In 1961, the moment everyone in baseball was waiting for arrived, and the results were some of the greatest performances ever seen. Koufax learned to control his white-hot fastball. He learned to control the big curveball. In 1961, he became Sandy Koufax. He won 18 games and struck out 269 hitters in only 255 2/3 innings, leading the league.
The next year, fighting injury, Koufax led the league with a 2.54 earned run average. In 1963, he won the Most Valuable Player and the Cy Young Awards, going 25–5 with 306 strikeouts and a 1.88 ERA. The Dodgers won the World Series, beating the hated Yankees in a four-game sweep.
In 1964, Koufax was incredible again, 19–5 with a 1.74 ERA. And he accomplished those numbers in an era of great hitters, facing Willie Mays, Frank Robinson, Roberto Clemente, Ernie Banks, and Henry Aaron. Koufax regularly faced some of the greatest hitters of all time—and he blew them all away.
Yet for all of his pitching, all of the championships and the no-hitters, being a person of substance and conscience is what separated Koufax from the rest of the pack.
In old-time baseball, pitchers and hitters engaged in an unspoken deal. The pitcher could throw at one part of the plate and the hitters could swing at the other. If a hitter tried to be too aggressive and swung too hard at both inside and outside pitches, the pitcher would immediately throw at the hitter to hit him or knock him down as a reminder not to break the unwritten rules.
From the 1900s through the 1970s, pitchers were well-known for hitting batters. Bob Feller, the great Cleveland Indians fastballer, would put a hitter on his butt in a heartbeat. So would Bob Gibson and Koufax’s teammate Don Drysdale. All were legendary headhunters.
Koufax threw as hard as all of them, maybe harder. He had control problems early in his career that kept him from being great, and yet Koufax was always known as a gentleman on the mound. He didn’t throw at hitters. He proved that a pitcher didn’t have to play mean or dirty to control the game, and that gained him the respect of players throughout baseball.
Off the field, Koufax was true to his Jewish faith. There had been several Jewish players in baseball in the past—especially during the pre–World War II years—who had suffered serious discrimination and hardship. Hank Greenberg, the great Detroit Tigers slugger, endured anti-Semitism throughout his major league career. Like in the rest of society, several Jewish players had shortened or changed their names to more “American-sounding” names to avoid the ruthless discrimination that Jews faced.
Yet Koufax was proud of his heritage. He did not hide from it. He did not shrink from his responsibilities. At first, Koufax was not obvious about his religious observance, but in 1965, when Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar, fell on the opener of the World Series against the Minnesota Twins, Koufax refused to pitch. Yom Kippur represented the Day of Atonement.
To Koufax, the gesture was not a big deal, but its symbolism to Jewish fans around the country was enormous. Koufax became an even greater inspiration. He became hero to fans for more than just being a ballplayer. Generations of Jewish fans and future baseball players placed Sandy far above the rest as a favorite.
Always, with Koufax, there was great performance on the field, too. In his second start of the series, Koufax won Game 5 of the 1965 World Series 7–0, pitching the entire game and striking out 10 batters to give the Dodgers a 3–2 lead in the series. The Twins won Game 6 and so Koufax pitched for a third time, on only two days’ rest, and pitched the whole game again, a complete game, 2–0 shutout to win the World Series. Two consecutive complete-game shutouts, only two days apart. Such a feat would never happen in today’s game, when pitching complete games is a rarity altogether and starting pitchers struggle with as little as three days’ rest between games.
Entering the 1966 season, Koufax experienced severe pain in his left elbow. Often, after pitching, the pain was so great that he could not straighten his arm. A drug new to the 1960s, cortisone, eased some of the hurt, but left Sandy feeling uncomfortable. In later years, players and team physicians would use cortisone shots routinely (though sparingly), but in 1966 its future effects were unknown and Koufax did not want to risk his health to play baseball.
