Johnny ached to get back into baseball himself. He had worked for the Dodgers as a hitting instructor in 1977 and 1978, but after his tell-all autobiography came out, the team did not renew his contract. He worked with Barbara at Fouch Roseboro & Associates, building their agency into one of Los Angeles’ premier public relations firms. The firm had become profitable, but the work wasn’t his passion. “It pays the bills, and I make a good living at it, but I’m a ballplayer, you know?” he said in 1987. “When you’re a ballplayer, you want to do what you do well. I like business, but I love baseball.”
More than anything else, he wanted to manage a major league baseball team. “I want to get back with the Dodgers and show some of those young pitchers, those young catchers the way the game is played,” he said. “I want to be in that dugout making moves during the game. That old guessing game with the guy in the other dugout, just like I used to do when I was playing the game.” He was 53 years old, starting to gray at the temples, 17 years removed from the playing field, and a qualified candidate yet frustrated. “I didn’t go to college, but I have a Ph.D. in baseball and I can’t use it,” he said.
The standard route to a major league managing post passed through the minor leagues. After 14 years directing the defense, handling pitchers, and mentally dueling batters as a catcher and another four coaching in the major leagues, Johnny felt qualified to bypass that detour to his dream. He also considered the required apprenticeship in the minors unnecessary. “Really it’s a cop-out, an establishment cop-out,” he said when he was still coaching with the Angels in 1974. “I don’t think it is necessary to go to the minors. Major league coaches learn more than what managers can in the minors. You don’t gain anything by going to the minors.”
By 1987 three other African Americans—Frank Robinson, Larry Doby, and Maury Wills—had already managed in the big leagues, but none of them remained employed in that role. The number of blacks coaching in the big leagues was less than the number of teams. There were only three blacks managing in the minors (Tommie Reynolds with Oakland’s Class A team in Modesto, California; Derrel Thomas with an independent Class A team in Boise, Idaho; and Jerry Manuel with Montreal’s rookie team in Bradenton, Florida), the purported grooming grounds for big league managers. Minorities made up just 2 percent of baseball front office employees. An unspoken prejudice against African Americans persisted—unspoken, that is, until Los Angeles Dodgers vice president and general manager Al Campanis articulated it on national television.
The man known as “the Chief” appeared on ABC’s Nightline in April on the 40th anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier on the field. Campanis, the Montreal Royals shortstop in 1946, had taught his teammate Robinson how to turn the double play at second base. But when host Ted Koppel asked why there were no black managers, no black general managers, and no black owners—“Is there still that much prejudice in baseball today?”— Campanis said, “I truly believe that they may not have some of the necessities to be, let’s say, a field manager, or perhaps a general manager.” He tried to justify the comment by saying that it was similar to the fact that blacks were not good swimmers “because they don’t have the buoyancy.”
See, there it is, laid open, the bias that’s been blocking our path, many asserted. “Baseball has been hiding this ugly prejudice for years—that blacks aren’t smart enough to be managers or third base coaches or part of the front office,” said Frank Robinson, who had been the first African American hired and fired as a Major League Baseball manager. “There’s a belief that they’re fine when it comes to the physical part of the game, but if it involves brains they just can’t handle it. Al Campanis made people finally understand what goes on behind closed doors: that there is racism in baseball.”*
* The irony of Campanis’s comments is that many did not consider him racist in attitude or practice. Not only had he played alongside Jackie Robinson in the minors, but Campanis as an executive had signed many minorities, including Roberto Clemente and Tommy Davis. He also had been willing to hire Joe Morgan, the African-American second baseman winding up his Hall of Fame career, as the Dodgers manager in 1983 when the team had reached a stalemate negotiating with Tommy Lasorda. Campanis’s comments more likely reflected the 70-year-old’s slipping health and tendency to blunder. Yet his Nightline interview became his legacy, and he never worked in a major league front office again.
