In the days before free agency mobilized players and fertilized fraternization between opponents who had formerly been teammates, the rivalry stuck because teams remained almost the same from year to year, which thickened the players’ loyalties. As with any long-standing conflict where the next generation inherits the elders’ feud, the veterans inculcated the younger players with their hatred—to the point where they saw red in orange-and-black or Dodger Blue. “We hated the Giants,” Carl Furillo said. “We just hated the uniform.”
So when Don Drysdale led off the eighth and Bobby Bonin retaliated with a slow curve that thumped him on the posterior, everyone expected it. But the pitch was not enough to assuage Marichal’s sense of injustice. “For the five years I’ve been in the league, I’ve seen too much of this sort of thing,” Juan said afterward in the clubhouse. “He [Drysdale] has hit Mays and Cepeda and has knocked just about all of us back from the plate. I do not say he tries deliberately to hit us, but he has good control and shouldn’t be that wild. This stuff has got to stop. I’ll do something about it if he continues. Somebody’s going to find out we can protect our hitters. Next time he comes close and I’m pitching, he’ll get hit. And real good, too.”
Sportswriter Arnold Hano interpreted Marichal’s statement as more than an idle threat: “The young Dominican declared war [on Drysdale].” National League president Warren Giles also took Juan seriously. Giles warned that any pitcher deliberately “protecting” his hitters would be assessed a $1,000 fine.*
* Marichal made $60,000 in 1965. The modern equivalent of Giles’s threatened penalty would be a $304,167 fine to Giants pitcher Tim Lincecum, who made $18,250,000 in 2012.
Drysdale, meanwhile, did nothing to mollify Marichal or the other Giants. Rather, the Big D incited his antagonists with the retort, “I’m only about sixty feet away from them in any direction. They know where I am. If they get me, they better get me good or I’ll take four guys with me, and I don’t mean those .220 hitters, either.”
Marichal lost the first matchup 2–1. The Dodgers came away from the series with three wins in four games. The two teams met again in San Francisco four days later on May 7. Johnny Roseboro had a big game, going 3-for-3, with his biggest hit coming in the eighth, a leadoff single that eventually became the winning run in the Dodgers’ 4–3 victory. That same day, the Dominican Republic’s civil war became Time magazine’s cover story. The American press widely supported the president sending troops to intervene in the region for the first time in 40 years. “If ever a firm hand was needed to keep order, last week was the time and the Dominican Republic was the place,” Time stated, referring to Santo Domingo as “a city gone berserk in the bloodiest civil war in recent Latin American history.”
The marines did not readily succeed in restoring order. The rebels included a loose collaboration of Bosch loyalists, aspiring communists, opportunistic insurgents, and defiant army soldiers battling the military junta’s air force and US Marines in a chaotic urban guerrilla war that ranged from one neighborhood to another. Ad hoc execution squads lined up victims against walls, snipers fired at US helicopters, and a mob paraded the head of a police officer on a pole like a trophy. Bodies littered the streets. The smell of rotting flesh hung pungent in the air. In the hospitals doctors operated on the wounded by flashlight and without anesthesia. “Santo Domingo was a city without power, without water, without food, without any semblance of sanity,” Time reported.
Juan couldn’t read these reports—many of them sullied by misinformation—without worrying about his family. Nor could his wife, Alma. They had allegiances on both sides. Alma’s brother was a lieutenant in the military, and her sister had married an officer. Juan had friends among those revolting and those resisting. They craved a stable government for their country and wanted their loved ones to be safe. “With troops in the streets and people being hurt and killed, it gives you a strange feeling to talk political abstractions when you are thousands of miles away, playing baseball for a living,” Juan wrote. He felt powerless being so far from his loved ones during the war. The anxiety overwhelmed him. His sinus troubles persisted. He was scheduled to start the third game of the second series with the Dodgers on Sunday afternoon, going up against Sandy Koufax, but while throwing his warm-ups before the game, he fought for breath. Franks substituted Gaylord Perry for Marichal.
