Sandy Koufax

by Jane Leavy

  Don Drysdale and Claude Osteen were listening in the clubhouse, lying side by side on training tables while trainer Wayne Anderson assuaged late-season aches and pains. Maury Wills, the agent provocateur of the base paths, was nursing his sore legs while his wife nursed their two-day-old baby girl one thousand miles north in Spokane, Washington. He hadn’t seen the child, their sixth. Leave the team during a crucial series with the Giants, in the middle of the pennant race? Unthinkable.

  Jim Lefebvre, the ex–Dodger batboy, who hadn’t expected to be playing in the majors this soon, was preparing to start his 136th game at second base. In the home opener, he faced Warren Spahn, the old lefty who was beginning his twenty-first and last major league season. Lefebvre had a lot of family in the stands. He figured he’d show the old man a thing or two. Three strikeouts and one fly ball later, he was back in the locker room, hanging his head, when he felt a tap on his shoulder.

  “Kid,” Koufax said, “if you can’t take it, get out of here. We don’t want people in here that feel sorry for themselves. You’ve earned the right to wear this uniform. You busted your rear end. You’re a Dodger. Dodgers don’t hang their heads. They don’t feel sorry for themselves and they don’t point fingers.” That was the day Lefebvre said he truly became a Dodger, the day the rookie grew up.

  The public didn’t see the Koufax his teammates knew, the clubhouse leader who nurtured rookies and scrubs, honing them into veterans so they would be strong up the middle when he needed them to be. They didn’t see the clubhouse instigator who would grab your head in one hand, like a melon, and not let go, one because it was funny and two because he could. They didn’t see his generosity. Koufax, a bachelor, was Doggett’s guest on the postgame show every time he pitched and a collector of countless new electrical appliances. Blenders and can openers were especially popular gifts. Jeff Torborg, the young catcher, was newly married and setting up housekeeping with his bride, the former Miss New Jersey. One day, in the locker room, Koufax handed him a can opener. “Here,” he said, “you can use this more than me.” Torborg made his wife promise never to get rid of it—a promise she honored, although she did not cherish the gift, the loudest can opener ever, and was glad when it finally broke.

  Torborg sat at his locker going over the Cubs’ lineup in his mind. There was no pregame meeting, no statistical analysis to review. No matter what the scouting reports said, Koufax would pitch his game. He believed in cultivating his fastball, working it the way a farmer works the land. Little by little, he would expand the strike zone, training the umpire to see its dimensions his way. By game’s end, he’d get that strike call on the outside corner. He told Torborg, “Sit in the middle of the plate and if I start hitting your glove, then we’ll move to the corners.”

  The Cubs were operating under an unusual system of rotating coaches; there was no manager. Lou Klein, the head coach, had written a lineup with two sure Hall of Famers and five rookies, two of whom were playing in their first major league game. Byron Browne, the left fielder, had flown in from Indianapolis earlier that afternoon. As the plane descended through the smog, he pressed himself to the window, not wanting to miss any part of his life’s biggest day. What he saw was more than just the usual West Coast haze. “The place was burning!” he told teammates later. “It looked like someone dropped a bomb on L.A.”

  He was met at the airport by Yosh Kawano, the Cubs’ clubhouse man, whose brother, Nobe, occupied the same position with the Dodgers. Yosh told him he was in the starting lineup. “I said, ‘Well, who’s pitching?’ He said, ‘Don’t worry about it.’ I get to the hotel. Billy Williams says, ‘Leave your bags, we’re going to the ballpark.’ I said, ‘Who’s pitching?’ He said, ‘Oh, don’t worry about it.’ I said, ‘Okay.’”

  At the ballpark, he noticed the quiet, internal preparation of his new teammates, which he attributed to experience, a calm at variance with his own emotions. Dodger Stadium made the requisite impression. “Randolph Scott was there and I think Doris Day. Guys said there were a lot of stars in the stands. The only stars I knew were the Dodgers.”

  Then he heard Johnny Ramsey announce the starting lineups: “And tonight, pitching for the Dodgers, Sandy Koufax.” Jesus, Sandy Koufax. “Welcome to the big leagues, Brownie,” he mumbled to himself.

