60 YEARS AGO TODAY:
8/22/65 – In perhaps the all-time worst example of
unsportsmanlike behavior, San Francisco Giants pitcher Juan Marichal hit LA
Dodger catcher John Roseboro on the head with his bat, causing a 14 minute
brawl. Roseboro would need 14 stitches to close the gash on his head and missed the next two games due to the injury. Marichal, on the other hand, was suspended for what amounted to the next ten games, meaning he lost two starts as well, and fined a then record $1750.
Quoting from Kevin Stone's article on the 50th anniversary of this incident:
On August 22nd, 1965, a season-high crowd of 42,807 packed Candlestick Park for a key National League matchup between baseball's biggest rivals. With two future Hall of Famers on the mound, it promised to be a memorable afternoon.
It certainly was, but not because the San Francisco Giants beat the first-place Los Angeles Dodgers 4-3 or because of the pitching performances by Sandy Koufax and Juan Marichal. And not because the game featured four future Hall of Famers (the two aces along with the Giants' Willie Mays and Willie McCovey) and four members of the that year's NL All-Star team (Dodgers shortstop Maury Wills, Koufax, Mays and Marichal).
The contest is still remembered for arguably the ugliest moment in MLB history. In the bottom of the third inning, Marichal infamously clubbed Dodgers catcher John Roseboro over the head with a bat, an action never seen before or again on a major league field.
Get the complete story here: https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/13463881/juan-marichal-hit-john-roseboro-bat-ugly-baseball-brawl-50-years-ago
According to Stone's article, both men were able to put the incident behind them. In fact, the two were reunited at an old-timers' game in 1982. At the time, Marichal hadn't yet been elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame, despite two years of eligibility. It was widely believed that this denial of recognition was at least in some small part due to what he had done to Roseboro.
The men later became friends, and Roseboro made it known that he held no grudge against Marichal. "There were no hard feelings on my part, and I thought if that was made public, people would believe that this was really over with," Roseboro told the LA Times in 1990, "So I saw him at a Dodger old-timers' game and we posed for pictures together and I actually visited him in the Dominican. The next year, he was in the Hall of Fame."
When Roseboro died at age 69 in 2002, Marichal was an honorary pallbearer and a speaker at the funeral.
