Sandy Koufax

by Jane Leavy

  He scoured the borough in search of The Big Game, which invariably took place at Brighton Beach, where playground legends, college stars, and pros gathered to hone their games, and the game basketball would become. Back then, no one knew from vertical leap. Vertical was for skyscrapers. But Koufax had wattage in his legs, hands large enough to palm the ball, and he didn’t shy away from contact. On the playground, players asked: You sure this boy is white? “He was just a skinny Jewish kid in a bandanna who challenged our small little prejudices,” Della Femina said.

  Soon his name began to appear in the fine print of the Brooklyn Eagle sports pages, usually misspelled. Caufax. Kaufox. Kofax, Kauflex, Kouflex. “He was an incredibly smooth basketball player,” said Alan Dershowitz, another neighborhood kid who made good—as a legal authority and author of I, Dershowitz fame. “He would fake a jumper, drive the baseline, come under the boards and reverse and dunk. We weren’t used to that.”

  In Koufax’s senior year, Rabinowitz named him captain of the basketball team. The editors of the Lafayette Legend named him to the Society for the Prevention of the Accumulation of Wallflowers in Speakeasies (S.P.A.W.S.) They also voted him “Best Boy Athlete,” confidently predicting stardom in professional basketball. As they walked to New Utrecht High School for the last game of the year, “Big Job” told him, “‘Let’s make a pact in blood that the first one of us to make a million dollars has to give the other half.’ He looked at me like—‘What are you, some kind of nut?’ In an attempt to cut off the stupid conversation, he said, ‘Okay, it’s a deal.’ So now if you calculate the interest on five hundred thousand dollars at five percent annually he probably owes me fifty to a hundred million.”

  In 1953, the National Basketball Association was a dark planet in the cosmology of professional sports. College ball was what mattered and Brooklyn was in mourning for the city game. The point-shaving scandal at City College was all anyone talked about on the coveted court at Seth Low Junior High. They knew those guys and had competed against many of them. Nat Holman’s boys broke more hearts than rules with the Big Fix but they also opened the door to the NBA. Seeking to capitalize on the void left by the scandal that came to be known as the Dump, the New York Knicks embarked on a marketing strategy that included scrimmaging against local high school teams in clinics sponsored by the Police Athletic League. The players didn’t mind. It was an extra twenty-five bucks. And so a match was made with the “Frenchies” of Lafayette.

  It was Friday night, about 8:00 P.M., when the Knicks arrived at the Bath Street gym. They were led by Harry “The Horse” Gallatin. And Harry was a horse: a big midwestern farmer’s boy who could fill up the middle and rebound like a sonofabitch. He was Koufax’s favorite player.

  The gym was full, the cheerleaders in full pom-pomed confection, a blur of maroon and white leading the crowd in the Lafayette cheer. Della Femina was there, Dershowitz and Kaufman, too. During warm-ups, the big boys—Gallatin, Al McGuire, Carl Braun—showed off their moves while the high-schoolers formed layup lines. Then Gallatin decided to try a couple of dunks. Unlike most horses, Harry required a running start. “Harry dribbles in and tries to dunk,” Rabinowitz recalled. “He misses. Harry tries again and misses again. I says, ‘Harry, would you like to see somebody dunk the ball?’ Very casual-like. He says, ‘You have somebody who can dunk?’ I said, ‘Sandy, come over here.’

  “In those days, there was no such thing as a dunk. Sandy didn’t even know he was doing it. He’d take these long strides and hang around in the air. He didn’t jump and come down, see. He’d stay in the air and hang around a little bit.”

  Next thing, Al McGuire’s got Koufax by the elbow, dragging him across the court, saying to Gallatin, “I’ve got a kid right here who can show you how to do it.” And he did. Rabinowitz couldn’t help himself. “I says, ‘Harry, you want to see him do it again?’”

  Gallatin had seen enough. “Who are you?” he asked. “Sandy Koufax,” the kid replied. Gallatin gave him an autograph; Koufax gave him his name and address. Then it was time to scrimmage. “He embarrassed the Knicks for the first ten minutes, totally outplaying them,” Della Femina recalled.

  Gallatin had the unenviable task of guarding him. “Generally, we clowned around,” Gallatin said. “We even let a few of the kids beat us. But then after the kid started making fools of us, we thought, Hey, we better do something here. We just wanted to have fun. Koufax didn’t want to have fun.”

