpled to the ground. Once he was able to limp to the bench, his teammates couldn’t stop laughing at the timing of the ill-placed injury. Same thing the next day in Columbus: His dad, brother, and buddies couldn’t suppress their mirth at his swollen testicles on the day of his nuptials. The injury did spoil some of the wedding night festivities, despite his best efforts, which perhaps foreshadowed the future of the young newlyweds who did not know one another very well.
Johnny made a good impression in Montreal, catching 113 games for the Royals and putting up decent numbers at the plate, including a career-best 25 home runs. Manager Greg Mulleavy, a former infielder with a brief Major League Baseball résumé, had suggested Roseboro pull the ball to take advantage of Montreal’s short right field fence. Johnny returned to Venezuela to play in the top-tier league based in Caracas. He lived in a hotel downtown and ate most of his meals there. He liked the seafood and was getting accustomed to picante dishes but was often bored and sometimes lonely when not at the ballpark. He took refuge in one of his favorite hangouts, the cinema, watching American movies or Spanish movies with English subtitles. His play that winter—solid behind the plate and batting .338 for the pennant winners—attracted attention and started the serious talk of him being the successor to the Dodgers’ perennial All-Star backstop, Roy Campanella. “Roseboro is the number one prospect I’ve seen any place,” said Mickey Owen, who managed a Puerto Rican team and saw Roseboro play that winter. “He can do all things big—run, hit, throw. Sure he can be another Campanella. He can do things Campanella can’t do right now. He can run like an outfielder, and on top of everything else, he’s a left-handed hitting catcher with power.”
During the 1957 spring training, the Brooklyn brass fingered Roseboro as “Campanella’s eventual successor.” That sort of talk made Roseboro uneasy. How do you replace a three-time MVP? Campanella had raised expectations for Dodgers catchers. But Brooklyn manager Walt Alston kept Roseboro’s ego from swelling when he sent him back to Montreal with the comment to the press, “He can run, he can throw, he could be a good hitter, but his catching could be better.”
Mid-June, Brooklyn called. The parent club needed a replacement for the injured Gil Hodges at first base. Bavasi wanted Jim Gentile, the Royals’ power-hitting first baseman, but he was out on the town and couldn’t be found, so the general manager promoted Roseboro, who had made a handful of starts at first for Montreal. Through 48 games Johnny was batting .273 with seven home runs, which on its own would not have been cause for the call-up, but Bavasi said he had planned to bring Roseboro to Brooklyn anyway, figuring he would learn more on the bench with Campanella and bullpen coach Joe Becker, a former catcher, working with him. “We feel that type of experience will come in handy,” Bavasi said. “He could be our first-string catcher next year.” New York Daily News columnist Dick Young commented on this succession strategy, “They plan to force feed him with savvy.”
Johnny caught a flight to New York and arrived by cab at Ebbets Field but was afraid to walk into the clubhouse. He had to give himself a pep talk to open the door to the room where Campanella, Reese, Snider, Furillo, and the Dodgers’ other stars were putting on their uniforms. Then he had to convince the attendant, who had no idea who this 24-year-old was, that he belonged there. Finally another clubhouse guy showed him to his locker with a uniform hanging in it. Roseboro pulled on the white jersey with the blue Dodgers script in a silent feeling of reverential respect. Several of the players he knew from Vero Beach nodded hello, but nobody greeted him warmly until manager Walt Alston came over and handed him a first baseman’s mitt. Shit. They had converted him into a catcher and now they wanted him to make his debut that night at first base. He emptied his nerves in a bathroom stall.
Roseboro started slow. He bunted his way on base in his debut on June 14, 1957, but it took eight games and more than a month before he collected another hit. Ten days after filling in at first, he caught h
is first game and made an error. He appeared in only 35 games during his three and a half months with the club, eight of those as a pinch runner and only 19 behind the plate. He managed a mere 10 hits, though two were doubles and two homers. He was scared to catch Don Newcombe, a pitcher who was quick to air his anger. “If I made a mistake, I thought he’d have my ass,” Roseboro wrote. Campanella calmed him, saying, “Son, Newk is the easiest guy in the world to work with. You just get behind the plate and put down whatever you want him to throw, and he’ll bring it to you.”
