On This Day in Baseball History: Juan Marichal Debuts
When you think of the great Juan Marichal you think of the unique delivery or deliveries I should say, a guy who threw five pitches but with his various deliveries, it became more like 13 or 14 different pitches. The deception was the name of the game for Marichal as he consistently kept hitters off-balance routinely inducing weak contact.
On this day in 1960, Juan Marichal would make his debut for the San Francisco Giants, and boy was he as advertised as he absolutely dominated the Philadelphia Phillies.
Marichal fired a one-hit, complete-game shutout in which he walked only one while striking out an impressive 12 batters.
The right-hander would go onto win an astounding 243 games compared to just 142 losses with a 2.89 ERA with a 1.101 WHIP. He spent the first 14 of his 16-year career in the big leagues with the Giants, a year with the Boston Red Sox, and his final season with the rival Los Angeles Dodgers in 1975. His best season came at age 30 in 1968 when he won a National League high 26 games compared to nine losses. He pitched to a sparkling 2.43 ERA over 38 starts and of those 38 starts he completed 30 of them. In addition, he pitched an NL high 325+ innings as well walking only 46 hitters.
Here's a part of a conversation Bob Costas had in 2009 via YouTube with Marichal who was nicknamed "The Dominican Dandy"
It really is remarkable that he never came away with a Cy Young Award during his career.
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