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Marichal’s Confrontation with Roseboro

In the midst of five-team National League pennant race that would soon narrow to the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants, the Giants hosted the Dodgers at Candlestick Park on August 22, 1965. Juan Marichal was pitching against Dodgers ace Sandy Koufax. In the early innings of the game, Marichal threw intimidating brushback pitches at Maury Wills and Ron Fairly. When Marichal went up to bat in the bottom of the third inning, catcher Johnny Roseboro called for Koufax to throw a high, inside pitch at Marichal, but Koufax refused to do so. Roseboro’s return throws to Koufax came close to Marichal’s face, and the latter, incensed, hit Roseboro on the head three times with his bat. A melee ensued between the two teams, and Roseboro needed fourteen stitches in his head. Marichal was suspended for nine games and fined $1,750. The Giants won the game, 4-3, but the Dodgers won the pennant and the World Series in 1965. Roseboro later sued Marichal for $110,000 but settled out of court for an undisclosed amount. The two players eventually reconciled. Dodger fans remained angry at Marichal for years. When he signed with the Dodgers at the start of the 1975 season, fans reacted with venom until Roseboro spoke publicly on Marichal’s behalf. Roseboro’s forgiveness also likely swayed the opinions of voters who had previously denied the pitcher induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Marichal was enshrined in the Hall of Fame in 1983.

Great Lives from History: Latinos

Juan Marichal

by Richard Sax

Dominican-born baseball player

Marichal’s distinctive high leg kick, excellent strikeout-to-walk ratio, and competitive attitude made him the winningest pitcher in baseball in the 1960’s. He was named to the National League All-Star team numerous times, threw a no-hitter in 1963, and had his uniform number retired by the San Francisco Giants.

Areas of achievement: Baseball

Early Life

Juan Antonio Marichal Sánchez (MAHR-ih-shahl) was born on October 20, 1937, in Laguna Verde, Monte Cristi, Dominican Republic. As a teenager, he became a legend as a starting pitcher for the Dominican Air Force baseball team.

Juan Marichal.

324_Marichal_Juan.jpg

(AP Photo)

Marichal was signed by the New York Giants of Major League Baseball (MLB) as a free agent in 1957 and sent to the team’s Class A minor-league affiliate in Michigan City, Michigan, in 1958. He had a record of 21-8 and an earned run average (ERA) of 1.87. The next year, Marichal played for the Class A team in Springfield, Massachusetts, where he went 18-13 with a 2.39 ERA. He credited his distinctive high leg kick with helping him throw an intimidating fastball and hard slider with pinpoint accuracy—in his first minor league season, for example, Marichal recorded 246 strikeouts in 245 innings and only 50 walks, a high strikeout-to-walk ratio that he would maintain throughout his career.

In the late 1950’s, the Class AAA Pacific Coast League (PCL) lost some of its premier cities in San Francisco and Los Angeles as the New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers relocated to those two cities, respectively. In 1960, Marichal was promoted to the now-San Francisco Giants’ PCL franchise in Tacoma, where he had an 11-5 record in 18 starts before being called up to the parent club in midseason. Marichal made his major-league debut on July 19, 1960, against the Philadelphia Phillies. He threw a no-hitter through 7 2/3 innings, finished with a 1-hit shutout, striking out 12 while walking only one batter. He finished the 1960 season with a 6-2 record and 2.66 ERA. Meanwhile, the Giants were assembling a legendary team (Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Orlando Cepeda, Felipe Alou, and Matty Alou, among others) to contend with the Dodgers.

Life’s Work

Marichal’s extraordinary starting pitching for the Giants throughout the 1960’s made him a celebrity in the Spanish-speaking portions of the Western Hemisphere as well as a feared competitor throughout baseball. Although the Dodgers and Giants continued their epic rivalry, now relocated to the West Coast, the Dodgers generally prevailed. After the two teams’ relocations, the Dodgers won the National League (NL) pennant in 1959, 1963, 1965, and 1966, and went on to win the World Series in all but the 1966 season. The Giants won 103 games and the NL pennant in 1962 but lost the World Series to the New York Yankees in seven games.

Marichal, having completed only his second full season with the Giants in 1962, was fourth in the starting-pitcher rotation, even though he had won eighteen games. He started only game four of the World Series, pitched a shutout for four innings, and recorded a no-decision as the Giants lost the game, 4-3. Marichal’s only other postseason experience came in 1971 when the Giants played the Pittsburgh Pirates in the National League Championship Series and lost, three games to one. Marichal pitched a complete game 4-hitter in game three but lost, 2-1, after allowing two solo home runs. It is ironic that one of the dominating pitchers of his era was only 0-1 with a 1.50 ERA in his scant two postseason appearances.

One of Marichal’s signature games came against the Milwaukee Braves and future Hall of Fame left-hander Warren Spahn on July 2, 1963. Spahn was known for his own high leg kick, although his did not approach the height of Marichal’s. Marichal pitched sixteen scoreless innings, and Spahn matched him until the bottom of the sixteenth inning, when Mays hit a solo home run. Given the rise in the use of relief pitchers in the 1970’s and 1980’s and the concern about long-term damage to pitchers’ arms, it is unlikely that Marichal’s and Spahn’s feat ever will be duplicated.

Marichal’s notorious 1965 fight with the Dodgers’ Johnny Roseboro occurred during one of the pitcher’s extraordinary seasons, in which he went 22-13 with a 2.13 ERA and 10 complete games. Marichal’s stamina and resilience were legendary; he pitched more than 300 innings in a season three times and more than 250 innings in a season seven times.

In 1970, Marichal received a penicillin injection that resulted in a violent reaction, causing back pain and arthritis. His final four seasons in San Francisco paled in comparison with his first decade as a professional. His contract was sold to the Boston Red Sox before the 1974 season, and he pitched well as a spot starter (5-1, 4.87 ERA in eleven games). Marichal signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers before the 1975 season and had two mediocre outings that April before retiring from professional baseball. That year, his number, 27, was retired by the Giants.

After his retirement, Marichal worked as a broadcaster and served as minister of sport in the Dominican Republic. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1983, and in 2005, the Giants erected a statue of him outside their ballpark in San Francisco.

Significance

Marichal was only the second pitcher from the Dominican Republic to play in the major leagues, and his stunning statistics (243-142, 2.89 career ERA, 191 wins in the 1960’s, ten All-Star team selections) likely would have merited his membership in the Baseball Hall of Fame in his first (rather than his fifth) year of eligibility were it not for negative publicity generated by his fight with Roseboro.

Citation Types

Type

Format

MLA 9th

Sax, Richard. "Juan Marichal." Great Lives from History: Latinos, edited by Carmen Tafolla & Martha P. Cotera, Salem Press, 2012. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=GLL_10013240037101001.

APA 7th

Sax, R. (2012). Juan Marichal. In C. Tafolla & M. P. Cotera (Eds.), Great Lives from History: Latinos. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.

CMOS 17th

Sax, Richard. "Juan Marichal." Edited by Carmen Tafolla & Martha P. Cotera. Great Lives from History: Latinos. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2012. Accessed October 22, 2025. online.salempress.com.

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