Despite the portrayals of him as the victim and the outpouring of public sympathy in his favor, Roseboro knew he wasn’t blameless. “Of course I provoked the incident,” he later wrote in his autobiography. He missed two games but was back behind the plate on August 25 with 14 stitches across his scalp. And, despite his qualified conciliatory tone in interviews and joking remarks, he remained righteous and unwilling to admit his part. A week later, he filed a suit in Los Angeles Superior Court against Marichal and the Giants seeking $10,000 in general damages and $100,000 in exemplary and punitive damages. The suit charged that Marichal “did without provocation commit assault and battery against the plaintiff with a deadly weapon, that Roseboro was severely injured and was caused pain and suffering.” Roseboro defended the disingenuous suit by telling the press, “My decision to take this action is due not only to the brutal attack upon my person [which he repeated was unprovoked] but, just as important, is due to the fact that some severe actions should be taken against a man who not only set a bad example for millions of baseball fans throughout the world but apparently from recent statements has attempted to defend and justify his outrageous conduct.”
When his anger softened his conscience would work on him.
The day after the incident, when Juan received Giles’s telegram rebuking him, he also started receiving “threatening, obscene and vulgar” telegrams and letters that persisted past the end of the season. The following day, the company that made Saxon Apple Juice replaced Marichal with Willie Mays promoting the drink on billboards throughout Los Angeles. And everywhere, it seemed, Juan heard the journalistic chorus condemning him.
He had wanted the chance to explain himself to Giles but cancelled their meeting after the league president told the press that he had not talked to Roseboro or Marichal or any of their teammates because “you don’t accomplish anything by talking to the players.” Marichal probably figured Giles already had his mind set and would not give any weight to what he had to say. Perhaps more significantly, he remembered what had happened when Ford Frick had fined him and other Latin players for playing in the Caribbean exhibition two years earlier. Marichal did not expect any understanding from the organization that had threatened to suspend him for playing in his own country.
The public condemnation stung. Even worse was the personal torment. He replayed the moment over and over in his mind. He couldn’t help but wonder what would have happened if he had dropped his bat, swung instead with his fists or pushed Roseboro away or even poked the bat into Roseboro’s gut—anything but swung the bat the way he had. Try as he did to shove these thoughts away, Juan couldn’t escape the guilt and shame and remorse that swamped him. Not even prayer could wash away those feelings.
Phil Pepe of the New York World-Telegram and Sun speculated how deeply the public reaction would affect Marichal, knowing that the punishment would not be measured in games or dollars but in much more personal terms. “There is the humiliation,” Pepe wrote. “Juan is a decent and sensitive man, who must know by now that he performed a dastardly act. And if he does not know it, he will hear about it, you can be sure. He will face public scorn and in the jungle that is baseball, opportunists will not let him forget what he did. The damage it will do to Marichal, psychologically if not physically and financially, is immeasurable. Life could be miserable for him from now on, and that is the real punishment.”
Arthur Daley of the New York Times raised the same question, wondering if Marichal would be able to survive not the suspension but the scorn. “Can his temperament withstand the derisive reminders he is bound to get in the days and years to come?” Daley asked.
Marichal continued to dress for the Giants’ five games in Pittsburgh, three in New York, and on to Philadelphia. He brooded for three days but then resumed his pregame running regimen in the outfield, and he pitched batting practice for six days. He even smiled gamely for photographers. But he sat impotently in the dugout while his team played. He could do nothing to help the Giants. They had left San Francisco half a game behind the Dodgers, but with Juan on the bench, they didn’t win a game until Friday, August 27, and won only three of ten during the length of Juan’s suspension. The eight “playing dates” ended up including two doubleheaders, makeups for rainouts that extended Juan’s suspension until September 2 and covered ten games.
Franks had said that the loss of his ace for any period “would murder the club.” The Giants pitching was already thin. The team carried two “bonus baby” rookies who took up valuable roster space but whom Franks couldn’t trust in critical situations. Gaylord Perry hadn’t reached his potential yet. The team picked up the 44-year-old Warren Spahn, but he lost more games than he won. Trailing the Pirates 8–0 in the first game of a doubleheader, Franks was so desperate that he called upon outfielder Matty Alou to pitch two innings.*
* Surprisingly, Alou gave up three singles but no runs and notched three strikeouts, twice fanning Willie Stargell.
