The Fight of Their Lives

by John Rosengren

  Juan made a brief trip back to the Dominican Republic in the off-season to see his family but spent most of the winter in San Francisco working out with a personal trainer in the hope that superior conditioning would safeguard him at age 33 against injuries. He started the season 10–4 then stalled. For seven weeks he didn’t win a game. He blamed bad luck but puzzled over what had really gone wrong. Finally, on August 10, he blanked Montreal, his 50th career shutout. He finished the season 18–11 with a respectable 2.94 ERA and again made the All-Star team. Perhaps most significantly, he pitched a complete game without giving up a run on the final day of the season when the Giants needed a win to edge the Dodgers. They lost in the league championship playoffs to the Pirates, but Juan showed he could still win in the clutch. At the end of the season, his .673 career winning percentage, based on his 221–109 record, stood as the best among all active pitchers. But like his 50th shutout, the .673 figure measured his success over time; those stats weren’t indicative of his immediate effectiveness.

  That season, even though Roseboro had left Los Angeles, Marichal further alienated himself from Dodgers fans. On September 13 at Candlestick with the Giants and Dodgers again in a race for first place and after Dodgers pitcher Bill Singer had hit two Giants batters, Marichal threw two purposeful pitches under Singer’s chin. Umpire Shag Crawford, who six years earlier had tackled Juan after he clubbed Roseboro, warned Marichal, an automatic $50 fine. Two batters later, Juan hit Dodgers rookie Bill Buckner on the elbow with his first pitch. Buckner started toward the mound with his bat in hand. Crawford and catcher Russ Nixon quickly intervened. Crawford promptly ejected the pitcher and the batter. The Los Angeles press excoriated Marichal. Los Angeles Herald-Examiner columnist Melvin Durslag, who tagged Marichal as a player “known to reciprocate before there is provocation”—an unmistakable allusion to his altercation with Roseboro—wrote, “He never has learned to control his emotions as he does his breaking stuff” and that “despite their sentiments socially about Marichal, the Dodgers despise him in a game.”

  Just how much did they despise him? Before one heated series in San Francisco, Walt Alston had told his team, “If there’s a fight tonight, I don’t want one of you guys to dare touch that [expletive meaning Marichal deleted]. I’ll be the guy, the only guy who takes care of him. Remember that. I want him.” Alston did not get the chance, but he had made his feelings clear.

  Marichal bickered with Giants owner Horace Stoneham about money before the 1972 season and held out once again. They finally agreed on a two-year deal worth $140,000 annually. But Marichal did not look like himself on the mound. He lowered his leg kick in his windup to ease the pain flaming in his back and the strain on his groin. After shutting out the Astros on Opening Day, he lost eight games in a row. He won with a complete game on June 2 but failed to go the distance again until August 22, when he pitched well but lost 0–1. His back hurt so badly at times that he said, “I just wanted to go to my room and cry.” He missed a week while lying in traction in the hospital. He had a dismal season, 6–16 with a 3.71 ERA. The man who routinely hovered among the league leaders in complete games and innings pitched completed only six games and threw 165 innings, the fewest since his rookie year in 1960 when he was called up in July. Frankly, he looked like a has-been.

  Late in the season, the Giants placed Juan on waivers to see who might be interested in the 34-year-old pitcher. No one bit, so Juan returned to the Giants in 1973. He had back surgery in October and spent the next four months wondering if he would be able to throw like he had before the pain. He worked hard to rehabilitate himself and report in top shape. He won on Opening Day with a complete game and thought he had another comeback in him. He felt he had regained his fastball and the ability to throw his sidearm curve. “I thought I was healthy enough to pitch like the old me, but I was never back to my old self,” he wrote. He had another disappointing season, once again losing more games than he won (11–15) and giving up almost four runs per nine innings (3.82 ERA). This was not the Juan Marichal who had rivaled Sandy Koufax as the best pitcher in the game.

  That December, Marichal received a phone call from Horace Stoneham. The Giants owner told Juan that he had sold him to the Boston Red Sox. What a blow. Like Roseboro before the Dodgers traded him, Marichal had known only one organization. He had been with the Giants for 16 seasons, the last 13½ in San Francisco. Now he had to move across the country to a different league.