Johnny had seen racism in organized baseball and Campanis’s remarks on national television confirmed it, but Johnny’s Ashland upbringing may have blunted his awareness of prejudice at work. He attributed his trouble finding a job to cronyism. “The problem with baseball is no upward mobility for blacks,” he told the New York Daily News a month after the Chief spoke out. “The mobility exists until you get to be a first base coach, then that’s it. There’s no bargaining power for a black man trying to move up. The game is layered with cronyism. All these white guys just keep hiring their pals as coaches. That’s why I don’t call what is going on racial prejudice.”
Campanis may have given Johnny the opportunity he had been seeking. When Roseboro saw the Dodgers general manager speak on television, he recognized it as a watershed moment for baseball. “I felt right away it was history in the making,” Johnny said. “The moment Campanis said it, I felt this might be the biggest breakthrough for blacks in sports since Jackie [Robinson] broke into the majors. This was a landmark. He opened a door that will change the face of baseball again.”*
* In the aftermath of Campanis’s remarks, Major League Baseball commissioner Peter Ueberroth hired a consulting firm to help teams set up affirmative action procedures and appointed a special consultant to identify former players interested in field and front office jobs, but the revolution Roseboro expected did not occur. Since 1987 five teams have hired African-American general managers. Through 2013 fourteen African Americans have managed in the majors, including Cito Gaston and Ron Washington, who both led their teams to two World Series championships, and three-time Manager of the Year Dusty Baker. In the front office minorities jumped to 15 percent of employees by 1989, when Bill White became the first African-American president of the National League. But that’s also when it seemed to level off.
Within 48 hours of his remarks, the backlash coerced the Chief to resign and the Dodgers to declare that “Mr. Campanis’s statements on the ABC Nightline show Monday night were so far removed from the beliefs of the Dodger organization that it was impossible for him to continue in his duties.” As though to prove it, the organization hired Jerry Royster, an African-American infielder, to manage its Gulf Coast team after he retired as a Dodgers player in 1988. Roseboro’s chance came next.
The Dodgers hired him as a roving catching instructor. He traveled to different posts in the team’s organization, from Vero Beach to the Arizona Instructional League, teaching younger players the finer points of playing behind the plate. One of his trips took him to the Dominican, where he met up with Marichal to play golf at Casa de Campo, a sugar mill converted into a luxury resort.* Johnny and Juan enjoyed a round of golf on the resort’s world-famous course.
* Casa de Campo became famous after Sports Illustrated shot its 1971 swimsuit issue there.
Johnny had made clear to Dodgers president and owner Peter O’Malley his desire to manage. O’Malley knew Roseboro’s qualifications but expressed reservations. “I don’t think you have the patience with the young kids because you’ve been the veteran for so long,” he told Johnny. But O’Malley was ready to give Johnny the chance in 1990. He offered Roseboro the managerial post with the club’s affiliate in the Dominican Republic, Los Tigres del Licey.
Johnny didn’t really want to serve an apprenticeship in Latin America, but he had seen how that route had worked out for Frank Robinson, who managed a team in Puerto Rico before the Cleveland Indians made him the first African American hired to manage a major league team, and for Maury Wills, who managed a Mexican
team before the Seattle Mariners hired him in 1980. Roseboro didn’t think he needed the experience, but when he was still coaching the Angels he had expressed his willingness to manage in Latin America if that’s what it took to land him the job he coveted in the big leagues. “I need a vacation,” he said with a smile.
So he accepted O’Malley’s offer and flew to the Dominican for the winter season. Johnny stayed in a Santo Domingo hotel near the stadium while Barbara remained with Nikki in Los Angeles, though Barbara did come to visit. Johnny was grateful to have the chance to run a ball club, especially a good one like he had with Los Tigres, which included James Brooks, Henry Rodriguez, and Juan Guzman on its roster. He was also grateful to see his friend Juan Marichal again.
When Juan came to Estadio Quisqueya, the Santo Domingo stadium that hosted Los Tigres, he sought out Johnny in the clubhouse. They chatted easily in the manager’s office after games about baseball, their families, and the Dominican. Juan asked Johnny what he thought of his country. “I like it very much,” Johnny said.