  Next thing Della Femina recalls, “McGuire went up and Gallatin went up, and there was a Koufax sandwich. Last I remember, he was limping off the court with that ‘I’m going to beat you’ look. Very few are that quiet and that competitive. There was something there. You could smell success.”

  Thus, on February 10, 1953, Koufax made headlines for the first time—and they spelled his name right. “Lafayette Cager Wowed Gallatin,” the New York Post proclaimed. Gene Roswell’s story was a gusher, the lead paragraph a fifty-eight-word run-on sentence beginning and ending with Koufax.

  When the Knicks scrimmaged against Lafayette during a missionary preseason basketball clinic at the Bath Beach school, pro center Harry Gallatin was so impressed by the spring and coordination of a rangy youngster named Sandy Koufax, who actually outjumped him several times, that he told Frenchie Coach Frank Rabinowitz: “We’ll be coming back for this kid some day.”

  Fifty years later, grown men who were present that night contemplate eroding memories and tell themselves, “Gee, I think I remember Sandy playing the Knicks.”

  Here it is, straight from the Horse’s mouth: “It happened. Koufax wanted to show us up and he did.”

  Chapter 4

  THE FIRST INNING

  GAME TIME WAS 8:00 P.M. Ed Vargo dusted off home plate. Groundskeepers refreshed the baselines with a powder of ground Georgia marble. The dugouts filled with the usual chatter and clatter of ash on ash. The starting lineups were announced. The umpires were introduced. Koufax walked to the mound. As always, he was accorded a greeting worthy of a maestro. “There was applause,” Scully said. “Not cheers, applause.”

  So confident were the Dodgers when he pitched that Jerry Doggett, Scully’s longtime broadcast partner, once successfully importuned him to prerecord a postgame interview. It was getaway day. Koufax reluctantly agreed. Anything for the team.

  John Werhas, the young Dodger utility infielder, studied the body language in opposing dugouts whenever Koufax appeared on the field. Everything stopped. Everyone looked. And not just scrubs like himself. Mr. Cub, Ernie Banks, the most cheerful man in baseball, watched that big Number 32 walking out to the mound and thought, It’s like being in the ballpark with Jesus.

  In all the accolades, there was an inference of aloofness that seemed above it all. By September 1965, it was commonplace to see in Koufax’s public demeanor an elegant but somber omnipotence—a touch of grimness perhaps, accompanied by an occasional grimace at a bad call. People saw him on the cover of Life magazine, tugging with purpose on the bill of his cap, looking up from beneath dark eyebrows at the headline: “The Mostest Pitcher.” They saw no wasted motion or emotion. They saw the look of a smoldering prophet. “The way his eyes seemed to go way back in his head,” as Torborg put it. “Almost like they were burning.”

  Few saw the obvious: how much he loved to play the game. Bob Hendley saw it. From his vantage point at the far end of the Cubs dugout (and the other end of the pitching spectrum) he was able to see what so many others missed. He saw Koufax smile. It was a big smile. He thought Koufax had a playful way about him. “Like he was saying, ‘This is where I am, this is where I belong. I’m untouchable.’ And not just in the baseball sense.”

  The smile, Hendley believed, wasn’t so much a premonition as a statement of character and perspective. He saw in it the sheer joy of being able to compete at your best, an opportunity he had never been afforded. Hendley scared nobody. He inspired confidence only in the opposing team. Checking the lineup card in the Dodger dugout, Dick Tracewski was del
ighted to see Hendley’s name penciled into the ninth place in the batting order. When you come to the ballpark and Bob Hendley is pitching, he thought, it’s nice to be here.

  Hendley was probably the only man in the ballpark who knew his lifetime record against Koufax was 2 and 0. In four tries, Koufax had yet to beat him. The Dodgers looked at the matchup and saw opportunity. Hendley looked at it and saw how much he and Koufax had in common: two lefties with bad elbows living on borrowed time. Mine, he thought, maybe worse ’n his. He knew how easy it would have been for them to inherit each other’s destiny. There was a time the newspapers said Hendley might be the next Warren Spahn. He could flat out bring it. He figured he’d pitch until he was fifty years old. He learned the hard way never to presume where ligaments and sinew are concerned.

