Juan had an insult to even. He fired a fastball high and tight. Shoulder high.
From first base Roseboro watched the ball hone in on Wills. That wasn’t right. Relieved to see Maury flop before the ball could hit him, Johnny was peeved that Marichal had thrown at his friend. Even though the two roommates had split up, Johnny did not want to see Maury hurt. Wills, the Dodgers’ team captain and emotional leader, didn’t like it either. He rose slowly and dressed down Marichal with a long look.
Wills lined out to end the Dodgers at-bat. When Los Angeles took the field, Roseboro wanted to set things straight with the Giants’ first batter, Willie Mays, San Francisco’s equivalent of Wills as team captain and emotional leader. Johnny didn’t want Koufax to hurt him; he just thought the situation called for Sandy to send a message that they wouldn’t tolerate Marichal throwing at the Dodgers’ batters.
Crouching behind home plate, Roseboro flicked his index finger, a sign for Koufax to put the batter in the dirt. Despite popular legend, Koufax believed in the practice of intimidating opposing hitters and protecting his teammates. He didn’t throw at their heads because he feared hurting them, but he was willing to deliver his own messages. Three months earlier, in a game against the Cardinals, after Lou Brock had bunted his way on, stole second and third, then scored on a sacrifice fly, an angry Koufax pointedly plunked Brock in the ribs with fastball.
Koufax wound up and sailed a fastball well over Mays’s head to the backstop. He later told reporters, “It was a lousy pitch. I meant it to come a lot closer.” But he had fulfilled his duty, even if it was merely a token gesture.
The Giants managed a run to make it 2–1.
Marichal took note of Koufax’s missive over Mays’s head. He resented the way Dodgers pitchers—mostly Drysdale but now Koufax—threw at his teammates. When Dodgers right fielder Fairly returned to the plate in the top of third with two out, Marichal was also thinking of Fairly’s first-inning double that had scored Wills. He delivered an inside fastball that sent Fairly diving to the ground. The Dodgers fans in the overflow crowd—and there were plenty of them that afternoon—hollered in protest. Giants fans cheered. Juan thought Fairly had overreacted—the pitch hadn’t been that close.
But Matty Alou later observed about his friend, “Juan wanted to fight all day. He had the devil inside him that day.”
Marichal’s pitch roiled the Dodgers bench, where manager Walt Alston and the players were convinced Marichal had thrown at Fairly. He had put two of their teammates in the dirt. They jumped on him with shouts and taunts.
Home plate umpire Shag Crawford warned both teams. No more. “Another one like that, and the pitcher’s out of here.”
That didn’t stop Koufax from approaching Roseboro. “Who do you want me to get?”
Johnny didn’t want Sandy ejected. “I’ll take care of it,” he said.
Marichal led off the Giants’ half. He knew baseball’s code called for Koufax to put him down, but he wasn’t sure Sandy would do it, especially after Crawford’s warning. Still, he was uneasy stepping into the box 60 feet from baseball’s hardest thrower. If ever there was a time for a pitcher to deliver an inside fastball that screamed “You can’t throw at our guys,” this was it.
The fans anticipated the showdown. The tension on the field crackled through the stands.
Crawford felt it, too. He crouched behind Roseboro, his hand on the catcher’s back, poised to eject Koufax if his pitch came too close.
Twenty-one-year-old Tito Fuentes, who had played his first major league game only four days earlier, watched from the on-deck circle, clutching his bat. The rest of the Giants peered intently from the bench and the outfield bullpen.
Koufax curved a pitch across the plate. Crawford called it a strike. Juan exhaled. He prepared to swing at the next pitch. Roseboro called for a fastball. Low and inside. Sandy delivered. Juan held off.
Johnny intentionally dropped the ball, moved behind Marichal to pick it up, and whizzed his throw past Juan’s face. Marichal later said the ball clipped his ear. He turned to face Roseboro. “Why you do that, coño?!” he demanded.
Roseboro, one of the strongest men in baseball, had decided that if Marichal challenged him, he was going to “annihilate” him. The 5-foot-11, 195-pound Roseboro dropped his mitt and stepped toward Marichal. “Fuck you and your mother!”