  Krug, the rookie catcher, was grizzled by comparison. He was called up in May. Still, he was so green he wandered around the infield smelling the grass so he would remember the scent if he got sent down. Also wandering was Uncle Miltie. Krug thought Berle looked upset because no one was paying attention to him. So they chatted until he had to go inside to get in uniform.

  Ed Bailey, the old catcher from Strawberry Plains, Tennessee, was happy to spend the evening in the bullpen. “That’s as close as I want to be when he’s throwing,” he said. Bailey was in the lineup when Koufax no-hit the Giants in 1963. It was a perfect game until Koufax walked him on a 3 and 2 pitch in the eighth. Bailey came over to the Cubs in May in a three-for-two deal that sent two fine-print guys named Bertell and Gabrielson to San Francisco in exchange for three guys who had seen better days: Bailey, Harvey Kuenn, the 1959 American League batting champ, and starting pitcher Bob Hendley.

  Hendley was a journeyman just back from an unpleasant tour of the minors. He was a big old country boy from Macon, Georgia, whose voice rose and fell like the languid countryside in which he was raised. He hadn’t slept much the night before. He hadn’t slept much at all since that road trip from Salt Lake to Oklahoma City in a plane so small they had to refuel in Denver. Six A.M., they went to the hangar. Sat there for hours. People started peeling off their shirts it was so hot. Then, as they take off in Denver, a big gust of wind comes up and the wing almost hits the ground. In Oklahoma City, it’s a hundred degrees. People are throwing up, it’s so hot. Who gets to pitch? Hendley. He’s thinking he’ll never make it through the first inning. He struck out twelve and lost 2–1. He told the manager, “I’ll pay my way, I’m not getting on that plane again.”

  His teammates coaxed him into it. This was his second start since being called up from Triple A. Hard to say which was worse: facing Koufax or another crop duster. Pacing the sumptuous major league quarters, he told himself, “I’ve been gone and I don’t want to go back.”

  Al Spangler, the utility man, was trying to make himself useful by demonstrating how Koufax tipped his pitches in the stretch position. Veterans, like Joey Amalfitano, nodded. Sure, kid. Everybody had Koufax’s pitches. And it didn’t fucking matter. Like Willie Mays said, “I knew every pitch he was going to throw and I still couldn’t hit him.”

  Kenny Holtzman, the young lefty from St. Louis, came in from throwing batting practice. Some of the guys wanted to face a left-hander before seeing Koufax. He’d only been in the big leagues a couple of days. He knew he had been selected because there was no way he was going to get into the game. At this point in his young career, simulating greatness was all that was expected of him. He took the job seriously. Throwing batting practice is an act of self-abnegation. You want to make the hitters look good, feel good. Holtzman was eager to please. But he was young and he threw hard and he wasn’t sure what to expect. It wasn’t this: The Cubs couldn’t touch him. In batting practice. When he was just laying it in there. He sat down at his locker and thought, God, if they have that much trouble with me, what the hell are they going to do with Koufax?

  Chapter 3

  WHEN SANDY TOUCHED THE SKY

  COACH “RED” RABINOWITZ BELLIED UP to his dining room table in Cedarhurst, Long Island, beneath the flight path to John F. Kennedy International Airport. When Koufax was captain of his basketball team at Lafayette High School in 1953, the airport was still called Idlewild. Jet plane service in the continental U.S. was still five years away. A person could hear himself think. On a warm June evening nearly fifty years later, Rabinowitz was having trouble concentrating on the remarks he was preparing for Lafayette’s Diamond Anniversary Award Presentation. The alumni committee had decided to honor the c
oaches of Lafayette, past and present, and Frank Rabinowitz had a lifetime of things he wanted to say. “They said two minutes. They couldn’t make it five?”

  His dining table was piled high with scrapbooks, yellowing images of boys in slick white uniforms, boys who are now aging men if life has been kind. Arthur Greenfeld, known as “Trip” because he was one of triplets—he died in 1999. And “Big Job” Burt Abramowitz, Asher Jagoda and Sid Yalowitz, Jerry Doren and skinny Sandy Koufax. Their coach, Red Rabinowitz, was a football guy coaching basketball at a school better known for its gridiron exploits. First thing, he bought his boys some decent uniforms so they wouldn’t have to walk home from practice soaking wet in moth-eaten woolens that added ten pounds to their frames. Got ’em gym bags too. He reached under the table for one, wondering whether to mention it in his speech. One thing, though, he wasn’t going to talk about Sandy. He was firm about that. “Every kid to me was the same.”

