Sandy Koufax

by Jane Leavy

  Duke Snider still complains about Koufax hitting him in the rear end during batting practice. Finally, Snider put a batting glove in his hip pocket to protect his hindquarters. “I gave him a target and he hit it,” Duke said. “I said, ‘If you’ve got that kind of control, you’ll win a lot of games.’”

  Carl Erskine tells a story about the late Sam Narron, the Dodger bullpen coach whose thumb Koufax had broken at a previous try-out in Pittsburgh. Sam wanted no part of Koufax. “Sam was a country boy from Carolina. Chewed tobacco and caught pitchers. That was his duty. So he warmed up everybody. That’s all he did. So when he’d get Sandy, Sam would get hit in the chin, in the ankle, in the wrist, in the chest with balls in the dirt. And Sam, as nice a Joe as he was, he hated to warm up Sandy.

  “One day at Ebbets Field, they told Sam, ‘Take Sandy down to the bullpen and give him a good workout.’ So Sam, knowing he was gonna have a tough time, put on all the equipment, the shin guards and the chest protector, mask. He goes down there and the bullpen was very close to the outfield fence. It was out in the open. So Sandy got really warmed up and threw a fastball over Sam’s head and it hit that fence and ricocheted right back and hit him in the back of the head where he had no protection. And Sam, right there, said, ‘You know, I’d rather be home workin’ on the farm than warmin’ up Koufax.’”

  For every tale of his wildness, there is a mitigating view.

  Fresco Thompson, the Dodger scout, told reporters after Koufax’s try-out at Ebbets Field, “Usually, when we use a kid to pitch batting practice, the players are kind of wary. Some don’t even bother to hit against the kids they’re so wild. But they all hit against him. He had good control.”

  As for throwing behind the barracks, everyone did—that’s where the string area was. Joe Pignatano caught him in the spring of 1955. “Everybody said, ‘Sandy’s wild, wild, wild,’” Pignatano said. “He was not that wild. A little high and low in the strike zone. Once they put that tag on you it stays with you. They never stayed with Sandy long enough to give him a chance until later when they had nobody else.”

  Besides, young lefties are supposed to be wild. They are valued because they’re different, rare, scary. “It’s good to be wild when you’re young,” Ernie Banks says.

  But Koufax’s wildness carried no such favor. It penalized him. Now it serves a mythic need and provides cover for those who chose not to use him. How wild Koufax was at a given place on a given day fifty years ago is probably not relevant or ascertainable—even by him. Friends have heard him protest, “My control wasn’t that bad.” Don Zimmer, a teammate from 1955 through 1959, demurs, “The thing that he don’t remember, he didn’t have to go up and hit off himself. The humpties like myself, we did. And we thought he was a little wild and hard.”

  What Koufax needed most, the Dodgers couldn’t or wouldn’t provide: opportunity. In 1955 and 1956, there was logic on Alston’s side—he had an established pitching staff and a team fighting for a championship. Not to mention an annual one-year contract. Taking chances was not in his nature or his interest. No doubt, he resented being saddled with a twenty-four-man roster. Alston needed to win; Koufax needed to pitch. Alston was afraid of inexperience; Koufax was damned by it.

  Sports columnist Jimmy Cannon once described a bonus baby as a “ballplayer who is paid a fortune to watch ballgames.” That pretty much sums up Koufax’s first two seasons in the big leagues. He was the first Dodger player signed under the new bonus system put in place by ownership in 1954. It acted as a deterrent to paying what passed for big money. Even then owners knew they couldn’t trust themselves not to outspend each other in a bidding war. So they instituted a rule that penalized the player by inhibiting his development, the manager by saddling him with unproven talent, and themselves if they paid too much too often.

  Koufax was greeted with the same skepticism that bonus babies encountered throughout the major leagues. The litany of disappointments was long. Paul Pettit, “The Wizard of Whiff,” signed by the Pirates in 1950 for $100,000, the first player to receive a six-figure bonus, won exactly one game in his major league career. Ted Kazanski, signed by the Phillies for $100,000 in 1953, batted .217 in 417 games. Few expected Koufax to be any different.

  The system almost guaranteed it, putting a player at odds with his teammates, his manager, and the culture. To be paid for potential was unthinkable. Nothing in life was guaranteed, much less in baseball. Entitlement was not yet endemic to the American psyche. Players signed under the system not only understood the sensibility, they shared it. They wanted to go to the minors and couldn’t. The only thing worse than not playing was being paid not to play.

  Koufax first met Joe Amalfitano killing time under the stands at Ebbets Field, commiserating over the awkwardness of their position. “These players were all fighting for the extra nickels—now they make thousands a day—and here we come, unproven talent,” said Amalfitano, who signed with the Giants in 1954. “We’re getting money up front and a signing bonus.”