  He reported to spring training with the Red Sox in Winter Haven, Florida, but felt out of place in the strange uniform. He won a couple of games but was giving up a lot of runs when the thumb and two fingers of his pitching hand went numb in mid-May. He left the team to consult a San Francisco orthopedist. The problem was a disc in his back, but another surgery could end his career. Juan decided to rest. He rejoined the team in August and won three games before he was sidelined again, managing only two appearances for fewer than three total innings in September. He finished 5–1 but with a 4.87 ERA and the nagging certainty that he was done in the major leagues. The Red Sox confirmed his suspicions, releasing him in October 1974.

  Juan went home to the Dominican Republic resigned that the end had come. He had his farm, four children, and a wife ready for a life together without baseball. But then his old friend Rafael Avila, the Dodgers’ Latin American scout, visited him. Juan was a free agent, able to sign with whomever he pleased. Why not sign with Los Angeles? With Tommy John recovering from arm surgery, the Dodgers needed another starter.

  The Dodgers? No, Juan said.

  Don’t you want to pitch again?

  No, no, Juan said. I’m 36 years old. I’m retired.

  But they have a good team, Avila insisted. They could go all the way.

  Another World Series. That was tempting. And maybe he did have another season left in his arm. But the Dodgers? No.

  Come on, Avila insisted. Come to spring training.

  Juan weakened. A team wanted him. Never mind if it was his archrival, he was a ballplayer. That’s all he had ever wanted to be since he started playing in Laguna Verde. Ballplayers played ball. The Dodgers offered him that chance.

  In March 1975 he was posing for photographs in Vero Beach with Alston. Marichal wore a Dodgers cap and a home jersey with No. 57. Alston, the man who had once claimed dibs on beating up the Dominican, held up an away jersey with Marichal’s name on the back. Both men smiled broadly.*

  * Marichal actually wore No. 46 for the Dodgers when the season began.

  Whaaat?!

  The news stunned the Los Angeles press and Dodgers fans. The papers reminded Angelenos of the fastball that had provoked Buckner in 1971, another aimed at Willie Davis’s head in 1969 that had landed the centerfielder in the hospital, and, of course, the bat that had bludgeoned Roseboro. Always the incident with Roseboro. “How could they sign a guy who has done all that to us?” one Dodgers veteran player asked.

  They needed another starting pitcher, that’s how. “No one hated him more than I did,” said Al Campanis, the Los Angeles general manager who had proposed the team sign Marichal, in trying to justify the deal to the doubting public.

  “The inmates at Dachau would have named Hitler Man of the Year before Los Angeles would hire Juan,” Melvin Durslag wrote. But when you are short of pitching and have a chance to win a pennant “you forget old wars,” Durslag rationalized.

  In response to the obvious question, What about Roseboro? Juan was diplomatic. “I do not have anything against him,” he said. “We can be friends right now.”

  Marichal knew what he was getting into, but he harbored another motive for signing with Los Angeles. Maybe, just maybe, if he pitched well enough for the team to succeed, he could win over his enemies. “I want to see if I can make the Dodger fans as well as the press forget about what happened,” he said. Years later he added, “The only reason I signed with the Dodgers was because I wanted people to know I wasn’t the
type of person that wanted to hurt somebody over the head with a bat.” Just maybe he could redeem himself.

  Didn’t happen. In his first start, against Houston on April 12, Marichal pitched three strong innings, but in the fourth he walked two; balked; gave up four hits, including a two-run homer; and trailing 5–2 with two outs uncharacteristically told Alston to take him out. Four days later against Cincinnati, he imploded in the third inning, allowing five hits, including another two-run dinger, and managed only one out. When Alston came to the mound with the Dodgers behind 3–0, Marichal told him he was done. “Go home and have a good night’s sleep,” the manager said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “No, Mr. Alston,” Juan said. “I just retired.”

  The next day, Marichal met with Campanis and told him if he couldn’t pitch the way he used to, he didn’t want to pitch and that pitching the way he had, he didn’t think he could help the Dodgers. Campanis tried to talk him into staying, but this time Juan was certain that retirement was the best idea. He told the Dodgers to keep their money; he hadn’t pitched well enough to earn what they had agreed to pay him. Juan said good-bye to the players and Alston in the clubhouse, publicly thanked the O’Malleys and Campanis and the fans for giving him a chance, and returned to his family.