Juan saw the catcher in his mask and chest protector advancing on him. He recalled Roseboro’s threats, repeated by Alou and Cepeda. Fear took over.
Marichal raised his bat over his helmet and brought it down toward Roseboro’s head like he was splitting firewood. The blow did not strike squarely but did open a two-inch gash above Johnny’s left eye.
Johnny’s rage erased his formal training in karate and boxing. He lunged at Marichal like an alley fighter.
Juan retreated and stiff-armed Johnny with his left hand. The two ended up between home plate and the mound. Roseboro flailed at Marichal with punches. Juan chopped at him with his bat. He pried Roseboro’s mask loose. Johnny knocked off Juan’s helmet, which flew toward first base and bounced on the grass. Juan nicked him again with the bat, and Johnny landed a single right to Juan’s face.
Koufax rushed from the mound and raised his hands behind Roseboro, the ball tucked in his glove, trying to calm Marichal’s bat, which Juan twirled with his right hand.
Charlie Fox, the Giants third base coach, ran in to separate the pair but then leaned back to get clear of Marichal’s bat. Fuentes raced from the on-deck circle, forgetting to leave his bat behind. Fox, Fuentes, and Koufax seemed intent upon separating the pair but hesitated to come between the two and be struck themselves. For one sickening instant Fuentes gripped his bat with both hands, looking like he was going to use it as a weapon, just as Juan had.
The benches and bullpens emptied. The players surged toward the sparring pair on the grass in front of the mound. The 42,807 fans, initially stunned by the sight of Marichal clubbing the catcher, leaped to their feet and shouted.
Plate umpire Crawford attempted to subdue the two. He placed a hand on both of them, his mask still on. Initially, he’d been astonished—did he just do that?!—but then he moved in, worried Juan was going to swing his bat at the players and coaches closing in on him. Crawford, a combat vet from World War II, noted that no one else dared step between the two men.
When Juan swung his bat and Johnny stumbled to his left, Crawford saw his opening. He wrapped his arms around Marichal from behind and the two tumbled to the ground, Marichal on top of Crawford, still clutching his bat. “I didn’t want them to take the bat away from me,” he later said. “I know if they take the bat away then everybody will hit me.”
Johnny regained his footing. Big Willie McCovey held out his forearm but Roseboro slipped past. Koufax had yielded to Crawford and tipped toward Fuentes, who let go of his bat and did not attack him. Both focused on Marichal. A gaggle of players and coaches surrounded him. The majority seemed more interested in breaking things up than in taking sides and joining the fracas. They were horrified by what they had just witnessed—a player had never clubbed another on the field with a bat—and by the sight of the blood streaming from the gash on Roseboro’s head. The blood covered the left side of his face. Many on the field thought Juan had crushed Johnny’s eye. “There was nothing but blood where his left eye should have been,” Alston said.
In the squirming melee, players grabbed at Marichal on the ground, trying to wrest away his bat or strike him. Dodgers rookie pitcher Mike Kekich reached one arm around Marichal’s neck but did not deliver a punch. Kekich had been getting a drink of water and had not seen the altercation begin. Afterward, when he heard how Marichal had struck his teammate, he said ruefully, “I could have punched Marichal silly. I blew it.”
Dodger Lou Johnson, a black man and Roseboro’s friend, sprinted in from left field and threw punches at anyone in a Giants uniform. McCovey smo
thered him in a bear hug from behind but was not able to contain him indefinitely. Relief pitcher Howie Reed, a white player, went “berserk” trying to get at Marichal. He yanked at those on top of Juan so he could get a piece of him. Still on his back, Juan fended off Reed with kicks, spiking him on the left thigh. Juan also caught Johnson in the ankle with his spikes, opening a cut that would leave a scar. It took several men to constrain Reed.
Roseboro tried to push his way through to Marichal, still on his back, though he had rolled away from Crawford. Someone stepped on Crawford’s hand and cut it.
The crowd packed into the stands watched the mayhem unfold on the field. The fans were set in their loyalties, and the violence only stirred the fury of the bitter rivalry. Mays worried that if Roseboro in all his rage reached Marichal, the fans would leap the low railing and set off a full-blown riot on the field. He scrambled toward Johnny, losing his cap and getting kicked in the head on the way.