During the time of Marichal’s suspension, the Dodgers also faltered, but despite the Giants’ chance to pull ahead, they didn’t—or couldn’t—without their Cy Young candidate. When Marichal returned on September 2, the same half game separated the two rivals in the standings. Juan felt responsible for how poorly his team had played during his suspension. “He had fretted over how he might make up for his loss to the team,” sportswriter Arnold Hano wrote. “During his inactivity, the Giants had played horrible ball. In a strong sense, it was Marichal’s fault. He had to make amends. Not just pitch well. Pitch doubly well.” So before Juan started the first game of a doubleheader that Thursday afternoon, he told Franks, “If I win my game, I will pitch the second game, too.”
On the eve of his return, he had learned about Roseboro’s lawsuit. It bothered him that Roseboro painted Marichal’s action as unprovoked, but Juan would not talk to the press about it, except to say about the monetary demands, “I wish I had that much, half that much, a quarter that much, but I don’t.”
Juan knew this start was not just another game. The 30,410 fans at Connie Mack Stadium wouldn’t let him forget it. Those who thought his action had been atrocious, outrageous, cowardly, and criminal, who thought he should not be back pitching so soon or should have been banned for life or even thrown in jail—those people booed Marichal when he was announced as the starting pitcher, when he took his warm-up pitches, when he ran to the mound to start the game, and every time he came to bat. He tried to shrug off the contempt but could not ignore it. He had not been booed like that before. He felt sorry all over again. But they hadn’t seen what happened, they hadn’t been there for the series, hadn’t witnessed the buildup to that moment on Sunday. They didn’t have family in the Dominican Republic during a civil war that worried them sick. No, they had just seen the photographs, the ones that made Juan look like a hatchet man, just read the convicting opinions in the paper, and so they booed. And booed. And Juan wept inside.
He pitched well but not well enough to win his 20th game. He lasted seven innings, struck out eight, gave up four runs on seven hits, and took the loss. “I was not sharp,” he told reporters after the game. Accustomed to a large workload—he had already logged 237 innings through the first four and a half months of the season—the layoff had hurt him. He did not have to make good on his promise to pitch the second game, which the Giants won to remain one game behind the Dodgers.
The following day, the Giants headed to Chicago. In the Dominican Republic, after 3,000 Dominicans and 31 US servicemen had died in a little more than four months, the warring sides accepted a provisional government until elections could be held in the spring. Nine thousand US troops remained in the Dominican Republic to make sure the truce held. Juan was pleased but would feel complete relief only when he could be with his family again.
Marichal usually pitched every fifth day, so ordinarily his next start would be on September 7. But the Giants were scheduled to play two games in Los Angeles on the 6th
and 7th and Giles feared that if Marichal pitched in Dodger Stadium, that could set off a riot the magnitude of those in Watts. So he prohibited Marichal from even traveling with his team to Los Angeles. Not wanting to wait another six days to pitch after his 10-game suspension, Marichal coaxed Franks into letting him start in Chicago September 5 after only two days of rest. Before the Giants left Philadelphia, Juan received a letter that threatened him if he pitched at Wrigley Field. Chicago FBI agents circulated through the stands during the first game of the series but did not apprehend any would-be assassins. Marichal pitched a complete game that Sunday to defeat the Cubs 4–2.
Juan was disappointed that he couldn’t pitch in Los Angeles. He didn’t want his absence to hurt the team further. And he didn’t think it was fair that Giles had banned him the additional games. “I don’t think it’s right,” he said. “We’re trying to win the pennant.” The Dodgers, on the other hand, would not have minded the chance to get their revenge against Marichal on the mound. “It doesn’t make any difference to us where he is,” manager Walt Alston said. “Truthfully, we would have felt better playing against him and beating his brains out.” The Los Angeles skipper was speaking metaphorically one presumes, though one couldn’t be sure, which probably made Giles seem prudent.