  Johnny Roseboro exhibited no schadenfreude at his one-time nemesis’s flameout with his old team. Speaking to a reporter from his office where he worked for an insurance company, Roseboro said he bore “no resentment whatever” and had been rooting for Marichal to succeed. He had wanted others to give him the chance, hinting maybe it was even time to pardon Marichal. “I think people won’t forgive that he beat us regularly, but the fight thing, that’s something that happens every day in baseball,” Roseboro said. “They can’t get down on him because he threw close to hitters. He wouldn’t be a great pitcher if he didn’t. That’s part of the game.” Johnny said he had hoped Juan would win 15 games. “That would have solved a lot of problems.”

  Indeed, it would have soothed the anger of many Dodgers fans. But it wasn’t how the story played out.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Johnny, I Need Your Help

  Juan Marichal belonged in the Hall of Fame. His career numbers: 3,507 innings pitched over 16 seasons, 243 career victories, .631 winning percentage, 244 complete games, 2,303 strikeouts, 2.89 ERA. He won 20 games in a season six times and made nine All-Star teams. Placed in perspective, those numbers looked even more extraordinary. The consummate control pitcher, Marichal’s strikeouts-to-walks ratio of 3.25 at the time was the best of any pitcher in the 20th century.* His 243 wins may have seemed modest compared to Cy Young’s 511, but Marichal had won more games over his career than three quarters of the Hall of Fame pitchers, including Herb Pennock, Mordecai Brown, and Waite Hoyt. His .631 winning percentage was higher than the majority of pitchers already enshrined, including Bob Feller, Carl Hubbell, Walter Johnson, Warren Spahn, and Cy Young. His 2.89 ERA was lower than that of more than a dozen Hall of Famers, including Dizzy Dean, Lefty Gomez, and Early Wynn. His 52 shutouts were then the ninth most all-time.* Against the best of the best—in the eight All-Star Games he pitched, when the players considered the outcome a matter of pride—he allowed the American League only one earned run. He also established himself as the dominant pitcher of the decade: His 191 wins during the 1960s were 27 more than Bob Gibson won, 33 more than Don Drysdale, and 54 more than Sandy Koufax. In short, Juan Marichal should have been a Hall of Famer on the first ballot.

  * This held true through 1980, the last season before he became eligible for the Hall of Fame. Through 2013 Marichal was 33rd all-time.

  * In 2013 he was 18th on the list.

  But not everyone saw it that way.

  When John Roseboro left baseball, it had not been on his terms. Disillusioned by how his career had ended with the Senators, he landed a job through a connection at the Security Pacific Bank back in Los Angeles. His role had him circulating through the black community schmoozing with business operators for $18,000 a year, a steep drop from his last salary in baseball. He had his own office, a secretary, and an expense account, but he hated it. He wanted to be back in the game. “Baseball gets in your blood,” he said.

  Roseboro let baseball people know his desire to coach, and the California Angels called. He wanted to be hired for his baseball acumen and leadership skills. The management wanted a black coach who could ease racial tensions on the team. It wasn’t the ideal job, posting him in the bullpen and forcing him to take another pay cut (a $17,000 salary), but if those were the terms he had to accept to get back into baseball, he was willing to do so.

  Johnny figured it might be a step toward fulfilling his ultimate goal to manage. Naive hope hadn’t blinded him—he knew organized baseball’s tradition and modus operandi conspired against him as a black man. He knew how Major League Baseball recycled managers from a small pool of candidates. “There’s always another job for these guys,” he wrote. “They belong to a private, restricted club. They get hired, they get fired, they get hired again. It doesn’t matter how mediocre you are. If you’re a white Christian, welcome to the club. The good guys get the good jobs up front while blacks like Larry Doby, Willie Mays, Monte Irvin, Jim Gilliam, Jackie Robinson, Henry Aaron, Ernie Banks, and many more get paid off to stay on the sidelines in the shadows and do as they’re told. If you’re white, you can be in baseball all your life, but if you’re black the time comes when you’re just an ex-ballplayer.”