After playing two and a half seasons of winter ball in Venezuela, Johnny had some familiarity with Latin culture. In addition to liking the food already—there was very little food Johnny didn’t like—he knew what to expect from his surroundings, which helped him acclimate. He also found the Dominican political climate a lot calmer than the revolutionary one he had fled in Venezuela. Since its civil war in 1965, the Dominican Republic had stabilized with Joaquín Balaguer still president. But the baseball games had not lost their drama, with the fans emotionally invested in the outcome and quick to let the players know it, which Roseboro loved.
Johnny also acclimated quickly to his role as skipper of Los Tigres. The Dominican press had been tough on him from the start, no doubt biased against him because of the Marichal affair, scrutinizing his every move and criticizing any mistakes they perceived. After chatting with him, Marichal had wished the new manager luck. “But he didn’t need it, because he was so smart and knew the game so well,” Juan said.
Johnny’s acumen had Los Tigres del Licey in first place, but something went wrong one hot Sunday afternoon. Rafael Avila, the Dodgers scout, noticed when talking to Johnny in the dugout before the game that he looked ill and did not seem like himself. Avila called his wife, a nurse, to come down from the stands to have a look at him. She thought Roseboro was having a heart attack. Avila sent her with Johnny in his chauffeured car to the hospital.
Marichal was deeply concerned when he heard the news. He tried to reach Johnny by phone but couldn’t get through to him at the hospital. “I was so scared because we didn’t want anything to happen to him in the Dominican Republic,” Juan said.
Turned out Johnny had, in fact, suffered a heart attack. He was only 57 years old. O’Malley sent his private jet to shuttle him to a Miami hospital. Johnny spent a week there. The doctors wanted him to go home to rest. “No way,” he said. “If I’m winning, my team is winning, we’re going to continue winning. I’m going back.” He did, and the team kept winning, finishing the season in first place, taking the pennant and facing their archrival Los Leones del Escogido in the Caribbean Series. Johnny’s team swept the defending champions in five games to win the Series.*
* The series, for some reason, was known as Winterball I. The set was played in Miami, one of only two times the Caribbean Series by any name was staged there—unsuccessfully in terms of attendance and attracting secondary sponsors.
Roseboro won the satisfaction not only of his success but of proving O’Malley wrong. The Dodgers owner admitted that Johnny had surprised him, but he was still not ready to hire an African American to manage his major league club. He didn’t have to at the time because he had Tommy Lasorda, in the middle of his managerial run from 1976 to 1996 when he won four pennants, two World Series, and two Manager of the Year awards (1983 and 1988). Nevertheless, Johnny didn’t think O’Malley would ever hire an African American to manage the Dodgers, even post-Lasorda. “My success didn’t change his philosophy that in certain markets a black is not going to be a manager,” Johnny said.*
* At the time, Roseboro didn’t know that O’Malley had been willing to hire Joe Morgan back in 1983.
Fred Claire, who replaced Al Campanis as the Dodgers general manager, believed Johnny was qualified to be a major league skipper but thought circumstances rather than race kept him from getting the opportunity in Los Angeles. “I felt John had all that was needed to be a successful manager,” Claire said. “Being a catcher was an asset, because you’re in a position where you see the field of play. He clearly had all of the ability and background to manage in the big leagues. But we had only two managers in 45 years.”*
* Forty-three years, actually, with Walt Alston skippering the team from 1954 to 1976 and Lasorda following him from 1976 to 1996.
The barrier—real or imagined—that kept him from fulfilling his dream to manage in the big leagues ate at Johnny. Typical of the man they nicknamed “Gabby,” he seethed quietly, internalizing his resentments, which corroded his health. Johnny didn’t return to manage another season in the Dominican. And he didn’t get the chance anywhere else. His heart had begun failing him and his dreams.
Marichal’s election to the Baseball Hall of Fame had elevated his status as a national hero in the Dominican Republic. Whatever animosity Dominicans had felt toward him 20 years earlier, when he didn’t pitch in the playoffs of the winter season, had long faded. He had become a living legend, revered throughout the republic. When attorney Leonel Fernandez was elected to replace Balaguer as the country’s president in 1996, he summoned Marichal to a private meeting. Juan went. The two dignitaries—one the prominent baseball hero, the other a protégé of former president Juan Bosch—greeted one another and shook hands. “I want you to become minister of sports,” Fernandez said.