  Frank Torre, a first baseman with the Milwaukee Braves, recalls the attitude in the clubhouse. “We almost laughed at those guys,” he said. “‘Here we go again, here’s another guy who’s going to take one of our spots and never do anything in the big leagues.’ I guess deep down most players resented it because money was so tough to come by. For somebody to earn so much without doing anything, it just wasn’t the way of the times. If somebody comes along and gets twenty thousand you preferred they earned it.”

  Koufax’s $14,000 signing bonus plus $6,000 annual salary sounded pretty good, considering that the payroll for the entire team was $500,000. Erskine remembers Koufax’s discomfort. “I always felt Sandy was self-conscious about taking up a major league spot,” Erskine said. “I think he showed a lot of respect for the players on the team who had made it through the minors.”

  He kept his mouth shut and tried not to get in the way, muttering to himself that if he didn’t learn how to pitch he would be riding that subway he and Wilpon vowed to avoid. Alston used him rarely and trusted him less. Having made twelve appearances as a rookie, he saw his workload increase 33.3 percent in 1956. He pitched a total of 58.2 innings, walking twenty-nine and striking out thirty, with an ERA of 4.91 (compared to 3.77 for the league). He wasn’t so much unproductive, Erskine says, as unpredictable. Rarely was he allowed to work out of a jam. “The only thing that bothered Sandy was when he threw two or three balls, they got somebody up in the bullpen,” said Pignatano. Often, it seemed, Alston had someone warming up in the first inning. Red Adams, who later became the Dodger pitching coach, said, “Walter didn’t have a lot of scout in him.”

  Jackie Robinson, then in his final season, clashed with Alston on many subjects, including Koufax. Villante, who was affiliated with the Dodgers throughout the fifties and sixties, said, “The one thing about Jackie was, no matter who the hell you were, Jackie appreciated talent. If you were good, he was on your side. I think he saw that in Sandy. Added to that was the fact Jackie Robinson did not like Alston.

  “Jackie always thought Alston was dumb. And the very fact that Sandy would every so often show this terrific flash of brilliance and pitch a terrific game and not pitch again for thirty days would add to Jackie saying how dumb this guy was.”

  Eventually, reporters began to question why Koufax was “wasting his life” in idleness. Dick Young of the Daily News referred to him as “the young, ignored lefty.”

  For some reason that escapes me, Alston manifests very little confidence in Koufax. A pitching pinch has to develop before Walt uses the kid. Then, it seems, Sandy must pitch a shutout or the bullpen is working full force and the kid will be yanked at the first long foul ball…. Koufax started in St. Louis the other night. He was leading, 3–1, in the fourth when he walked the leadoff man and threw two balls to the next hitter. Carl Erskine, who had been warming up since the first inning, relieved. Erskine gave up seven hits in four innings. Koufax had given three hits in three innings. After the game, Alston s
aid Koufax didn’t have good stuff, but Erskine did.

  That winter, the Dodgers sent him to Puerto Rico to play winter ball. There were cigarettes to bum and women to impress and older teammates to shore up his confidence. He spent time with outfielder Jim Landis and his bride, who fed him egg salad, the only thing she knew how to make. Tim Thompson, his catcher, nourished his self-esteem. By then, Koufax’s reputation had become a self-fulfilling prophecy. “When we first got down there, he was wild,” Thompson said. “Most of his trouble, though, was that he didn’t believe he could throw strikes. So many people said he couldn’t do it that he believed it. We didn’t change anything. We more or less talked to him. ‘Don’t believe what people tell you.’

  “The reputation followed him and the umps went along. He could throw the ball close to the plate and they’d call it a ball because the umpire expected him to throw balls. I think they squeezed him.”

  One night, in an effort to relax him, Thompson suggested a new approach, a spitter. “He said, ‘What’s that?’ I said, ‘You put a little saliva on your finger and throw a spitter.’

  “So anyway, I said to Sandy, ‘When I give you the sign, you go throw the spitter.’ He turned his back to me. I saw his head go down toward his glove. I thought, ‘What the devil is he doing?’ So he turned around and threw the ball and the saliva flew right off the ball all the way in and the umpire said, ‘What’s that?’ I said, ‘Sandy, I didn’t say spit all through your hands. Just moisten your fingers.’

  “He started laughing about it. We didn’t throw any more spitters. Probably the only one he ever tried.”

  Thompson thought he’d be fine in 1957. But the season began just as the previous one ended—with perplexing inactivity. What was understandable on Alston’s part in 1955 and 1956 was inexplicable in 1957. The Dodgers were going nowhere—except west. And he was pitching well. On May 15, the day he became eligible to be sent down to the minor leagues, Tommy Holmes of the Herald Tribune wrote, “There’s not a chance. He has been getting his good stuff over the plate this spring.”