  At 8:03 P.M., Vargo yelled, “Play ball.” Koufax stepped to the pitching rubber; Torborg went into his crouch; trainer Bill Buhler moved into position behind the backstop, the forbidden area just behind the home plate gate deemed off-limits by the fire marshals. He had to be discreet. An unctuous usher patrolled this select section of ballpark real estate and was always on the lookout for trespassers. From this strategic outpost, he had a perfect view over Torborg’s shoulder of Koufax’s delivery. He hadn’t won since beating the Pirates 1–0 in ten innings on August 14, his longest dry spell since joining the starting rotation in 1961. (“Sandy to Try Again,” the morning paper moaned.) No doubt, the coaching staff was hoping Buhler’s camera would detect some kinetic flaw to explain why Koufax was making his sixth attempt to win his twenty-second game.

  For Torborg, working one of Koufax’s games was an on-the-job tutorial. On days when he wasn’t pitching, Koufax—he called him “The Great Sandy Koufax!”—would hit fungoes to the young catcher so that he could acclimate himself to pop-ups behind the plate at Dodger Stadium. Koufax could be tough, too. Earlier in the season, he chewed Torborg out on the mound at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. Torborg’s father had come down from Jersey for the game. He could see the back of his son’s neck pinking up and wondered what in hell was going on. Torborg had an arm. He’d gun that ball back to Koufax on the mound, popping up from his crouch after every pitch. Finally, that night in Pittsburgh, Koufax summoned the hyperkinetic young catcher to the mound and said, “Would you stop throwin’ so hard? You’re throwing it harder than I am. Would you please sit down? I like the picture of the catcher being quiet behind the plate, staying down, so everything I see is low.”

  Chastened, Torborg replied, “Well, sure, I can do that.” But it was hard. Staying within himself wasn’t within his personality. So as he settled into his crouch on September 9, Torborg reminded himself to stay down and not to throw the ball back so goddamn hard.

  There’s a special place in heaven reserved for guys who face Koufax in their first major league at-bat. It’s like losing your virginity to the prom queen. Donald Wayne Young, a .267 hitter touted as a defensive outfielder in the Texas League, was in the unenviable position of batting leadoff against Koufax in his first major league game. He took the first pitch to get acclimated—a curve that bounced in the dirt. “Ball one,” Vargo said.

  “Oy!” Joy Gilbert cried.

  “Don’t worry, Mom,” her son Russell said. “It’s just the first pitch.”

  Young was a late-season call-up on the worst team in the majors. He was also overmatched, overwhelmed, and overanxious. He popped out on the second pitch. “That’s one in a row,” Zev Yaroslavsky told his friend Norm, as Greg Figge snapped his first picture. With Koufax on the mound, you never knew when history was in the offing.

  Richard Hume, the young lawyer sitting in a field box Koufax had arranged for him, picked up a three-cent pencil and marked his scorecard: P4. He wasn’t sure why. He had never kept score at a ballgame before.

  Jess Whitehill Jr. and Jack Epstein did the same, Jess aspiring to his father’s calligraphic elegance, Jack trying to ignore his father’s disdain. It was one art form Joe Epstein, scion to a family of concert violinists, did not appreciate. The summer before, he had taken the boys to New York and Paris. Jack, who had two heroes—Koufax and Gandhi—was still sore because he had wanted to see the Mets and the Phillies instead of going to the World’s Fair. Joe said no. That day Jim Bunning pitched a perfect game. Later, in Paris, all Jack wanted to do was read the Herald-Tribune sports section. “Forget Koufax,” Joe said. “We’re going to the Louvre.”

  Glenn Beckert, the second batter, stepped to the plate and took a deep breath, reminding himself of the hitter’s mantra: You gotta get to him early. This was true of all power pitchers but particularly of Koufax. You had to get to him before muscle memory and fatalism kicked in. You were contending with not just his stuff but his aura. You ever try making contact with an aura?

  “Beck” was also a rookie. He had not yet absorbed the obdurate futility peculiar to the Cubs and those who root for them. And, Koufax didn’t seem to have his best stuff. Unlike other pitchers who changed speeds and arm angles, Koufax threw only two pitches and he threw them the same way. It didn’t take long to know whether he was sharp. When he wasn’t, the fastball sailed too high and the curve dropped gently into the strike zone instead of biting through it.

