Giant Missteps

  In the 1960s, the San Francisco Giants were poised to become the best team in baseball. Not only did their roster sport such fan favorites as Willie McCovey and Willie Mays, but the team had positioned itself to take advantage of the new wave of talent coming into the game — the Latino ballplayer.

The Dodgers’ Jackie Robinson had broken the color barrier in 1947, opening the door to other players of color. “The Latin player then took the game to another level,” says Hall of Fame player and baseball executive

Joe Torre. And nobody had more, or better, Latino players in the early 1960s than the Giants.

Pitcher Juan Marichal, for example, recorded a one-hitter in his very first major league start and won 20 or more games six times. Outfielder Felipe Alou, who grew up a three-hour drive from Marichal’s home in the Dominican

Republic, joined the Giants along with his brothers, Matty and Jesus. Orlando Cepeda and Jose Pagan came north from Puerto Rico to play in the big leagues.

“The Giants were the first team with so many black and Latino stars,” says Rob Ruck, a professor of history at the University of Pittsburgh and the writer of the PBS documentary “The Republic of Baseball.” “Not only did gloved fists were raised in protest at the Mexico City Olympics, the San Francisco “Latino” Giants made headlines of their own. In looking back, so much of the current era in baseball — in which nearly