The Giants won both games in Los Angeles without Juan and pulled even with the Dodgers in first place. Back in San Francisco, the fans embraced Marichal on September 9 in his homecoming against the Astros. They cheered him warmly when he ran to the mound. Their affection buoyed him. His teammates also had his back. With two outs in the fourth inning, Marichal had not allowed a hit. Houston’s Walt Bond drove a ground ball up the middle. Giants shortstop Dick Schofield snagged the ball behind the base but, off-balance, had no play. Wanting to keep Marichal’s no-hitter going, he shoveled the ball to second baseman Maxie Lanier, who turned and threw blindly to first. They didn’t get the runner, who reached with the Astros’ first hit of the game, but they did show Juan how much he meant to them. “That crazy play those guys made behind me—an utterly foolhardy and impossible try to get the ball to first—gave me one of the warmest feelings I have ever had in my pitching career,” Marichal wrote in his first book. “And you should have heard the applause from the crowd!”
Juan won the game, his 21st, and recorded his 10th shutout, best in the majors, but Koufax obscured his heroics by pitching a perfect game the same day. The Giants had a slim half-game lead over the Dodgers, but Koufax moved to the forefront as the prime candidate for that year’s Cy Young Award.*
* Koufax finished the season 26–8 with a 2.04 ERA, 27 complete games, and the Cy Young Award.
Roseboro hadn’t caught Sandy’s perfect game. Alston had given him the day off. But a strange thing had happened to Roseboro after his fight with Marichal: He had started to hit. The baseball. In the 10 games between his return and Koufax’s perfecto, Johnny had gone 14-for-36, a blistering .389 average. But Johnny’s hitting surge and Sandy’s perfect game notwithstanding, the Dodgers had not played like a pennant winner. In the three weeks since August 22, the Dodgers had won 10 games and lost 12.
Marichal won his 22nd game on September 13 against Houston, but he wouldn’t win again that season. The Giants’ 14-game winning streak, which had stretched their lead over the Dodgers to four and a half games, began to crumble with Marichal’s next start. He could not find his rhythm against the Braves in Milwaukee, giving up two early home runs to Hank Aaron. Franks pulled Marichal with one out in the fourth and the Giants trailing 5–1. Juan came undone in those final four starts, losing three of them and giving up an inordinate number of home runs (eight). Since coming back from his suspension, he had been reluctant to pitch inside, and power hitters took advantage of him. Post-suspension, he gave up a home run every five innings as opposed to averaging only one every 16 innings prior to his fight with Roseboro. His ERA those final four games was 6.45, almost quadruple his league-best 1.78 through August 22. In Juan’s final start of the season, on September 30, the game was tied 2–2 (Marichal had given up two solo home runs) when he smacked a double in the top of the eighth. He swung too wide around the bag. When he dove back, he jammed his left thumb and broke it. He had to come out of the game. He didn’t pitch again in 1965.
The Giants faltered along with Marichal, going 8–8 the final two weeks and two days of the season. Their lead dwindled steadily with each of Marichal’s starts. They were up by four games as late as September 20, but the Dodgers went on a tear, winning 15 of their last 16 games, and claimed the pennant, two games ahead of the Giants. Roseboro credited Koufax, who set a major league record that season with 382 strikeouts. When they needed to win, they did. “We had confidence,” Roseboro wrote. “He gave us confidence.”
San Francisco’s general manager Chub Feeney, on the other hand, blamed Giles for the Giants losing the pennant. He didn’t think his team had been able to recover from the loss of its ace for 12 games and that Juan had not pitched with the same effectiveness when he returned, especially his final four starts. Feeney was not alone in that opinion. “The ten-day layoff cost Marichal his great year,” sportswriter Jim Ellison observes in his essay “Juan Marichal: After the Incident.” “He was an indifferent pitcher the rest of the way, winning three games and losing four; he was hit freely. His usually impeccable control was off. The man who came back, against the wishes of at least half the country, was not the man who swung his bat in anger on Sunday, August 22, in Candlestick Park. He was a sad and confused young man, saddled with a $110,000 lawsuit and a haunting memory to contemplate through the long nights.”