  Rabinowitz keeps a napkin Koufax autographed at a 1974 reunion in a Ziploc bag inside his dresser. “My wife brings it out for me every once in a while,” he said, smoothing the cloth, stained with age and stale coffee. “Sandy loved the kids who played basketball and he loved his coach. My wife says she doesn’t recognize me when I start talking like this. I become young and strong, y’see?”

  The next evening several hundred Lafayette alums gathered on the campus of Kingsborough Community College. There were lots of guys with big Saturday Night Fever hair and lots of guys without socks in from California. Gary David Goldberg, who produced the television show Brooklyn Bridge, was there, along with Senator Barbara Boxer, whose husband graduated from Lafayette. Herbie Cohen flew in from Washington. Some of Sandy’s guys were there too: Asher Dann (né Jagoda), Bruce Glatman, Jimmy Massifero, and Freddie Wilpon. Larry King, class of 1951, was the emcee.

  Koufax was a presence in absentia, his name whispered in hushed asides. As in, “He never comes to these things.” Not since that 1974 dinner when King, known in the neighborhood as Larry Zeiger, made a big fuss over him. Arthur Greenfeld witnessed Koufax’s embarrassment. “You want an autograph too, Trip?” Koufax asked glumly. “Only if it’s on the bottom of a check,” Trip replied.

  Despite King’s best efforts, the program at Kingsborough Community College ran long. Every one of the honored coaches had a lifetime of things to say. “The class of ’47 has just passed away,” King announced an hour and a half into the proceedings, thanking his urologist “for making it possible for me to sit here tonight.” An old Danny Kaye line.

  Rabinowitz, being among the most senior coaches, was also among the last to speak. He spoke and he spoke, holding up the maroon gym bag, until finally a voice rang out in the hall: “C’mon, Frank, enough already.” Rabinowitz has a face the shape and patina of a well-traveled bowling ball. He summoned his chin from his chest and growled, “I’m not leaving till I have my say.”

  At which point Bruce Glatman and Asher Dann headed for the lobby. “We didn’t go to our own graduation,” Glatman said. “Why do we gotta go to this?”

  “Can we get a drink?” Dann replied.

  And then they started trading stories, which is the reason why people fly in from California for things like this. The first story they tell is the one about the bus stop. In Brooklyn, and at social functions celebrating Brooklyn (many of which take place outside of Brooklyn and all of which are known as “functions”), they always tell the bus stop story. It goes like this. They were hanging by the corner of 86th and Bay Parkway the way they always did—Herbie, Brucie, Bucko, Nick De Cicco, and Sam De Luca, the football player. Koufax was there, too, hanging back beneath an awning when Bucko decided to show everyone how strong he was.

  In those days, the city had no bus shelters. Bus stop signs were held in place by concrete stanchions, a challenge to otherwise unoccupied minds and bodies. “Bucko lifted it up like six times,” Glatman said. “Nick De Cicco, another famous guy, he then lifted it like seven times. So people started egging on poor Koufax.”

  “He didn’t want to do it,” Cohen said. “But everyone was bothering him. So he did. It looked like Koufax could do twelve but he did it eight. One more than De Cicco. That’s Koufax. He didn’t want to show off. He just wanted to do it. Then he put it down. He didn’t bang it down, slam it down. He just put it down and went back toward the awning into the shadow, into a darkness. Around our corner, having these characteristics, humility, integrity, and not being willing to brag, he stood out.”

  Time plays havoc with memory. Or, as Herbie says, “Recollection is the manipulation of memory.” Maybe the story’s true. It ought to be. It has the feel of prophecy. Or maybe, as Koufax has been known to point out, “Kids just want to make heroes of their friends.”

  They also want to believe, at a remove, in the ability to see the future. They want to believe not just in heroes but in the ability to recognize the makings of one. Koufax was an unlikely choice. In a world of tummlers and self-promoters, he was modest, shy, polite, wholesome even, preferring shadows to limelight. Senior year in high school, he volunteered for the Cafeteria Squad. His ambition, as stated beneath his picture in the June 1953 Lafayette Legend yearbook, was “TO BE SUCCESSFUL AND MAKE MY FAMILY PROUD OF ME.”

