TODAY IN BASEBALL HISTORY

August 22, 1965.

After struggling through his first two starts as a Dodger in 1975, Juan Marichal asked Fred Claire to join him on a visit to the office of team owner Peter O’Malley. “He said, ‘I can’t take your money anymore if I can’t pitch the way I want to,’” Claire said. “It was remarkable. Most people would have stayed the rest of the year just for the money.”

He and John Roseboro, such a spare talker that his teammates called him “Gabby,” had a lot in common. “They were both men of great pride, and they took baseball very, very seriously,” Claire said.

In the last years of his life, when heart trouble, two strokes and a case of prostate cancer put him in the hospital for long spells, “you never heard a word of complaint from him,” his wife said. He died at age 69, and his funeral drew dignitaries from many fields. Former Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson, former L.A. Police Chief Bernard Parks and retired U.S. Rep. Mervyn Dymally were all listed as speakers. But no one made as much of an impression as Marichal.

When Barbara sent out word that Roseboro was dying, Marichal was one of the many former players to call and offer support. “He said he would be praying for John,” she said. When she invited him to speak at the funeral, he didn’t hesitate.

According to an account written by Claire, the emotional high point came when Marichal told the congregation: “I wish I could have had John Roseboro as my catcher.”

Koufax spoke later and turned to Marichal to say, “You would have loved pitching to John Roseboro.”

The Fight and the Friendship that happened later

Barbara Fouch-Roseboro can’t begin to count the number of times her husband had to relive one of the ugliest moments in baseball history. In restaurants, over the phone with clients, at the hospital where he lay dying, John Roseboro couldn’t escape the questions. “People would come up to us at dinner and say, ‘Please tell us about the fight with Marichal,’” the catcher’s widow said recently from her office in Beverly Hills. “He would always accept his responsibility for that incident. He’d say: ‘I provoked it. I threw that ball too close to Juan’s ear.’”

Today is the 62nd anniversary of the day that Marichal, one of the greatest pitchers of his generation, hit Roseboro with a bat, starting a 14-minute brawl between the Dodgers and Giants at Candlestick Park. The fight ended when Willie Mays crossed rivalry lines to usher a bleeding Roseboro to the Dodgers’ dugout. For both Marichal and Roseboro, though, the incident never really ended. That day, Aug. 22, 1965, defined them in caricature, Marichal as violent perpetrator and Roseboro as victim. They were neither. But famous photographs from the brawl, showing Marichal with his bat poised to strike the catcher, created an indelible image. The pictures appeared in Life magazine and can still be purchased as baseball memorabilia.

They were reprinted on the back of an eight-page funeral program for Roseboro. Inside the program, Marichal appears again. His name is on the list of honorary pallbearers and speakers who memorialized Roseboro.

Roseboro’s “forgiving (me) was one of the best things that happened in my life, “ Marichal told the other mourners.

Over the years, the two had transcended the moment that linked them in baseball infamy. They had become friendly, genuinely respectful. In the 1980s, as a gesture of goodwill, Roseboro and his family flew to the Dominican Republic for a charity golf tournament hosted by Marichal.

“It doesn’t surprise me that he would do something like that,” said John Werhas, a former Dodgers player who is now a pastor in Southern California. “John Roseboro was probably as nice a human being as you’d ever meet.”

Roseboro’s widow speaks almost as fondly of Marichal. “After my husband passed away, Juan would call to check up on me and my daughter every six months or so,” she said. Of the two, Marichal was easily the more famous. Roseboro had the batting average of a journeyman, .249 for his career. But he made four All-Star teams and won renown for his toughness, his quiet leadership and his ability to read pitchers. Those things all worked against him at Candlestick Park 40 years ago.

After Marichal had knocked down Maury Wills and Ron Fairly in the top of the third, Roseboro signaled for Sandy Koufax to retaliate in the bottom of the inning. It didn’t work. “Koufax was constitutionally incapable of throwing at anyone’s head,” Roseboro wrote in his 1978 autobiography, “so I decided to take matters into my own hands.”

When Marichal came to the plate, one of Roseboro’s return throws to Koufax whistled by Marichal’s head. When Marichal complained, Roseboro squared off for a fight. Then: pandemonium. Marichal was suspended for eight games and fined $1,750. Roseboro filed a lawsuit, asking for $110,000 in damages, but settled for about $7,000. He reportedly needed 14 stitches to close the wound on his head. The peacemaking process started when Marichal went to Los Angeles to finish his career in 1975. Roseboro, then retired, made it clear that he held no grudge, easing Marichal’s transition into Dodger blue.