Campanella welcomed the rookie and became his mentor on and off the field. He tutored Roseboro in catching philosophy, the art of setting up hitters and outthinking them. They roomed together on the road. Campy taught Rosey how to treat fans, how to talk to the press, how to order in restaurants, how to shop for a big leaguer’s wardrobe, and how to carry himself. He invited Jeri and Johnny to join him and his wife for weekend outings on his yacht up the Hudson and had them over for dinner. Johnny warmed instantly to Campanella’s bonhomie and considered him, 12 years his senior, a second father.
Campanella had not had a good season the previous year. The summer of ’57 confirmed his decline. The 35-year-old had started only 94 games behind the plate, and while he was still steady defensively, his offense had fallen off dramatically the past two years, in large part because his left hand was so mangled after a decade catching that he could barely grip the bat. Talk of Roseboro replacing him became more urgent, though Johnny didn’t believe it. He had spent most of his time in the bullpen warming up pitchers and hardly looked like the heir apparent to the future Hall of Famer.
Roseboro had not played much during his rookie season, but an incident in a game he caught against Milwaukee showed that the young man from Ashland had the intestinal fortitude of a major leaguer. With two strikes on the Braves shortstop Johnny Logan, Roseboro set up inside and thumped his glove loudly behind Logan’s ear, but called for a curve. When the pitch started inside, Logan backed out of the box, only to watch the ball break over the plate for a called third strike. Embarrassed, Logan turned on Roseboro and said, “What are you, one of those wise-ass rookies?” Logan had a reputation as a feisty player. That frightened Roseboro, but he didn’t want to show it. He stood up, ripped off his mask, and glared at Logan. The plate ump pushed between them before they could fire their fists. Roseboro had made his point. He wouldn’t back down, not even when scared.
Johnny and Jeri had found an apartment in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, which was poor and black but not dangerous then. They liked the city life and enjoyed taking in the sights such as the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty. Best of all for Johnny was the chance to be part of the Dodgers tradition in Brooklyn. But before the season ended, Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley announced the team’s move to Los Angeles along with the New York Giants’ departure for San Francisco. Roseboro was there for the final game at Ebbets Field, when the Dodgers shut out the Pirates, organist Gladys Goodding played “Auld Lang Syne,” and many fans wept. Johnny had been there long enough to know what a special place the ballpark and its fans were and was grateful to be part of it, though sorry to leave so soon.
He went to Los Angeles via Venezuela. He brought Jeri for another season in Caracas, which made it a working vacation. The team played three days, then had three days off. The young couple shopped, attended a bullfight, lounged on the beach, and traveled some. Johnny was playing well, but the political scene soured the vacation atmosphere. They heard rumblings of revolution, with discontent mounting toward the dictator Marcos Perez Jimenez. One night Roseboro’s team played with tanks lined outside the stadium amid rumors that an uprising would take place at the ballpark. It didn’t, but no one liked playing under those conditions. Johnny and Jeri decided to leave early and go home for Christmas. Just in time, in fact, because less than a month later a coup d’état ousted Perez. Roseboro’s teammates in Caracas were pinned in their hotel by the gunfire in the streets outside.
Five days later, Roseboro learned worse news. On January 28, 1958, he was still in bed upstairs at his parents’ house when his mother heard it on the radio and called up to him. “Roy Campanella crashed his car.” He was badly hurt and taken to a hospital in New York. Johnny was shocked. He phoned the hospital but couldn’t get through. The diagnosis eventually came out: Campanella was paralyzed from the neck down. He would never play baseball again. The news devastated Roseboro. He loved Campy almost as much as his own father. And now he had to do his job.
CHAPTER THREE
The Pride of the Dominican
After a week of throwing batting practice, Marichal made his first start for the Giants on July 19, 1960. Until his call-up, the only major league games he had watched had been on television. Now he had to perform in front of 13,279 fans at Candlestick Park on a cold and windy night, the type of weather he did not favor. Giants catcher Hobie Landrith ran through the Phillies lineup with him before the game, but Juan did not recognize any of the opposing hitters.
When he heard his own name announced throughout the cavernous stadium, Juan felt an unfamiliar chill of nerves that nearly paralyzed him. He threw his warm-up pitches uncertain that he would be able to pitch in that condition. But when the Phillies leadoff batter Ruben Amaro dug in, a calm settled on Marichal, and he struck out his man. He fanned the next batter as well. Through six innings Marichal modeled perfection, retiring the first 18 batters.
