The Old Man and the Lion

How many Hall-of-Fame pitchers do you need to cover both sides of a 16-inning game? On one incredible night in 1963, the answer was two.

Paul Jackson
Feb 10, 2025

Arthur C. Clarke famously said that any sufficiently advanced technology “is indistinguishable from magic.” Along similar lines, some of the best history could easily be re-shelved under fantasy. Things that shouldn’t have happened, but somehow did. Things that happened, once, but will never happen again.

In the realm of sports, such a fantasy played out at Candlestick Park on July 2, 1963. That night, 15,921 hardy fans watching the San Francisco Giants play the Milwaukee Braves got to see the baseball equivalent of a Homeric epic.


The Braves had a Hall-of-Famer pitching that night. Warren Spahn was 42 years old, in his 18th full season in the major leagues, but still crafting adornments for his inevitable plaque in Cooperstown. If instead of starting he’d retired that day, Spahn would still have finished more games (338), pitched more shutouts (58) and more innings (4,628) than any left-hander in history to that point. A “thinking pitcher” with a high leg kick, excellent control, and a dastardly screwball, he appeared to be immortal.

This story may have a special resonance for us as we approach our 42nd birthday. 42, we now understand, is an age when “standing up wrong” becomes an operating concern; when you start paying much closer attention to where your feet are when running; when unusual physical undertakings echo through the body for days afterward. In our version of 42, most things are harder, some things are much harder, and a few things have already gone out of reach.

This was not Warren Spahn’s experience. Del Crandall, Spahn’s catcher on July 2 (and for 13 seasons) recalled his attitude:

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?' 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.'

When his cap covered his thinning hair, it was easy to mistake him for the Spahn of ten years prior. That season, 1953, he won 23 games for the Braves. This season, 1963, he would do so again.

The Giants’ pitcher was youthful vitality personified. Juan Marichal was 25 years old, building on an All-Star season in 1962, his second year in the majors. He was part of a wave of talented Latinos from the Caribbean reshaping a game that—when Spahn started playing—had been almost exclusively White. He too had a high leg kick, and both men threw a diverse arsenal of pitches, but that was where the similarities ended. Spahn threw from the left, Marichal the right. Spahn repeated his delivery and had near-perfect control. Marichal threw every which way and gave up his walks.

Continued
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