John Junior Roseboro (May 13, 1933 – August 16, 2002) was an American professional baseball player and coach.

A four-time All-Star player, Roseboro is considered one of the best defensive catchers of the 1960s, winning two Gold Glove Awards.

[5] Roseboro was signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers as an amateur free agent before the 1952 season and, began his professional baseball career with the Class-D Sheboygan Indians of the Wisconsin State League.

However, in January 1958, he was promoted to the starting catcher's position ahead of schedule when Campanella was badly injured in an automobile accident that left him paralyzed from the shoulders down and ended his athletic career.

[19] During spring training 1962, Roseboro was amongst the group of black Dodger players, along with Tommy Davis, Maury Wills, Jim Gilliam, and Willie Davis, who approached Peter O'Malley, son of the Dodgers' owner, and demanded that segregation come to an end at Dodgertown.

[26] The Dodgers dropped to seventh place in the 1964 season, however Roseboro hit for a career high .287 batting average and led the league's catchers with a 60.4% caught stealing percentage, the ninth highest season percentage in major league history.

[27][28] Roseboro was involved in a major altercation with Juan Marichal during a game between the Dodgers and San Francisco Giants at Candlestick Park on August 22, 1965.

[31] Maury Wills led off the game with a bunt single off Marichal, and eventually scored a run when Ron Fairly hit a double.

[31] In the top of the third inning with two outs, Marichal threw a fastball that came close to hitting Fairly, prompting him to dive to the ground.

[31] Marichal's act angered the Dodgers sitting in the dugout and home plate umpire Shag Crawford then warned both teams that any further retaliations would not be tolerated.

Instead, he was startled when Roseboro's return throw to Koufax after the second pitch either brushed his ear or came close enough for him to feel the breeze off the ball.

Afterwards, National League president Warren Giles suspended him for eight games (two starts), fined him a then-NL record $1,750 (equivalent to $17,000 in 2023), and forbade him from traveling to Dodger Stadium for the final, key two-game series of the season.

Roseboro filed a $110,000 damage suit against Marichal one week after the incident but eventually settled out of court for $7,500.

He took matters into his own hands as he did not want to risk Koufax being ejected and possibly being suspended for retaliating while the Dodgers were in the middle of a close pennant race.

[37] The Dodgers' pitching staff continued to lead the league in earned-run averages in 1966 as they battled with the San Francisco Giants and the Pittsburgh Pirates in a tight pennant race.

[39] Roseboro led the league with a career-high 903 putouts and finished second to Joe Torre in fielding percentage to win his second Gold Glove Award.

[42] The following season, after the Dodgers fell to 8th place, Roseboro, Ron Perranoski and Bob Miller were acquired by the Minnesota Twins, which needed a veteran catcher and left-handed reliever, in exchange for Mudcat Grant and Zoilo Versalles on November 28, 1967.

[11] Baseball historian and sabermetrician Bill James ranked Roseboro 27th all-time among major league catchers.

When the Los Angeles Dodgers broadcast games on television, Chevrolet commercials were aired in which Roseboro and Drysdale sang the song "See The U.S.A.

Upon seeing the commercials, Dodgers' announcer Jerry Doggett joked that Roseboro's and Drysdale's singing career "was destined to go absolutely nowhere.

In it, he was very direct with his criticism of the baseball establishment and his own shortcomings, as well as those of his teammates, including his one-time roommate and close friend Maury Wills.

Roseboro personally appealed to the Baseball Writers' Association of America not to hold the incident against Marichal after he was passed over for election to the Hall of Fame in his first two years of eligibility.

[58] Later in life, Roseboro's health began to fail and he suffered from several strokes, heart ailments, and a bout of prostate cancer.