That surprised Juan. He had not suspected that the incoming president wanted him to be a member of his cabinet. After talking it over with his wife, Marichal accepted the offer and became the Dominican’s minister of sports, physical education, and recreation. The president gave him a car, a bodyguard, and responsibility to oversee the country’s athletic budget. Marichal supervised the building of parks, promoted athletics from kindergarten to the international amateur elite level, and facilitated relationships between Dominican baseball prospects and major league scouts. Remembering the days of his youth when children fashioned gloves out of cardboard and bats out of guacima branches, he enjoyed the chance to provide young athletes with proper equipment for baseball and other sports. During the four years of his tenure, the country sent athletes to the summer Olympic Games in 1996 and 2000, and even a couple of Nordic skiers to the Winter Olympics in Nagano. Marichal received praise for securing the Dominican Republic as host of the Pan American Games, but he was proudest of his part in starting a program to educate athletes. “Athletes now become doctors, nurses,” he said. “You can only be an athlete for a short time. After that you have to prepare yourself. I’m happy we started that and the ministers of sport after me have continued it.”
Like many ballplayers from his generation, who retired before the days of big money that came with free agency, Marichal also sold autographs at card shows, finding it a lucrative way to spend a few hours, particularly during the 1990s, when the demand boomed. Roseboro, too, found the card shows worthwhile. Sometimes, Marichal would have the event organizers post a sign at his table stating that he would not answer any questions about the 1965 incident. It still seemed that was all some people wanted to talk to him about, and he did not like talking about it. But other times, Juan and Johnny willingly autographed photographs of their fight. In doing so they reclaimed their legacies, taking their reputations out of the hands of the photographers who had shot the images and refashioning it, marking the event with a flourish of their Sharpies as one that they had transformed into a friendship. Bearing their signatures, the photographs no longer froze the two men
as combatants but rather anointed their reconciliation.
Johnny had a Life magazine photo from the altercation framed in his home office, which was adorned with bats, balls, gloves, hats, and other photos commemorating his baseball career. The image of Roseboro and Marichal’s fight hung behind his desk next to a photo of Johnny with Roy Campanella, his mentor who had meant so much to him and whom he had succeeded behind the plate. Johnny knew that baseball had made him and that the significant people and moments from the game had defined his place within it. He did not hide from that.
No such photograph hung on Marichal’s walls. The den of his Santo Domingo home where he watched baseball on television displayed bats and balls autographed by fellow Hall of Famers, shelves lined with baseball memorabilia, framed photographs of Juan with political and baseball luminaries, and a Leroy Neiman painting of him in his famous high-kick windup. The room shrined his success; it bore no trace of his shame.
One Ohio writer thought Roseboro deserved a larger space in the country’s collective memory. Steve Eighinger wondered in one of his 1986 Mansfield News Journal columns if Roseboro might have earned a place in the Hall of Fame. While it seemed on the surface a provincial proposition to nominate a .249 career hitter to that elite company, upon closer examination, the idea deserved some merit. Of the 11 catchers enshrined at the time, Roseboro had hit more career home runs than five of them and played more consecutive 100-game seasons (12) than all of them except for Yankee great Bill Dickey, a testament to Johnny’s durability. Most significantly, his .989 fielding percentage ranked him 14th all-time in that category and better than any of the Hall of Famers. He also ranked second all-time in career putouts (9,291), trailing only the Tigers’ Bill Freehan. Some might dismiss that figure as an irrelevant and inflated statistic because catchers receive credit for the putout on a pitcher’s strikeout, but many of Roseboro’s pitchers credited him for the pitches he called to rack up those strikeouts. The movement for Roseboro in the Hall never gained momentum beyond one partisan writer’s imagination, but it did provide a point of comparison that showed how good—and often underrated—Roseboro had been.
The Fight of Their Lives Page 20