Despite the pain he had to endure, Koufax pitched brilliantly that year. His arm hurt every time out, but he still pitched more innings (323) than any other pitcher in baseball, led the league with 27 wins, and only lost 9. He also led the league with 41 starts, an ERA of 1.73, and a whopping 27 complete games. To put that last statistic into context, Adam Wainwright of the Cardinals led the major leagues in complete games in 2013 . . . with five.
The Dodgers won the pennant again in 1966, and then faced the young, talented Baltimore Orioles in the World Series. Koufax pitched well, but the series was over in a flash: the Orioles swept the series, shutting out the Dodgers in three of the four games.
Yet the worst news for the Dodgers wasn’t losing the World Series. The worst news came weeks later. At age thirty, Sandy Koufax announced he was retiring from baseball.
The pain had been too great, he said. He didn’t like taking all of those shots and didn’t like how the drugs made him feel.
Sandy Koufax was the best pitcher in the world at the height of his talent and he walked away from the game because he thought it would help him lead a healthier, longer life.
Baseball lost its shining comet, yet the legend of Sandy Koufax lives to this day. There have been other great pitchers who dominated for a period of years, like Greg Maddux and Pedro Martinez and Roger Clemens, but no pitcher combined three important ingredients—great pitching in the regular season, great pitching in the World Series, and inspiration as a person off the field—like Sandy Koufax.
Sandy Koufax
TOP TEN LIST
Sandy Koufax threw four no-hitters. From 1961–1966, he put up six of the greatest seasons in history, winning two World Series titles as well, with the Los Angeles Dodgers. Who are the greatest pitchers of all time? That’s a discussion you could have for hours and still not agree. Here are ten names to start with, though, along with their career win totals. Note that “greatest” doesn’t necessarily mean having the most wins.
Bob Gibson, STL (1957–1975)—251
Walter Johnson, WSH (1907–1927)—417
Tom Seaver, NYM, CIN, CHW, BOS (1967–1986)—311
Greg Maddux, CHC, ATL, LAD, SD (1986–2008)—355
Nolan Ryan, NYM, LAA, HOU, TEX (1966–1993)—324
Pedro Martinez, LAD, MON, BOS, NYM, PHI (1992–2009)—219
Warren Spahn, MIL-NYM-SFG (1942–1965)—363
Cy Young, CLE-STL (NL), BOS (AL), CLE (AL), BOS (NL) (1890–1911)—511
Randy Johnson, MON-SEA-HOU-ARI-NYY-SFG (1988–2009)—303
Christy Mathewson, NYG-CIN (1900–1916)—373
“Something for Me, Mama”
HENRY AARON HITS #715
Sometimes, in the middle of the night, Estella Aaron would hear the drums outside her home in Toulminville, a small town near Mobile, Alabama. The drumbeat would grow closer. She would hear footsteps. She would look out the window and see the men dressed in white robes, wearing hoods, and carrying torches.
She immediately knew who the men were. It was the Ku Klux Klan, the worst terrorist organization in America. It was the 1940s and the Klan targeted Catholics, Jews, and especially African Americans, intent on scaring them and often killing the ones who did not fear them, to keep them in their place, to remind them that they were not true Americans, that they were inferior to white Protestants. On the nights she was alone and the Klan was near, Estella would pull her eight children from their sleep and hide them under the bed to keep them safe until the danger left.
In the daytime, one of Estella Aaron’s children, Henry, would hold a broomstick and try to hit bottle caps through the air. Oftentimes a friend would pitch the bottle caps to Henry and they would fly toward him, swerving and darting unpredictably, and Henry
Aaron, head still, eyes focused, would easily swat the flat little crowns as though they were as big as basketballs. It was a great skill, and Henry would tell his father, Herbert, that he wanted to be a ballplayer when he grew up. “You can’t,” Herbert told him. “There are no colored ballplayers.” Young Henry would see an airplane fly overhead, change his mind, and say, “Well, I want to be a pilot.”
“You can’t,” Herbert Aaron told his son. “There are no colored pilots, either.”
