The Greatest Game Ever Pitched: Juan Marichal, Warren Spahn, and the Pitching Duel of the Century
by Jim Kaplan ’62
Triumph Books, February 2011
Taking the mound at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park in 1963 were 42-year-old Warren Spahn and 25-year-old Juan Marichal, the wunderkind headed for the Hall of Fame. As one scoreless inning followed another en route to a 16th-inning climax, those in attendance sensed that they were watching a pitching duel for the ages. The event surpassed the world of statistics and entered into the realm of magic.
Jim Kaplan, who covered baseball for Sports Illustrated in the ’70s and ’80s, planned to expand a magazine story he’d written about the game into book form. The more he researched the principals, the more fascinated he became with their biographies. Spahn was one of the most decorated ballplayers to fight in World War II. Marichal narrowly escaped death three times. Despite their obvious differences—Spahn was white, American, and left-handed; Marichal is bronzed, Dominican, and right-handed—Kaplan found extraordinary similarities between the friendly rivals. As a result, The Greatest Game Ever Pitched is a dual biography with an unforgettable game woven through it.