  Still, Johnny had reason to believe that he might one day be given the chance to run a ball club. Back in 1970 when Bob Short had hired him as Ted Williams’s backup with the Senators, New York Daily News columnist Dick Young had written that Roseboro, “a highly intelligent and perceptive man,” had what it took to manage in the big leagues and that Short was the man to hire him because he also had the guts to fire him, which certainly presented a barrier in many a general manager’s mind, the anticipated public outcry over firing a black manager. Young reasoned that because Short had fired the Latino Hector Lopez from his position managing the Senators’ Triple-A club, he would be able to fire Roseboro if needed. That scenario never played out, but at least Young’s column validated Roseboro’s aspirations.

  Harry Dalton, the Angels general manager, reportedly considered Roseboro as a replacement when he fired his manager at the end of the season, but Dalton instead hired Bobby Winkles, a white man who had won three national titles coaching at Arizona State University. The move prompted sportswriter Dick Miller to speculate, “Despite his lack of managerial experience, Roseboro might have had the job that went to Bobby Winkles if the franchise hadn’t been located in the staunchly conservative Orange County.”

  Winkles did promote Johnny out of the bullpen to coach first base, though the ball field coaching boxes remained segregated: Dark-skinned ex-players could occupy the first base side, but the third base side, which required more thinking, was still seemingly reserved for whites. At the time, only one African American coached third on a regular basis in the majors: Gene Baker in Pittsburgh. By the following summer Baker was gone, and there were only six American-born black coaches in the majors, none of them on the third base side.

  The racism in organized baseball that kept Roseboro on his side of the field rippled through the Angels club. One pitcher from the South frequently complained about the “goddamn niggers” on the team. He even beat up a white girl for dating one of his black teammates. The racial divide on the team ran too deep for Roseboro to mend. Despite Nolan Ryan throwing two no-hitters and breaking Koufax’s single season strikeout record by fanning 383, the Angels had another lousy season, winning only 79 games and finishing 15 games back in the American League West.

  In January 1974 the bottom fell out of the Roseboros’ marriage. The bond had long been tenuous, but money stretched its limits. The drop in Johnny’s income severely crimped their lifestyle. He had made some bad business deals along
the way that complicated their mutual financial stress. Jeri wanted to go back to school to finish her bachelor’s degree and even enrolled at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo to take courses, but she said Johnny discouraged it. Johnny complained that she spent her time volunteering for her daughters’ Girl Scout troops and running the Angels’ wives charity without bringing in any money herself. “She never worked a minute,” he wrote. “She was too busy socializing.” One morning in January 1974, Johnny snapped. He packed some clothes into his Camaro and left.

  His departure hit the kids hard. Shelley was 14 years old; Staci, 12; Jaime, 7. Johnny tried to explain why he had to leave, but the children started crying and he could only hug them, unable to speak himself. Johnny visited when he could, but once spring training started, he was unable to see them often. Jeri accused him of abandoning his children. He accused her of turning them against him. She was bitter, having to sell the house and go on food stamps because Johnny couldn’t afford enough child support. It was not an amicable divorce.

  The Angels put Roseboro back in the bullpen for the 1974 season. He figured that was payback for the time the previous season when Winkles had told him to reprimand some drunken players harassing the stewardesses on a team flight. Roseboro thought that was the manager’s responsibility, so he told Winkles to reprimand the players. And found himself back in the bullpen. Dalton gave Roseboro a $1,000 raise (to the measly annual amount of $18,000), but Johnny was not happy. With his primary responsibility answering the phone next to the relievers, he thought it was a bullshit job. But he realized his position. “As a coach, you have no bargaining power,” he wrote. “You take what they want to give you or you go.” He took it so he could stay in baseball and because there remained the faint chance “there might still be a future for me with the ball club.” But when Winkles got fired midseason, the job did not go to Roseboro or Frank Robinson, another qualified candidate with the club finishing out his playing days; it went to Whitey Herzog—whose nickname seemed more apt to Roseboro than just coincidental—until Dalton could work out an arrangement with former Oakland manager Dick Williams. The new skipper brought in his own coaches for the next season, which meant Johnny was out of baseball, again.