Mays wrapped his arms around his friend from behind and tugged. “Johnny, stop it,” Willie pleaded. “Stop fighting. Your eye is out.”
Mays pulled Roseboro away, and the wounded man stopped struggling. Willie grabbed a fistful of jersey under the bloodied chest protector and led him away from the swarm around Marichal. The blood streaked Johnny’s face. It flecked Mays’s jersey. Johnny gingerly touched his hand to his head and looked at the blood on his fingers. They met Dodgers trainer Doc Buhler behind home plate. Willie tenderly pressed a towel to his friend’s forehead. “This never should have happened,” he said. “Nobody should hit anybody with a bat.”
Tears slid down Willie’s cheeks.
Doc Buhler examined Roseboro’s wound. Johnny did not feel the pain yet. He just felt angry that he had landed only one punch.
His teammates and coaches gathered around while Mays wiped the blood from his hands with the white towel. Koufax faced him with his hands on his hips and a look of bewildered concern.
Meanwhile, back on their feet, Crawford lectured Marichal, who gestured in his defense. His Giants teammates and coaches looked on.
Roseboro suddenly burst from the trainer, tore past Mays, and rushed back for another shot at Marichal. This time, Preston Gomez, the Dodgers’ third base coach from Cuba, grabbed him and pulled him away, with Roseboro jawing at Marichal.
Juan yelled back, “You want some more?”
That incited Dodgers coach Danny Ozark. In the initial scuffle he had tried to separate opponents, but when he heard Marichal mocking Roseboro, he wanted to tear him apart. “He’s a goddamn nut,” Ozark later said. “A guy like that would hit a woman.” Several Giants had to block Ozark from their pitcher. Somebody decked him with a punch.
San Francisco pitching coach Larry Jansen, one of the few men Juan could trust at the moment, put his arm around Marichal’s shoulder and led him off the field.
The Candlestick fans booed Roseboro on his way to the dugout. He flashed them the finger.
Johnny wanted to stay in the game, but Alston insisted he have his head tended to. “You get that fixed up,” the manager said.
“Shit,” Roseboro said and removed his gear.
To get from the visitors’ dugout on the third base side to the clubhouse entrance in right field, he had to walk across the outfield. The fans taunted him ferociously. He bent over and patted his rear—Kiss my ass.
Once inside the clubhouse, he started to feel the pain. His head “throbbed like a toothache.” Doc Buhler wanted to stitch the wound, but Roseboro didn’t want him sticking a needle in his scalp, so the trainer closed the cut as best he could with butterfly bandages. The gash would later require 14 stitches at the hospital.
Johnny heard that Russ Hodges, one of the Giants’ broadcasters, had said Roseboro swung his mask at Marichal. Not so. The accusation infuriated Roseboro. “It made me mad on top of mad,” he said.
He was ready to go after Marichal again in the clubhouse across the hall, but did not make a move to plow through the dozen policemen guarding each entrance.
Crawford ejected Marichal. A policeman escorted him to the clubhouse. A couple of teammates checked on him. His jersey was torn open and he had a few scratches on his chest but was not hurt. He settled at the desk in the clubhouse office and listened to the game on the radio.
Play resumed with Jeff Torborg behind the plate for the Dodgers and San Francisco police officers patrolling the dugouts and field. They would remain stationed there until the final out. No one wanted the riled fans leaping the railing. Crawford told Koufax, “Whatever you do, don’t throw at anyone. We don’t want a riot here.”
With police officers also guarding the two clubhouses, Juan heard Giants broadcaster Lon Simmons’s description on KSFO that Bob Schroder finished Marichal’s at-bat and struck out. Fuentes then flied out deep to left. But the incident had rattled Koufax. He walked Jim Davenport and McCovey in succession. That brought up Mays.
The crowd booed. They did not approve of his role in the brawl, crossing enemy lines to tend to Roseboro instead of fighting for his side. That prompted Los Angeles Herald-Examiner sportswriter Bud Furillo to comment, “San Francisco always has been a ‘Kill the Umpire’ town, but what kind of cannibals roam in Candlestick these days?”