  “The most regular guy.” That’s how Sid Young (né Yalowitz) describes him. All his buddies agree, he hasn’t changed at all. He’s consistent with a time and a place, and with himself. It is his peculiar fate to aspire to be the one thing his talent and fame did not permit: regular. Jerry Della Femina (Class of ’54) is big in the advertising business now so you should forgive the hyperbole. What appears enigmatic to others about the present-day Koufax makes perfect sense to him. “It’s very male, very much that neighborhood,” Della Femina said. “Men from that part of Brooklyn don’t talk. He’s symbolic of all the people who turned out well from that neighborhood. They all have that quality and they all got it from their fathers. It was right after the thirties. Their systems were shocked by the Depression. They passed that shock onto their children. It’s a way of being in yourself. Sandy isn’t a recluse—to the rest of the world, maybe. Put him in Brooklyn, he’s everyone. He’s my father, my uncle. He’s everybody I knew.”

  Born in the Depression, three years before Kristallnacht, Koufax spent much of his childhood among the potato fields of eastern Long Island. Though Brooklyn claims him as its own, he did not become Sandy Koufax until he left the borough. He was born to Evelyn and Jack Braun on December 30, 1935. His genetic father left the family, divorcing his mother when Koufax was three years old. Eventually, Jack Braun remarried and quit paying alimony. His relationship with his son all but ended with the payments.

  Mother and son lived with her parents in an apartment in an attached row house. Evelyn was a working woman, a certified public accountant. Her son spent most of his time with his grandparents, Max and Dora. “Butch” Hackett, later known as Buddy, the rotund comedian, lived next door. Dora would yell down from the apartment window to Hackett, “Get off my stoop and go bother someone else, you meshuggener.” When that didn’t work, she poured water on his head.

  Max Lichtenstein was a plumber and a socialist who dabbled in real estate. He loved classical music and Yiddish theater and imbued his grandson with his values and culture. On Saturday mornings, he took Sandy swimming in the surf at Coney Island. Unlike his grandfather, Koufax was a quiet insurrectionist, the sort of boy for whom not doing his homework was an act of defiance. But, in many ways, he remains his grandfather’s son.

  Koufax was nine when his mother married Irving Koufax, a neighborhood lawyer with a modest practice and a highly developed sense of honor. When Evelyn remarried, her son acquired a new father, a new last name, and an older sister, Edie, Irving’s daughter from a previous marriage. Though he was never legally adopted, Koufax would write in his 1966 autobiography: “When I speak of my father, I speak of Irving Koufax, for he has been to me everything a father could be.”

  Irving Koufax moved his family to Rockville Ce
ntre, Long Island, nineteen miles and light-years away from Brooklyn. A move that presaged the great urban diaspora soon to follow. It was the beginning of the subdivision of America into shirtwaists and gray fedoras. Irving and Evelyn took the Long Island Railroad to work in the city each day. One day, the train they were scheduled to take was in a deadly, head-on collision. Sandy and Edie huddled together listening to radio bulletins about dead bodies and emergency calls for bags of plasma. It turned out their parents had missed the train. They had also had enough of commuting. The family moved back to Brooklyn in June 1949, the day Sandy graduated from eighth grade.

  In those days, Brooklyn was not just the most heavily populated borough of New York City, it was seventy-five square miles of contiguous hamlets, each one a hometown. Bensonhurst was the hamlet in which The Honeymooners, Ralph and Alice, lived and where the Koufaxes settled. It was a neighborhood of lower-middle-class Italians and Jews. Parents were just as likely to read Il Progresso and the Jewish Daily Forward as the Daily News and the New York Post. It was the era of waxed fruit, plastic covered furniture, and plaster Madonnas on front lawns, of egg creams, celery tonic, and cream soda, of corner stores and concrete stoops. Streetlight poles admonished, “Post no bills,” and nobody did. Cabdrivers were sages and an NYC medallion was a lifetime annuity. Spring began not with the equinox but with the annual preseason exhibition series between the Yankees and the Dodgers. Kids went to sleep in their baseball uniforms so they’d be ready to play ball in the morning. Fields were coveted, especially fenced ones. Camping out at home plate overnight was not unprecedented. Charles Aspromonte, known in the neighborhood as Sonny, remembers candles burning in the dirt at home plate on the Lafayette High School field and the protection offered by a beat cop when some older boys tried to hijack the diamond.