Jesus Alou popped a two-run homer off Koufax in the bottom of the fourth to give the Giants a 2–0 lead that delighted the 40,596 fans at Candlestick. Los Angeles countered with a two-run homer of their own by Willie Davis in the sixth. The Dodgers took special satisfaction in the home run off Perry, who had hit two of their batters. Franks pulled Perry in the seventh after he gave up two singles. Giants reliever Masanori Murakami hit Roseboro with the first pitch he threw all season. That loaded the bases. Murakami struck out the next batter for the second out, but then Franks brought in the right-handed Marichal to face the left-handed-hitting Wally Moon. Juan hadn’t felt fit to pitch but, as he often did, pushed himself to play through his malady. Not so well at first. He gave up a single that scored one runner and almost another who was thrown out at home. Though the run counted against Perry, Marichal had given up the hit that put the Dodgers ahead 3–2.
In the Giants’ half of the eighth, Koufax walked Mays, gave up two singles that tied the score 3–3, and left the game. Two sacrifices and a single by Marichal put the Giants up 6–3. Juan walked the first batter in the top of the ninth but then struck out the next two and got the final out on a fly ball to right field for the win. Koufax, despite striking out 11 batters in seven innings, gave up five runs in his worst outing of the season to date and took the loss. Still, the Dodgers remained in first place, five and a half games ahead of the Giants, who were mired in eighth place with an 11–13 record.
The teams did not play each other again until June 15, when Marichal faced Drysdale in their first meeting since they had traded taunts in the papers. The Giants had found their winning stride, going 20–13 since Marichal beat the Dodgers on May 9, and climbed up to third place, though they remained five and a half games behind their first-place rivals. Marichal had won nine games, led the league with four shutouts, and allowed only 1.85 earned runs per nine innings. Drysdale had won 11 games, the most of any NL pitcher.
The civil war continued in the Dominican Republic, and President Johnson kept funneling marines to the cause. By the end of May, 20,500 US troops occupied the island, about half the number of those in Vietnam. But the factions on both sides complicated negotiations and rendered a ceasefire impossible. Riflemen sniped at suspected enemies in Santo Domingo, rebels launched mortars at marine positions, and government tanks rolled through narrow capital streets blasting houses suspected of harboring rebels. From his perch in Puerto Rico, deposed Dominican president Juan Bosch blamed the United States for the messiness of the situation. Americans began to question and criticize Johnson for aligning himself with “a military junta that is widely hated,” and it became clear that “the Dominican people—not just a handful of communists—were fighting and dying for social justice and constitutionalism,” as the New York Times pointed out. Marichal’s sinuses raged unabated. Time referred to his condition somewhat dismissively with the comment that he had been bothered by “an allergy his doctor blamed on the revolution in his native Dominican Republic.”
But the strain on Marichal was serious. On television he saw the scenes of his countrymen rioting, stealing from stores, killing one another. The images disturbed him. “There’s no way you can concentrate while that is happening in your country,” he said. The Braves rocked him for nine runs in less than four innings, one of the worst outings of his career, in late May. He and the Alou brothers received word at the end of the month that their families were safe—for the moment. Juan’s sinuses continued to trouble him. Sneezing fits shook him so violently that when he was driving he had to pull over his car until they passed.
More than
50,000 fans filled Dodger Stadium on Tuesday, June 15, for the Marichal-Drysdale rematch. Neither pitcher hit any batters. Both delivered top performances. Drysdale pitched a complete game, gave up only two runs, and cracked two hits of his own. But Marichal outdid him, scattering five hits over nine innings, allowing only one run, and getting a hit himself. San Francisco won 2–1. But the Dodgers took the next two, and the Giants left Los Angeles six and a half games back.
Two weeks later, they met again in San Francisco, once again Drysdale against Marichal. The 35,000-plus San Francisco fans booed Drysdale and cheered merrily when the Giants scored a quick run in the first inning. But then the two pitchers took turns retiring batters quickly with strikeouts and ground ball outs. When Marichal gave up a single in the third, he induced the next batter to ground into a double play. When Willie McCovey singled in the fourth, Roseboro threw him out trying to steal.