Mays appeased the fans somewhat when Koufax threw his fastball over the middle of the plate, waist high—exactly where he didn’t want to put it. Willie stroked the ball 450 feet into the left field bleachers. His 4th homer of the series, 38th of the season, and 491st of his career put the Giants up 4–2.
Ron Herbel took Marichal’s place on the mound. He shut out the Dodgers on three singles for the next five frames.
Out the doorway and into the corridor that connected the two clubhouses, Juan could see Mays going into the Dodgers clubhouse between innings to check on Johnny. Once the adrenaline subsided, regret crept in. Juan was sorry he was out of the game. Sorry for what he had done. At the same time, he thought, Roseboro had been wrong to throw the ball so close to him. That could have killed him. He had lost his head wanting to defend himself. Still, he was sorry it had all happened.
Franks came in and told Marichal he should leave for the airport and that some policemen should accompany him. Just to be safe. Juan agreed and joined the team that night for its flight to Pittsburgh.
Roseboro also left early, escorted by police. Two of San Francisco’s finest disguised the Dodgers catcher in a Giants cap and led him out of the stadium to a taxi stand, where Johnny and the team’s traveling secretary, Lee Scott, caught a cab to the airport.
The Dodgers managed a run in the ninth, but the Giants hung on to win 4–3, finishing the series where they had started it, a half game behind their rivals. By the time the game ended and police allowed reporters into the clubhouse, both Marichal and Roseboro had left the ballpark. But they would never escape that afternoon.
CHAPTER SEVEN
This Ain’t Over
No one could remember a player striking another in the head with a bat. Word spread widely and rapidly. The bulletin scorched the wires from Candlestick to the other parks in the league. Mets announcer Bob Murphy read it during the live WOR-TV broadcast of New York’s game: “Juan Marichal hit John Roseboro on the head with a bat following knockdown pitches to Wills and Fairly. Roseboro left the field bleeding over the left eye.” First came shock, then indignation.
Back in Los Angeles, 10-year-old Roger Guenveur Smith was one of the million or more fans watching the televised broadcast of the game.* He had spread his baseball cards of the starting players on the living room floor the way he always did. The lineup included one of his heroes, John Roseboro. Roger had met Roseboro at a community event and Johnny had signed an 8-by-10 glossy photograph of himself in his catcher’s gear. Roger treasured that autographed photo.
* In accordance with the practice of the time, the home game was not broadcast in the San Francisco area.
Suddenly h
is mother screamed. Then the mayhem and Roseboro’s head, the blood dark on the black and white screen. “I took it personally,” Roger said. Nine days earlier, he had stood in front of his father’s motel, the Palm Vue on Western Avenue and 39th, and watched the liquor store and pawn shop across the street burn. Now he plucked Marichal’s card from the carpet, a head shot of the pitcher in his SF cap grinning and looking to the side. With absolute rage Roger set the cardboard effigy aflame. “Burn, baby, burn,” he chanted.
KTTV, Channel 11 in Los Angeles, which had broadcast the game, replayed the incident on the evening news that Sunday, but then the station destroyed the videotape, per the Dodgers orders. “They said it was for the good of the game,” KTTV sport director Bill Welsh said. “That re-showing the tape wouldn’t be good for baseball.”
Jeri Roseboro had the game on but had stepped outside to be with her daughters. They were splashing in the pool with a babysitter. When she heard the commotion from the television, Jeri retreated inside. She saw the fighting on the screen, the trainer tending to Johnny, her husband bleeding. The images horrified her. Jeri locked the door. She didn’t want the girls to come inside and see what was happening. She hadn’t liked Marichal before, thought he was arrogant beyond what was acceptable in a pitcher, and now she trained her fear and anger on the man.
Once Johnny had left the game, she called the Dodgers clubhouse but could not reach him. It calmed her some to hear Vin Scully, the voice of the Dodgers, address her directly during the broadcast, “Jeri, John’s okay.”
She finally did reach Johnny in the clubhouse. He assured his wife that Scully was right. He had not lost his eye. It was only a flesh wound on his scalp. He told her he was going to leave the park early with Lee Scott to go to the airport and grab a bite to eat. That’s when she knew her husband was all right, when she heard he still had his famous appetite.
The Fight of Their Lives Page 12