Spahn greatest game

Although Marichal did not serve in the military, he had battles of his own to deal with, primarily the double-edge sword of racism faced by Hispanic players.

On top of being treated as poorly in many venues as their African-American counterparts, Marichal and teammates such as Felipe Alou, Jose Pagan and Cepeda had the additional yoke of language and cultural issues that were exacerbated even by their own manager, who demanded they speak only English in the Giants' clubhouse. As illuminating as the dual biographies are, however, they detract from the purported purpose of the book: to pay tribute to the endurance and accomplishments in that single amazing game that will probably never be duplicated.

In fact, if all the pages containing actual game information were tallied, they would probably account for less than a third of the total content. This is not to say that Spahn's and Marichal's stories don't deserve to be told, but it's too much when you're promoting the "pitching duel of the century" angle. Footnote for the sake of accuracy: I'm not sure exactly what criteria Kaplan used in decided that the Spahn-Marichal game, as obviously impressive as it was, qualified as the "duel of the century," but it bears noting that on May 1, , Leon Cadore of the Brooklyn Robins later known as the Dodgers and Joe Oeschger of the Boston Braves went the distance for their teams in a tie that was called after 26 innings.

The Book Report Network. In fact, Kaplan seems to devote fewer time to this game renowned for both hurlers going the distance without relief than he does to exploring the plight of Latino ballplayers in the s and the impact of pitch counts on modern-day baseball.

Not that this is such a bad thing; this game would never happen today and the author skillfully explains why. Kaplan also breaks from typical sportswriter prose, drawing comparisons between Spahn's final years and a late scene in Shakespeare's "King Lear," for instance, and mostly overcomes his zig-zagging structure.

Apple Books Preview. Both men made their next scheduled starts five days later, the Sunday before the All-Star Game. Spahn complained of a sore elbow, which apparently flared up enough to cause him to miss two starts later in the month, but he pitched through it to lead the National League with 22 complete games.

Today, we call it a quality start when a guy goes six innings. We count pitches and start talking about it around Years ago, Marichal and Spahn battled each other until Mays ended the game with a homer.

It was more than a pitching duel. It was a demonstration of character and work ethic. We could use a bit of that these days. You are commenting using your WordPress. You are commenting using your Google account. You are commenting using your Twitter account. You are commenting using your Facebook account. Notify me of new comments via email.

Notify me of new posts via email. Four hours and 15 innings later, he was still toiling there. And so was Warren Spahn—in a scoreless pitching duel. Like this: Like Loading Leave a Reply Cancel reply Enter your comment here Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:.

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