With one out in the seventh, an error by the Giants shortstop gave the Phillies their first baserunner and a walk gave them another. Juan still had a no-hitter with two outs in the eighth when pinch hitter Clay Dalrymple plopped a “dying quail” into center field for a single. Juan calmly retired the next four batters to finish the game with a 2–0 victory. The Candlestick crowd rose to its feet with applause when he walked off the field after the final out. His one-hit shutout marked one of the most impressive major league debuts ever seen. Serving up a mix of fastballs, curveballs, screwballs, and sliders with his overhand delivery, Marichal had walked just 1 batter and struck out 12. Phillies manager Gene Mauch praised the rookie: “He changed speeds tonight better than any pitcher I’ve seen this year.”
Juan had not been thinking about his no-hitter. He just wanted to pitch the entire game to win it for the Giants and prove himself. His fine performance gave him the confidence he needed to stay in the big leagues. “It established me,” he wrote in My Journey. “I knew then that I belonged with the Giants and that I wouldn’t have to go back to the minor leagues.”
The Giants recognized they had something special in Marichal, and so did others. The New York Sun headline the next day read Marichal May Turn Out to be the Miracle Giants Need (to revive their pennant hopes). Another paper said of the 22-year-old rookie with the baby face, “And a little child shall lead them.” After his second game, a four-hit, 3–1 complete game win over the first-place Pirates, Smoky Burgess, Pittsburgh’s All-Star catcher, described Marichal as a “guy who throws like he’s thirty-one instead of twenty-one,” and after Juan won his third start 3–2 in 10 innings over the second-place Braves, Hank Aaron said Marichal was “faster than Walter Johnson.”
Juan’s second start had been broadcast in the Dominican Republic over the Caribbean network, the first play-by-play sent out of the United States by Western Union. Finally, his mother heard the name of her son, the professional ballplayer, on the radio. Dominicans celebrated his success. So began a long devotion to Marichal.
But Juan discovered that making it in the big leagues required more than just good stuff and a competitive spirit. The newspaper reporters dwelled on his complexion, “skin color of a new penny”; referred to him with diminutive stereotypes, such as the “sunny señor” and “cool caballero”; and seemed to make a point of quoting him in his broken English and giving his accent phonetic spellings, the way they had with Pittsburgh Pirates star Roberto Clemente. The press’s portrayal reflected the pr
evailing North American attitude of superiority and a ready willingness to lampoon Latin culture. Television audiences laughed at Ricky Ricardo’s heavily accented malaprops on I Love Lucy, and newspaper cartoons poked fun at Hispanic pronunciations of English words.
The rise in the number of Latin major league ballplayers during the 1950s exposed inflated stereotypes and prejudices. While players like Marichal struggled to adapt to a foreign language, navigate the alien practice of Jim Crow segregation, comprehend different coaching styles, and discern the varied nuances of social interactions, they also faced scorn largely born of ignorance about cultures south of Texas at a time when Hispanics composed only about 3.25 percent of the US population. Cincinnati Reds pitcher and pioneering baseball memoirist Jim Brosnan displayed this ignorance and the patronizing attitude that often accompanied it in his account of the 1961 season with this comment: “Venezuelans, like most Latin Americans, seem to prefer vigorous, bloody revolutions to the dull peace and platitudes of U.S.–style democracy, but they do love baseball. Ergo, they can’t be all bad.” In his sweeping generalization he ignored the fact that the United States backed many of those “bloody revolutions” and exercised the grandiosity so often expressed toward Latin culture.
The larger numbers of dark-skinned Latinos playing in North America seemed to intensify the perceived threat they posed, ready to take roster spots that had been traditionally reserved for white American players; the resistance grew with their numbers. Latin players were thrown at, spat upon, and spiked on the field; in the clubhouse they were shunned and regarded with suspicion. “It’s not shocking that there is an undercurrent of feeling in baseball for the growing roster of Spanish-speaking ballplayers,” Leonard Shecter wrote in his New York Post column in June 1961. “What does bring you up sharply, though, is how ready to erupt these feelings are; that so many players speak as though all the cliché prejudices are accepted facts of life.” He quoted one player from the Minnesota Twins, which had seven Latinos on its team, as saying, “You don’t know what they hell they’re saying, whether they’re laughing at you or what. They’re in America, let ’em talk American.”
The Fight of Their Lives Page 4