(10 of 10)
Marichal later claimed that the ball had ticked his ear. He spun around, bat in hand. "Why you do that? Why you do that?" he screamed. Roseboro did not answer. He charged at Marichal, and in front of 42,807 witnesses at Candlestick Park, Juan clubbed him three times on the head with the bat, sending blood streaming down the catcher's face from a deep wound in his scalp.
Marichal was fined $1,750 by National League President Warren Giles and suspended for eight days; Roseboro was not punished. Neither Juan nor the Giants ever regained their form: 19-9 before the fracas, Marichal ended the season with 22 wins, 13 losses. The Giants blew the pennant to the Dodgers, wound up two games behind. And the incident is still not closed; Roseboro is suing Marichal for $110,000.
To the Giants, to his family, to Dominicans who idolize him as a national hero, the thought of Marichal in a blazing fury is hard to conceive. "I don't understand it at all," says his shy, slender wife Alma Rosa, 21, who has known Juan since she was twelve, married him at 16. "Juan is never angry—even when he gets up in the morning." Roseboro's own roommate, Dodger Shortstop Maury Wills, insists that Juan Marichal is "a nice guy—and a great individual." He is that all right. He is the grinning practical joker who passes around a perfume vial labeled "Apple Blossom," which actually is a stink bomb. He is the "Dominican Dandy" who dresses all in blue and cream. He is the mild hypochondriac who changes doctors with the wind and claims that he can't sleep properly in San Francisco because of "something in the air." He is the grand master of his trade. He is the stay-at-home who plays for hours at a time with his three daughters. And he is the fervent Dominican patriot who cannot wait to return home when the baseball season ends, and who bought a full-page ad two weeks ago in the nation's biggest newspaper, urging his countrymen to vote in the presidential elections.
SCENE THREE
THE TIME: Last week. THE PLACE:
Santo Domingo, capital of the Dominican Republic. It is election eve, but most of the attention is focused elsewhere#151;just about every radio in the city is tuned to the broadcast of a baseball game at Crosley Field in the U.S.A., where Juan Marichal is pitching against the Cincinnati Reds. The game is very tense. "If Juan were running for President," a voter sighs, "it would be a landslide." It might, and at least one poiltician knows it. Presidential Candidate Joaquin Balaguer has Juan's cousin, also named Juan Marichal, as a running mate on his ticket, and has posters calling himself "The Marichal of the Palace." He can't lose.
*Behind the New York Yankees' Whitey Ford (.698) and Bob Caruthers (.700), an ace of another epoch who retired in 1893.