Juan Marichal is best Latin pitcher of all-time, Dominicano Juan Marichal es el mejor lanzador latino en la historia del MLB

The Dominican Baseball Guy is happy to blog that the top two pitchers on the MLB.com list of Top 5 Latin pitchers are both Dominican.  As the Dominican Baseball Guy blogged yesterday, Pedro Martinez was voted the second best Latin pitcher of all-time.

And today, the voters announced the top Latin pitcher of all-time, and the honoree is Juan Marichal.

Marichal won 191 in the 1960s, more than Sandy Koufax, Bob Gibson, and Don Drysdale.  He went on to win 243 games, and is probably most well known by baseball laymen for his trademark high leg kick, as pictured below.  O, and just to show how big of pansies modern day pitchers are, Marichal pitched 243 complete games and won 25 games in a season three times

He is also known for the Roseboro incident in which he hit opposing catcher John Roseboro in the head with a bat.  This incident and the fallout has been mythologized in a play.  However, luckily the incident did not define his career in the long term.

Baseball analysts and historians agree, he was the greatest Latin pitcher of all-time.  Baseball historian Rob Ruck says, "the greatest right-hander of his era," Ruck said, "at a time when there were great pitchers to be found."

And Marichal's peers and countrymen agree too.  According to Indians manager and native Dominican Manny Acta: "he was on top of the list. He was the guy."

Juan was elected to the National  Baseball Hall of Fame in 1983, and he remains the only Dominican player to have that honor.  See his Hall of Fame profile.

He is still beloved by Giants fans and memorialized in a statue in front of the Giant's San Francisco home.

He is from Laguna Verde, DR, and he took a simple approach to the game, perhaps drawn from his life in the Dominican Republic:

I have five pitches. Fast ball, change, curve, slider, screwball. I don't know any hitters. Catcher, he tells me what to do. I can get any pitch I want over the plate.

Juan Marichal statue in San Francisco, by sporst on Flickr

Juan Marichal play to debut in Columbus, Ohio

Playwright and actor Roger Guenveur Smith will debut his one man play about the Marichal-Roseboro incident in 1965.  In the event, Juan Marichal attacked John Roseboro with a bat and hit him in the head.  Roseboro eventually recovered and came to forgive Marichal for the unspeakable act.  The two even went on to become friends.

Guenveur Smith weaves the baseball story with other events, such as the Watts race riots and the United States invasion of the Dominican Republic that were happening at the time.  The play tells a personal story of the two men, but also gives a historical and cultural historical lesson of the 1960s.  See the play at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio.

Marichal is the only Dominican player in the National Baseball Hall of Fame, though there should be a few to follow soon.  He is a ten time all-star selection and had his #27 retired by the Giants.  He is from Laguna Verde, DR.

The Juan Marichal statue outside Giants stadium, by Eric Molina on Flickr

History of the Estadio Quisqueya

The Dominican Baseball Guy is going to continue a series of blog posts that he started at the beginning of the Dominican Winter Baseball League (LIDOM) season last year.  They will be on the history of Dominican Baseball, with a focus on the teams and stadiums.  The first two posts on Dominican Baseball History were the History of the Gigantes del Cibao and the History of the LIDOM.  The Dominican Baseball Guy also included a post with several important books that have a histories of Dominican Baseball.

The Quisqueya Stadium is the most important sporting place in the Dominican Republic.  It is in Santo Domingo and is home to the Licey Tigers and the Ecogido Lions, the two most prominent and longest standing teams in the country.  The stadium was the dream of longtime dictator Rafael Trujillo and inaugurated on October 23, 1955.  Trujillo is not usually seen as a favorable ruler as his regime was characterized by an iron fist, but he did maintain order and brought progress in infrastructural development.  And he loved baseball.

Quisqueya has been the Cathedral of baseball in the Dominican Republic and has hosted 50 plus games nearly every year since the first game in 1955.  Everyone in the country knows this stadium and it is the dream of most young players to play here, even more so than in the big leagues because their friends and family can see them play in the Quisqueya.

Last May, the federal government set forth to redevelop the stadium and surrounding area.  They will be adding 10,000 seats to make the capacity nearly 25,000, and they will be updating locker rooms and all the guest facilities.  Additionally, they plan to develop the area around the stadium and build apartments, a luxury hotel, and retail outlets.  The new area will be named after Juan Marichal, the only Dominican in the Cooperstown Hall of Fame.  He is from Laguna Verde, DR.

You can see a complete history at the Licey website here.  Great place to see a game, and it will be even better when this renovation is complete!