Baseball: The Dandy Dominican

(7 of 10)

At first, Juan played shortstop. Then one day when he was 15, Brother-in-Law Prospero took him to watch a local favorite named Bombo Ramos pitch amateur ball in the town of Monte Cristi, six miles up the highway from Laguna Verde. "He was great!" recalls Marichal. "You know, he used to talk to the batter. He'd say, 'You'd better hit this pitch. If you don't, you'll never hit the next one.' Once, I hear, he even told his infielders and outfielders to sit down. I went home that day and I never played shortstop again."

Within a year, Marichal himself was good enough to pitch for Monte Cristi. When he was 17, a recruiter for the United Fruit Co. persuaded him to join the company's team at Manzanillo, a banana port on the Massacre River, which separates Haiti from the Dominican Republic. The inducement was a job driving a tractor-lawnmower ("I only had to do it when it rained, and it didn't rain much"), in return for which he got room, board, laundry and $12 a week. That idyl ended abruptly when Marichal pitched Manzanillo to a 2-1 victory over a Dominican air force team sponsored by Ramfis Trujillo, eldest son of El Benefactor, Dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina. The next thing Juan knew, he was recruited into the Dominican air force.

Off to Jail. Military life did not particularly agree with Private Juan Marichal, 18—especially the crew cut and the long-sleeved khaki uniform he had to wear. It must have hit him pretty hard because one payday Juan went out on a toot: two drinks. He had never touched a drop of hard liquor before, and he hasn't since. The final blow came when the air force, despite a heroic performance by Marichal, lost both ends of a doubleheader to his old teammates at Manzanillo. "And so," he sighs, "we were put in jail. Five days' restriction and a $2 fine." That was it for Private Marichal: he got out—sort of—by signing a professional contract with the Escogido Leones, who just happened to be owned by Francisco Martinez, who just happened to be El Benefactor's brother-in-law.

The coincidences progressed—geometrically. Escogido also just happened to have a "gentleman's agreement" with a certain U.S. baseball team named the Giants; every player signed by the Leones was simultaneously signed to a Giant contract by one Horacio Martinez (no kin to Francisco), who was employed both as a coach for Escogido and a "bird dog" (an irregular, unsalaried scout, paid on commission if successful) by Horace Stoneham. Since no regular Giant scout ever saw Martinez' prospects before they were signed, the limit he could offer on bonuses was $200. "Imagine my surprise," says Giants Executive Jack Schwarz, "when I opened my mail one morning and there was a signed contract, binding us to pay a $500 bonus to a kid I had never even heard of, named Juan Antonio Marichal Sanchez."