So on the playground and in his dreams, Henry stuck to baseball, hitting rocks and bottle caps and—finally—baseballs, with his friends at Carver Park. No one knew it at the time, but that kid would eventually grow into the greatest home run hitter in the history of Major League Baseball.
When Henry was fourteen he met Jackie Robinson, who had joined the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, and Henry’s father no longer needed to tell his son he couldn’t be a professional baseball player. Robinson told young Henry to work hard in school first and then concentrate on being a great baseball player. Henry smiled and agreed, but he didn’t listen. He put baseball above everything, above school, above work. It paid off for him. He became one of the most famous baseball players of all time, joining the Milwaukee Braves in 1954, winning his first batting title in 1956, playing in two World Series, and winning one in 1957.
While he earned his place in baseball history by hitting home runs, Henry could do anything on the baseball diamond. He was a 21-time all-star (21 times!), won three Gold Gloves, and set records at the time for the most RBIs, extra-base hits, and total bases.
Even though he was a confident player, Henry had, in his own way, always felt overshadowed within the world of baseball. He was a great hitter, but Willie Mays was flashier. He was a solid right fielder, but everyone in baseball raved about the rocket arm of Roberto Clemente. Mickey Mantle was with the mighty Yankees and he played in New York, the big media capital. Most of all, Henry was always aware, perhaps a bit more than others in the game, of how differently society treated people based on the color of their skin.
But by the middle to late 1960s, it was clear that for all the big names, for all the guys who received more attention than he, it was Hank Aaron, and not Mantle or Mays or anyone else, who suddenly had the best chance to capture the greatest record in baseball: the all-time home run record.
The all-time home run record was the one record that no one thought would ever be broken. It belonged to Babe Ruth since his last home run, in 1935, gave him a total of 714 for his career. It was the magic number in baseball, the number all great players wanted to reach, but none ever could.
As fans and sportswriters began doing the math, it was clear that Aaron had a great shot to break the record. He was already the first player in major league history to both hit five hundred home runs and amass three thousand hits.
In 1968, the letters from the public began to arrive. Most of the letters were from fans, young kids and longtime baseball fans wishing Henry the best, wishing he would break the record and that they would be able to see it when the magic moment happened. For most of the people who wrote him letters, he was their hero.
Then there were the terrible letters, the ones in which anonymous people threatened to kill him and members of his family, the letters that reminded him, in ways even his talent could not deflect, that life was different and often worse for African Americans. One letter was so serious that the FBI removed Henry’s daughter from college for her protection. Henry then hired Calvin Wardlaw, a former police officer, as his personal bodyguard. The themes of the letters were all the same: they didn’t want him to break the home run record because he was African American. The home run record, the letters said, should not belong to a black person.
“All I did was play baseball to the best of my ability,” Henry would say. “And there were so many things I had to deal with, all because of the color of my skin.”
When he was having his worst days, he went to visit his family in Mobile, but he wouldn’t tell anyone where he was going. He and his brother would go fishing, just to get away from all of the attention, all of the talk that he was unworthy of breaking Ruth’s record, and from the death threats that followed him.
One day, sitting in the kitchen with his mother, he asked why he received so much hatred from people he didn’t even know.
“Why don’t they want me to have something for me, Mama?”
After that conversation, Estella Aaron was convinced more than ever that her son would break the record.
“He told me he was going to do it,” Estella said. “He said, ‘I don’t want them to forget Babe Ruth. I just want them to remember me.’”
By the time Henry was forty, in 1974, the United States had changed. The Ku Klux Klan still existed, but great people like Jackie Robinson, John F. Kennedy, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis, and countless others had a dream of their own to make America a place where every person, no matter the color of their skin, could at least have an opportunity to succeed if they were talented and hungry and driven enough. The all-time home run record was something Henry wanted, both for himself and as proof that, given the chance, African Americans could do great things, just like everyone else.
