* Lest we forget: Johnny Roseboro

August 16, 2008

Roseboro, a catcher primarily with the Los Angeles Dodgers during the 1960s, died this date in 2002. He published an autobiography, Glory Days with the Dodgers, and Other Days with Others, in 1978.

Unfrtunately, the signature moment in Roseboro’s career might have come when pitcher Juan Marichal took a bat to his head during one of the heated Dodgers-Giants contests. The incident was captured on film by famed sports photographer Neil Leifer, who described the event for an article in the NJ Jewish News:

One of [Leifer’s] signature shots involves one of those athletes. It occurred in 1965 at a game in which the San Francisco Giants’ Juan Marichal clubbed the L.A. Dodgers’ Johnny Roseboro over the head with a bat. Sandy Koufax, who was on the mound for the Dodgers, put himself in harm’s way when he moved to intervene in the scuffle, an act Leifer caught on film. Leifer had been assigned to cover the game by Sports Illustrated to concentrate on the pitching duel between Koufax and Marichal, two of baseball’s best. He was shooting in color and ran out of film so he switched to his back-up black-and-white set-up and caught the surreal moment.

“I didn’t know what happened until I saw the film and the news that night,” he said. “I became a lot more aware when the event was over and Roseboro was taken away bleeding. It happened so fast I don’t remember having any reaction other than the fact that I ran out of film on it.”

The Amazon Report on Johnny Roseboro:
Glory Days with the Dodgers, and Other Days with Others

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