  The second pitch to Beckert was one of those curves, rolling in on him like the tide. He swung with the urgency that comes from knowing you don’t get many such chances and hurled himself down the first base line. Koufax had jammed him with the pitch, and the resulting line drive eluded Jim Gilliam at third base. Beckert knew he had hit it decent. Enough for a double anyway, he thought.

  Torborg leapt from his crouch with a guttural epithet, “Umyaaauuooh!” From where he stood, it looked as if the ball had hit the baseline. Beckert had a better view. As he rounded first, he saw the ball “going down the line with the chalk on the wrong side.” Foul by no more than the width of the ball. Oh shit, he thought, as he returned to the plate. Now he’s got me two strikes, not a place you want to be.

  Beckert struck out rarely. But Koufax got him looking at another overly round curve. Beckert wasn’t dejected by this turn of events. In fact, as he headed back to the dugout he was optimistic about the future, specifically the next eight innings. There’s hope, he thought.

  “There’s two in a row,” Zev Yaroslavsky said.

  As Billy Williams settled into the batter’s box, Beckert’s roommate, Ron Santo, ventured into the on-deck circle. “Hey, Rooms,” Santo said. “What kind of fastball does he have?”

  “So-so,” Beck replied.

  Williams also struck out looking at an oversized curve to retire the side. They’re big, Torborg thought. Too big. They would fool some of the people some of the time but not for nine innings. “He’s struggling,” Torborg murmured to himself, as he headed to the dugout. “Struggling for Sandy.”

  Chapter 5

  THE ACCIDENTAL PITCHER

  IN THE HIGHLY CALIBRATED WORLD of modern athletics, a talent like Sandy Koufax would be harvested, cultivated, and enhanced. His muscle twitch fibers would be counted, his vertical leap measured, his fastball—and perhaps even his snowballs—timed. He would be coddled, wooed, and ruined. His parents would be assailed by men with beepers and stopwatches who can measure everything but serendipity.

  It was Milt Laurie, who delivered papers for the New York Journal-American, who first saw the potential in Koufax’s left arm. And he saw it in the most prosaic way, during infield practice, when Koufax was a senior playing first base for his high school team, just whipping the ball around the horn. Laurie’s sons, Wally and Larry, also played for Lafayette. At their father’s behest, they recruited Koufax to pitch for his sandlot team.

  Milt had been a prospect once, signed by the Boston Braves. Just before spring training, his newspaper delivery truck skidded on a wet New York City street, flipping over and crushing his right side. He saw in Koufax the hopes and ambitions of his own thwarted major league career. Perhaps that is why he saw what no one else did.

  Later, in the recons
tructed history of his fame, headline writers proclaimed Koufax a “Boro Sandlot Star.” In truth, his dispassion was such that his parents didn’t even know he played baseball until his father happened by the field one day. Milt sometimes kept him overnight in order to make sure he got to the field on time. Later, there were some hard feelings. Walt didn’t think Koufax credited his dad enough. Sonny Aspromonte, whose brothers Bob and Ken went on to the major leagues, mentioned it to Koufax one day around the batting cage in Houston. Next thing Sonny reads in the newspaper is a quote from Koufax: “My sandlot manager, Milt Laurie, was the first to recognize my ability.”

  Milt’s team, the Parkviews, competed in the Coney Island Sports League. Wally, Koufax’s first catcher, remembers one kid coming up to the plate in the fog and leaving in a thicker one after the umpire called a strike on a pitch he hadn’t seen—walking away from the plate, never to return. Another kid Koufax hit in the throat. He turned blue. Koufax turned white. “He was a caring kid,” Wally said. “You know, he had feelings.”

  Dick Auletta, whose father, Pat, founded the league, played outfield for the Parkviews. “One time when Koufax pitched, the entire infield and outfield sat down,” he said. “He only walked people or struck them out. He was one strike away from his first no-hitter when the third baseman yells out, ‘C’mon, Sandy, get the no-hitter!’ Sandy didn’t even know he had one. He burned it in there. And Lu Lu DePace, the umpire, goes, ‘Strike three!’ The batter says, ‘Where was it?’ And Lu Lu replies, ‘I don’t know, but it sounded like a strike.’” Not the last time an umpire would employ such logic.

  Nah, Wally says, it wasn’t that way at all. Dolly King was behind the plate. And when the game was over, King turned to him and said, “You were the only thing between me and the hospital.”