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"How Juan Marichal and John Roseboro Turned Baseball's Ugliest Brawl into a Story of Forgiveness..."

Public Radio Tulsa | By Rich Fisher
Published March 31, 2014 at 2:37 PM CDT
Aired on Monday, March 31st.

"Play ball!" Weather allowing, 26 of the 30 teams that comprise Major League Baseball will be taking the field today. There may have been two games last week in Australia between the Dodgers and Diamondbacks, and a game last night between the Dodgers and Padres, but MLB's Opening Day for 2014 is actually today --- Monday the 31st --- and to mark the beginning of the new season, we at ST are pleased to present (as is our custom) a baseball-driven interview. Our guest is John Rosengren, whom we last had on to discuss his fine biography, "Hank Greenberg: The Hero of Heroes." Rosengren's latest volume, which he tells us about today, is "The Fight of Their Lives: How Juan Marichal and John Roseboro Turned Baseball's Ugliest Brawl into a Story of Forgiveness and Redemption." As was noted by a staff writer for The Christian Science Monitor, which named this book as one of its "six must-read baseball books" for the new season: "During a 1965 game between the Dodgers and Giants, San Francisco's Juan Marichal and L.A.'s John Roseboro engaged in an ugly home plate fight. A famous photograph captured Marichal, who eventually was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, swinging his bat at Roseboro." As we find on today's show, Rosengren not only explores the lives, careers, and accomplishments of these two notable players, but also their cultural roots, personal beliefs, and racial backgrounds, in order to tell the larger story behind this intense and defining yet also mysterious ballpark battle.
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StudioTulsa American Culturerace relationsSportsPopular CultureMajor League Baseball
Rich Fisher
Rich Fisher passed through KWGS about thirty years ago, and just never left. Today, he is the general manager of Public Radio Tulsa, and the host of KWGS’s public affairs program, StudioTulsa, which celebrated its twentieth anniversary in August 2012 . As host of StudioTulsa, Rich has conducted roughly four thousand long-form interviews with local, national, and international figures in the arts, humanities, sciences, and government. Very few interviews have gone smoothly. Despite this, he has been honored for his work by several organizations including the Governor's Arts Award for Media by the State Arts Council, a Harwelden Award from the Arts & Humanities Council of Tulsa, and was named one of the “99 Great Things About Oklahoma” in 2000 by Oklahoma Today magazine.
See stories by Rich Fisher
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