Almost a month to the day since Marichal struck Roseboro, another Dominican lost his head with bat in hand. Pedro Gonzalez, the second baseman that Ramfis Trujillo had let the Yankees assign to Licey when he denied their request for Marichal, had been traded to the Indians earlier in the season. On Monday, September 20, in Cleveland, bottom of the fifth inning, Gonzalez faced the Tigers’ Larry Sherry. Sherry threw an inside pitch that caught Gonzalez’s bat when he ducked out of the way. Gonzalez believed that the Detroit manager, Charlie Dressen, often had his pitchers throw at black hitters. When Sherry’s next pitch came inside again at his head, Gonzalez’s rage spurred him to the mound. He swung his bat at Sherry. Some say the lumber caught the pitcher on the leg; others say the swing missed. Players rushed in quickly to subdue Gonzalez before he could seriously harm Sherry.
Once again, the summer of fury had erupted in a moment of violence on the diamond. It did not receive the national attention that the Marichal-Roseboro moment had, probably because neither player involved was as big of a star and the Indians-Tigers rivalry was nothing compared to the Giants-Dodgers. Also, with both teams more than a dozen games out of first place, the confrontation lacked the context of a pennant battle. And, of course, Gonzalez hadn’t spilled blood the way Marichal had.
But the authority’s response was still swift and severe. American League president Joe Cronin suspended Gonzalez for the rest of the season, 13 games, and fined him $500, substantially more as a percentage of his salary than the amount levied against Marichal.* The fact that it had occurred in the wake of Marichal’s action no doubt compounded the punishment for Gonzalez’s crime. “I’ll do anything to stop the use of bats in baseball controversies,” Cronin said. “We just can’t have any more of this. It is our job to stop physical violence, and we will punish fighting of any kind.”
* Gonzalez earned $10,500 in 1965, compared to Marichal’s $60,000.
Not only had a player taken a bat to another—again—it was a Dominican player, which only seemed to confirm the earlier indictments of Marichal as being part of a rogue class of “Caribbean hot-bloods” and “fiery Dominicans.” These incidents could be the kernel that formed the basis of the stereotype. Or the classification of Dominicans as hot-bloods could be an exaggeration extrapolated from several incidents. To get at the truth would require a significant study and sensitive c
ultural analysis, as Jim Kaplan suggests in The Greatest Game: “We would have to . . . determine if the number of Latinos involved [in violent incidents] was greater than their percentage of the baseball population. Further, we’d have to explore the effect of poverty and prejudice on Latino players and wonder how Anglos would behave if they were from the same background.” Regardless, Gonzalez had delivered Marichal another derisive reminder of his own guilt.
Meanwhile, Johnny and the Dodgers were delighted to be back in the World Series. After the Twins won the first two games, Roseboro contributed to his team’s critical Game Three victory with a stolen base and two RBI on a pair of singles. Johnny had another hit in the deciding Game Seven, pitched and won by Koufax. With six hits Roseboro batted .286 in the Series, by far his best performance in any of the four Fall Classics he played. “Because of our comeback, it was an especially satisfying series,” he wrote.
The 1965 season had ended—in success for Roseboro, disappointment for Marichal—but the implications of their altercation had not ended. For the two of them, the sun would never set on August 22, 1965.
CHAPTER EIGHT
That’s Not How the Story Goes
Under the hot Phoenix sun, uncertain what to expect, Johnny Roseboro gripped his bat more tightly than usual. Juan Marichal glared at the hitter 20 paces away and fingered the ball in his hand. Somebody had wanted them to shake hands at the plate beforehand, but neither one volunteered to initiate a staged truce. This duel, their first meeting since last August 22, had drawn a crowd of curious onlookers that jammed the nearly 8,000 seats, stood beyond the right field screen, swarmed the slope past the left field fence, and perched on the hill across the street. Runners poised on first and second with one out in the top of the second of a scoreless spring training game, but there was far more than an RBI or two at stake that Sunday afternoon of April 3, 1966. San Francisco sportswriter Harry Jupiter captured the mood: “It was like the crowd that packs the Indianapolis Speedway every Memorial Day. Nobody wants to see anybody get hurt or killed, but if it’s going to happen . . .”
The Fight of Their Lives Page 14