On the last day of the 1973 season, Henry hit home run number 713. He was one home run away from tying the record, but now the season was over and he had to wait the entire winter for a chance to tie Ruth. It was the longest winter of his life. Henry worried and worried about being so close to the record without breaking it. Sometimes, his mind would wander to scary places. He would wonder if the letters were true and not just threats from bad people meant to intimidate him. What if someone shot him before the season started? What if some awful accident happened? He remembered his friend and rival Roberto Clemente, who reached his three-thousandth hit on the last day of the 1972 season and was tragically killed in a plane crash on New Year’s Eve. What if Clemente hadn’t gotten that last hit in 1972? It would have never come.
Opening day of the 1974 season finally arrived and Henry didn’t waste any time. On his very first swing of the season, against the Cincinnati Reds, Henry tied Babe Ruth’s record with home run number 714, a no-doubt-about-it shot over the left field fence. The game was stopped and the vice president of the United States walked onto the field to shake Aaron’s hand.
Given a microphone to address the cheering crowd, Henry Aaron thanked everyone for their support and then said what was on his mind. “I’m just glad it’s almost over with.”
On April 8, 1974, at home in Atlanta, Henry started his afternoon sitting on the couch watching soap operas, waiting for when it was time to go to Atlanta–Fulton County Stadium for a game against the Dodgers. Right before game time, Henry looked at his teammate Ralph Garr and said, “Ralph, tonight’s the night. I’m going to do it.”
The fans booed when Al Downing, the Los Angeles pitcher, walked Henry on four pitches in the first inning. But then in the fourth inning, Downing threw him a hanging breaking ball and Henry lashed it over the left field fence for home run number 715. The crowd went crazy. Henry rounded first, then second, and suddenly, two fans ran onto the field and were running side by side with him. His bodyguard, Calvin, fearing that the fans might have been two of the people who had threatened Henry, reached for his pistol—before seeing the two kids patting Henry on the back.
When he reached home plate, his father stood next to him while his mother was there squeezing her son in joy. When Henry was born, African Americans weren’t allowed to play in the major leagues. Now, three months after his fortieth birthday, the kid who once hit bottle caps and dreamed of one day playing baseball held the most celebrated record in American sports.
What did Henry remember the most about that magical night?
“I never knew,” Henry said, “that my mother could hug so tight.”
Hank Aaron
TOP TEN LIST
Henry Aaron di
dn’t hit the longest home runs. He didn’t even really think of himself as a home run hitter at all, but when he retired in 1976, he had hit more than anyone ever. Time and the use of performance-enhancing drugs by many players has changed the all-time home run list and how fans feel about it, but Henry’s 755 and Babe Ruth’s 714 are still time-treasured numbers for all baseball fans. Here is that all-time home run list.
Barry Bonds, PIT-SF, 762
Henry Aaron, MIL (NL), ATL, MIL (AL), 755
Babe Ruth, BOS (AL), NYY, BOS (NL), 714
Willie Mays, NY-SF (NL), NYM (NL), 660
Alex Rodriguez, SEA-TEX-NYY, 654
Ken Griffey Jr., SEA-CIN-CHW, 630
Jim Thome, CLE-PHI-CHW-MIN, 612
Sammy Sosa, CHW-TEX-CHC-BAL, 609
Frank Robinson, CIN-BAL-CLE-LAA, 586
Mark McGwire, OAK-STL, 583
Rickey Henderson
ONE OF A KIND
From the time of the dead-ball era of the 1880s through 1920, as well as in the Negro Leagues, when African Americans were forced to play separately from white players, the roots of baseball had been about getting on base, about forcing the action.
No one forced the action like Rickey Henderson. When he began his rookie year with the Oakland A’s in 1979, Rickey was unlike anything the fans had ever seen. Rickey could run and run fast. He grew up in Oakland and not only was he a baseball star at Oakland Technical High School but also a football star—and he was built like one, too, like a running back.
But Rickey chose baseball. He became a star for the hometown baseball team, the A’s. “I could have played in the NFL. I think I would have been a very good running back,” he said. “But I remember it. My mother thought I was too small. She thought I would get hurt. So I played baseball to keep her from worrying.”
Legends: The Best Players, Games, and Teams in Baseball Page 3