“He was the only person in the ballpark who thought it was foul.”Ĭrandall said the umpire got the call right. I hit it so high and so far, he waited until it landed … which was in Oakland,” McCovey said, chuckling at the memory. In 2003, a few months before his death, he attended the unveiling of the artwork depicting his delivery in midkick, his right foot pointing forever toward the sky.īecause scoring was next to impossible that night, McCovey still rankles at the mention of the moon-scraping shot he hit down the right-field line with one out in the bottom of the ninth.įirst-base umpire Chris Pelekoudas ruled it foul. There’s a similar statue of Spahn outside Turner Field in Atlanta. (Roger Angell once wrote that Marichal “throws like some enormous and dangerous farm instrument.”)įor an idea of what his delivery looked like, check out the statue of Marichal outside AT&T Park, where his left foot soars over his right shoulder. They all told me that Juan Marichal is the best right-handed pitcher they ever faced.”ĭespite their differences in age, both starters that night shared one trait: an exaggerated leg kick to propel their delivery. “Hank Aaron said the same thing,” Cepeda, 75, said. Orlando Cepeda, who played for the Giants from 1958-66, said Sandy Koufax was the best left-hander he ever saw. 45s, the first-no hitter by a Giants pitcher since Carl Hubbell in 1929. Less than a month earlier, on June 15, he had thrown a no-hitter against the Houston Colt. Marichal, meanwhile, was in his third full season and making the leap from promising newcomer to full-fledged star. “And Spahn would look at the guy in disbelief and say, ‘Why not? I’m only five months older than I was at the end of last season.’ “ “Every year after he got into his 30s, some sportswriter would come up to him in spring training and say, ‘Do you anticipate having the same type of year you did last year?’ “This kind of typified how Spahnie looked at things,” recalled catcher Del Crandall, now 83. Age would catch up to him soon, but there were no cracks yet: His 23 wins that ’63 season would match his career high. Spahn entered play with an 11-3 record and had already won more games (338), with more shutouts (58) and more innings (4,628) than any left-hander in history. “I mean, I felt like I was in Milwaukee in January,” Selig recalled.īut neither Selig, nor anyone else in the park that night, was caught off guard by the excellent pitching. It was his first visit to San Francisco in the summer, and he was woefully underdressed. “But I remember that game like it was yesterday.”Īmong the 15,921 people to file into the Candlestick Park stands on that chilly Tuesday night was a 28-year-old lifelong Braves fan named Bud Selig. “Oh, my god, that was long time ago,” he said. Spahn is gone - he died in 2003 at age 82 - but Marichal, 75, is still going strong. In honor of the golden anniversary, we asked players from that game to reflect upon what it means to them a half-century later.
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