Juan Antonio Marichal Sánchez, nicknamed "the Dominican Dandy", is a Dominican former right-handed pitcher who played 16 seasons in Major League Baseball from 1960 to 1975, mostly with the San Francisco Giants. Known for his high leg kick, variety of pitches, arm angles and deliveries, pinpoint control, and durability, Marichal won 18 games to help the Giants reach the 1962 World Series, and went on to earn 191 victories in the 1960s, the most of any major league pitcher. He won over 20 games six times, on each occasion posting an earned run average (ERA) below 2.50 and striking out more than 200 batters, and became the first right-hander since Bob Feller to win 25 games three times; his 26 wins in 1968 remain a franchise record.

Dominicans are an ethno-national people, a people of shared ancestry and culture, who have ancestral roots in the Dominican Republic. The Dominican ethnic group was born out of a fusion of European, native Taino, and African elements, which is an ethnic fusion that goes back to the 16th century. Due to this fusion, the majority of Dominicans are of mixed-race heritage, tracing roots mainly to these three sources with the vast majority being of predominant African ancestry. The demonym Dominican can be traced as far back as the 1621. The name came from Santo Domingo, which was not only the name of the capital city but also of the entire island at the time, Spain used this term to refer to the inhabitants of Spanish province of Santo Domingo. Recent immigrants and their children, who are legal citizens of the Dominican Republic, can be considered "Dominican" by nationality but not ethnicity due to not having ancestral roots in the country.