At some point in the late 1970s, the two met at an old-timers game and, for the first time, discussed the fight. “We shook hands,” Roseboro wrote in the autobiography, “Glory Days with the Dodgers, and Other Days with Others,” “and I said maybe we shouldn’t because now they wouldn’t have anything to write about.”

A few years later, Marichal became eligible for the Hall of Fame, but missed election on his first two ballots. Fouch-Roseboro remembers her husband talking with Marichal on the phone after the second time he was snubbed. They were concerned that memories of the fight might be standing in Marichal’s way.

“John said, ‘Barbara, can you believe that people are still holding this against Juan?’” she said. “‘That’s not right.’”

At the time, Roseboro was helping his wife run a public-relations company, Fouch-Roseboro & Associates, that she had originally established in Atlanta. They vowed to give Marichal any help he needed. In the next year, Roseboro accepted Marichal’s invitation to the Dominican, and the Hall of Fame voters accepted Marichal.

“We had a wonderful time there with Juan and his family,” Fouch-Roseboro said. “My daughter (Morgan Nicole) went off to play with the Marichal children almost the minute we got there, and we barely saw them again the whole trip. They were having so much fun together.”

Eventually, Roseboro would return to the Dominican as manager of the Licey winter-ball team in Santo Domingo, and Marichal remembers driving over to the stadium to see him.

“We’d talk baseball,” Marichal said last month, when he visited San Francisco for the ceremony to retire Gaylord Perry’s number. “I asked him how did he like my country, and he always said very positive things.”

For obvious reasons, Marichal does not like talking about the fight. “It’s not who I am,” he said, and plenty of baseball people agree. Fred Claire, a longtime Dodgers executive, remembers the dignified way Marichal left the game.

This article was originally published in 2015 by Gwen Knapp

Todays Podcast

August 22, 1933 — Bill Veeck suggests the idea of a mid-summer series of interleague games and proposes a split-season schedule format. Although the Cub president’s concept of games between the two circuits receives some support, Senator owner Clark Griffith opposes the proposal, calling the American League a major league not in need of grandiose schemes he deemed as “Hippodrome stuff”.

August 22, 1959, future Hall of Famer Frank Robinson of the Cincinnati Reds hits three home runs in an 11-4 win over the St. Louis Cardinals. Robinson’s trio of blasts come in consecutive at-bats. and 7 years later in 1966 – At a private party for the Robinson falls into a swimming pool and is saved from drowning by Andy Etchebarren, who dives in to rescue his teammate.

August 22, 1961, Roger Maris of the New York Yankees hits his 50th home run of the season during a 4-3 loss to the expansion Los Angeles Angels. Maris becomes the first player to reach the 50-home run mark during the month of August. Maris will eventually break Babe Ruth’s record for most home runs in a single season.

August 22, 1968 — After walking on a 3-2 count, which included pitches sailing over his head to the backstop and a ball being thrown behind him, Dick McAuliffe charges the mound and drives his knee into White Sox hurler Tommy John, causing the pitcher’s shoulder to separate. Tommy John (10-5, 1.98) will be lost for the rest of the season, and the Tigers’ shortstop is suspended for five games and fined $250 by AL president Joe Cronin as a result of the bench-clearing incident.

August 22, 1989, Nolan Ryan of the Texas Rangers becomes the first major league pitcher to reach the 5,000 strikeout mark. Ryan fans Rickey Henderson of the Oakland A’s On a 96 mph fastball in the fifth inning. The “Ryan Express” strikes out 13 and gives up only five hits, but loses the game 2-0.

 ANSWER TO TODAY’S TRIVIA

TRIVIA ANSWER: ZOILO VERSALLES  

He was AL MVP in 1965. Five of his teammates finished in the top 15 vote getters, including the future Hall of Fame player whose vote prevented Versalles’ selection from being unanimous—Tony Oliva.

- #1 The Twins had been the Washington Senators until 1961. Their last MVP was HOF-to-be Joe Cronin who had won it in 1930.

- #2 In the 7^th inning of the game on 09-Jun-1966, 5 Twins all went deep: Rich Rollins, Versailles, Oliva, Don Mincher & Harmon Killebrew. Except for a groundout by Sandy Valdespino after Versalles, it was a straight string of back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to back. Still, they did OK

Thank you Horsehide Trivia

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