But the Dodgers battery came undone in the fifth. Drysdale committed two errors on the first two batters. Roseboro made another to let a run score. Then Johnny let a ball get by him, and the runner advanced. A walk and two singles later, the Giants led 5–0. Drysdale buckled down for the final four innings, retiring 12 batters in succession, striking out 4 of them. Roseboro atoned by singling during a Dodgers rally in the seventh and making it to third but did not manage to score. Marichal got Drysdale to ground out weakly with the bases loaded to end the threat. Juan was simply too good for the Dodgers that day, shutting them out on six hits. The victory marked Marichal’s 10th consecutive win over the Dodgers at Candlestick. Los Angeles remained in first place, but the Giants had whittled the gap to two and a half games.
Juan was selected as the National League’s starter for the All-Star Game in Minnesota on July 13. In his last start before the game, he blanked the Phillies 4–0, his seventh shutout and 14th victory of the season. He lowered his ERA to 1.55 even with a nine-run barrage over three and two-thirds innings in Milwaukee. Despite the distraction of the civil war back home and his sinus trouble, he was pitching one of the finest seasons of his career.
His teammates on the NL All-Star squad included Drysdale and Koufax. For all the attention given to his matchups against Drysdale that season, Koufax remained Marichal’s true counterpart for the distinction of being the major league’s best pitcher. That season the Sporting News referred to “the great Marichal” as “the best righthander in the league” with his “magnificent mastery.” Koufax was, simply, “the Left Arm of God.” While Koufax blew batters away with his supernal fastball and curveball, Marichal baffled them with his patented mix of pitches and impeccable control. Sandy racked up strikeouts; Juan preferred the efficiency of ground ball outs. “It takes at least three pitches to strike a man out,” he said. “It only takes one for a ground ball.” However they achieved it, Marichal and Koufax were equals in success: From Opening Day 1961 to the Midsummer Classic of 1965, both had won 91 games.*
* Over 16 seasons Marichal would win 243 games and lose 142 for a .631 career winning percentage (51st on the all-time list). Koufax went 165–87 through 12 seasons, a .655 winning percentage (22nd all-time).
Equals in success, they were a study in contrasts: Marichal was married with children, a dark-skinned Catholic Latino and sometime practical joker who set off stink bombs on airplanes. Koufax was a highly desired bachelor, a light-skinned Jew from Brooklyn and a man of incalculable reserve. Marichal employed a variety of windups, most notably his signature high leg kick, to sling his arsenal of 13 pitches—including a fast slider, a jumping fastball, a sinking overhand curve, a breaking sidearm curve, and a nasty screwball—all with precise control. He had another weapon: his willingness to tickle batters inside. Koufax, on the other hand, used an amazingly efficient windup to throw his curve and fastball, the only pitches he needed to dominate the opposition. Koufax modeled understated emotion; Marichal displayed a flash temper.
They had started against one another only twice, both times in 1964, splitting decisions, though Koufax could claim the edge with his no-hitter. “No other head-to-head mound rivalry ever seemed more destined to fire the fan’s imagination,” Peter C. Bjarkman writes in Elysian Fields Quarterly. The two would square off for the rubber match in August—with everlasting consequences.
After curfew that night on a darkened street in Santo Domingo, a short line of cars carrying representatives of the Organization of American States’ negotiating team drove out of the rebel zones. The talks had stalled, stymied by the “bitter hatred” that divided the two sides. An American reporter observing the cars’ retreat was suddenly startled by a civilian rebel with a rifle. The reporter took a nervous step backward. “Tell me,” the rebel accosted him. “How did Marichal do today in the All-Star Game?”
The reporter was relieved to be able to tell the man with the rifle that even though Sandy Koufax picked up the win with an inning of scoreless work, Marichal took home the game’s MVP Award for his three innings (the maximum the rules allowed a pitcher to throw in the game) of one-hit, shutout pitching. Marichal also singled and scored in the National League’s 6–5 triumph. The rebel walked away satisfied, and the reporter’s heart rate eventually stabilized.
The violence remained centralized in Santo Domingo, but the effects spread nationwide. Bank closings hampered the country’s already weak economy. Resolution seemed remote, the conflict’s escalation more a certainty. “After thirty-one years of savage Trujillo dictatorship and subsequent vacuums, the hatred of the Dominican Republic runs deep, and there are thousands of people on both sides who are just aching to have at each other,” Time reported in August.
Juan continued to fret and to win. In his first outing after the All-Star Game, he shut down the Astros 7–0 for his 15th win and 8th shutout. Joe Morgan, Houston’s future Hall of Fame second baseman, said of Marichal afterward, “There’s only one more in his class, and I’m not so sure about him [Koufax].” On August 4 Juan beat the Cincinnati Reds 4–3 in 10 innings. In his 17th win of the season and 100th of his career, he struck out 14, his high mark for the summer. He had pitched 18 complete games and allowed only 1.65 earned runs per nine innings. His performance had been remarkable; given the circumstances, it was absolutely amazing.
Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, Roseboro wasn’t repeating his success of the previous year. He had put together an eight-game hitting streak in April, but his aching back took him out of the daily lineup. He had some timely hits, like his eighth-inning single that produced the winning run against the Giants in May, but he was putting up a lot of oh-fers in the box scores, the worst being an 0-for-7 night in Houston in mid-May. By July 5 his 33 RBI were second-best on the team, but he was hitting only .239. The frustration that ensued may have prompted a falling out with one of his best friends on the team.
Maury Wills and Johnny had been roommates on the road and good friends for six years. They both enjoyed playing various musical instruments, from the ukulele to the banjo, though Wills showed more talent and didn’t hesitate to tease Roseboro about his musical shortcomings. They also enjoyed dressing up for a meal on the road and generally got along well. “He was a charming guy with a gift of gab, a very appealing person and roomie,” Johnny wrote. But Wills had a weakness for women, and the more success he had on the field the more he enjoyed in the bedroom. Finally, one night during the first week of July in Cincinnati, after Rosey had waited two hours to call his wife while Maury wooed a woman on the phone from midnight to 2 a.m., Rosey asked Alston to switch him to a room with Willie Davis. “He [Wills] gets into so much business I can’t get my rest,” Johnny explained. “I love him like a brother, but I got to get away from him.”
“It’s like a divorce,” Wills told a reporter. “Roseboro packed up and went home to mother.”
Johnny wasn’t a playboy in the fashion of his ex-roomie, but he was no monk, either. He and his wife endured frigid spells that he warmed with other women, occasionally accepting the overtures of groupies who wante
d to make it with a ballplayer. Jeri knew ballplayers cheated on their wives. She once showed up unexpectedly in Johnny’s hotel room saying she simply wanted to surprise him, though he suspected she wanted to catch him being unfaithful. She didn’t, though her radar was astute even if her timing was off. Johnny had an affair with a graduate student in Chicago that lasted several years and ended after Jeri found one of the woman’s love letters. Jeri lit into Johnny, but he did not admit any more than she read. He would later meet a woman that would end their marriage.
Two weeks after his breakup with Wills, Roseboro fell into a slump. His parents came out to visit during a home stand, but all they saw was their son’s futility during an 0-for-19 spell that lasted five games. His average fell to a disappointing .211. He managed a hit on July 27, but Walt Alston dropped Roseboro to eighth (from fifth) in the batting order and even sat him a couple of games the final week of July.
Roseboro’s hitting picked up some during August. During nearly the first three weeks of the month, going into a critical series with the Giants, he went 9-for-34, a .265 clip. Not great, but an improvement on his July. His biggest contribution remained his defensive play. That season he posted a stellar .994 fielding percentage, allowed only eight passed balls—his best mark since 1958—and threw out nearly half of the runners who tried to steal on him.
On August 6 the Dodgers played the Reds in Cincinnati, Roseboro went 1-for-3 with two walks, and President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act in a ceremony that heralded the new law as the completion of the Emancipation Proclamation, eliminating voter qualification tests and adding more than one million African Americans to the voting rolls. Referring to slavery’s legacy in America, Johnson said, “Today we strike away the last major shackle of those fierce and ancient bonds.” But the stroke of the president’s pen did not erase the prejudice. That week, white thugs beat five civil rights workers in Americus, Georgia; night riders burned two black churches in Slidell, Louisiana; and white neighbors of Chicago mayor Richard Daley pelted demonstrators outside his house with eggs and tomatoes. Despite the landmark legislation, racial tension remained taut throughout the nation.
The Fight of Their Lives Page 10