  The next day, Alston gave him a chance to justify his place on the major league roster—his second start of the season. Facing the Cubs at Wrigley Field, he struck out thirteen and won 3–2. It was his first complete game in two years. For the next two weeks, and for the first time in his career, he was a member of the starting rotation. He won two of the next four games he pitched. On June 4, he faced the Cubs again, this time in New York on Better Brooklyn Night. It marked Joe Pignatano’s first major league appearance behind the plate. Roy Campanella came out of the game after being hit by a pitch. Rube Walker, his backup, also was injured. Frank Dascoli was the home plate umpire. “Sandy threw a pitch right down the damn middle of the plate,” Pignatano said. “He called it a ball. I said, ‘How the hell did you miss that? It was pecker-high and right down the middle.’ He came in front of the plate, and said, ‘Son, I have never missed a pitch in my life.’ I said, ‘You’re full of shit.’”

  Then he realized there was no one else on the bench who could catch, and shut his mouth. But his opinion never changed. “Anything close, they didn’t give it to him. They gave it to the hitter until he became a star.”

  Koufax had a no-hitter into the sixth inning that night. His twelve strikeouts gave him a total of fifty-nine in the 492?3 innings he had pitched—most in the National League. His ERA was 2.90, twelfth in the league. He didn’t get another start for forty-five days.

  A small item buried in the Sporting News alluded to “a lame arm” and “muscle soreness,” for which doctors prescribed rest. He got plenty. He was completely idle for twenty-three days. Between June 5 and July 19, he made three brief appearances in relief. When he finally made his next start, on July 19, he struck out eleven in seven innings but got no decision.

  By this time, even those who had doubted him early were perplexed. Pee Wee Reese, The Captain, confronted Alston about it. “They had other pitchers who were just as wild but it didn’t seem Alston wanted to pitch Sandy,” he said in a letter written shortly before his death. “But I told Alston he’s got to give the guy a shot with an arm like that even if he throws the ball over the damn backstop. I didn’t care just as long as I didn’t have to hit against him.”

  Danny Ozark, who had been in the Dodger system since 1942 and was a member of Alston’s coaching staff from 1965 through 1972, said, “Somewhere along the line someone had to be told, ‘Don’t pitch this guy.’ You can smell a fish here. I know he—Sandy—was upset. He’s probably still upset. They could have given him a chance to pitch, especially in ’57. They could have pitched him every fifth day. He should have pitched. They were going nowhere. He could have gotten twenty to twenty-five starts. He probably would have been a better pitcher in 1959 and ’60. Somebody upstairs had a reason for this. It has to go back to the g.m.”

  These days, former general manager Buzzie Bavasi sits atop a mountain in La Jolla in retirement. The Pacific lies outside his picture window. But the easy chair he favors faces the interior of a study lined with baseball books and photos, the accumulation of fifty years in the game. “I can’t believe that,” he said, when asked about Koufax’s numbers. “I can’t believe he went two months without pitching. In ’57, who the hell did we have?”

  Carl Erskine and Sal Maglie were injured. Don Newcombe and Roger Craig lost more than they won. Don Drysdale was the ace. Koufax was his forgotten foil. Later, they would come to be seen as linguistically inseparable—Koufax and Drysdale. But, in the early years, their lives and careers couldn’t have been more divergent. Drysdale was larger than life, the kind of guy sportswriters always referred to as “strapping.” Koufax was bigger than he seemed. Drysdale, the bland California blond, was born and raised to be what he became. Tall, dark, and Semitic, Koufax became the one thing no one, including himself, expected him to be. By 1957, Drysdale was fulfilling his promise; pitching regularly, he won seventeen games. Koufax was the Great (Unfulfilled) Jewish Hope. “The Great Unwanted” is how he described himself in his autobiography.

  Bavasi was especially close to Donald, as he still refers to him. Reaching now for the Baseball Encyclopedia, he scanned the small print of Koufax’s lifetime record for the 1957 statistics. “Well, yeah, right,” he said. “He pitched one hundred four innings, only gave up eighty-three hits, struck out one hundred twenty-two. That’s not too bad. If I would have known that, he would have been pitching. Fifty-seven, of course, we had so many things on our mind.”

  Even now, former Dodger executives cannot bring themselves to use the word “betrayal” in the same sentence with “Brooklyn.” In 1956, the last of the trolleys went out of service. The Dodgers played seven “home” games across the Hudson River in Jersey City and eight more in 1957. Little by little, Walter O’Malley loosened the ties that bound the Bums to Brooklyn, selling off the property on which Ebbets Field stood to a real estate magnate and then exchanging the Dodgers’ Fort Worth Texas League team for Chicago’s Pacific Coast League Angels and L.A.’s Wrigley Field. The handwriting was not just on the outfield wall, it was in all the papers. In the New York Daily News, Dick Young wrote: “Inching their way westward, the Dodgers…”

  Koufax was the last man to pitch for the Brooklyn Dodgers, throwing an inning of relief in the final desultory loss of the 1957 season. His record after three years in Brooklyn: nine wins and ten losses.

  When the Dodgers left Brooklyn it marked not just the end of an era but the end of a way of life. The day the Los Angeles City Council approved the deal to bring the Dodgers to California, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that New York City’s population had decreased by 96,486. Cities were becoming inner cities. Everyone who could was getting out. In July, the Giants had announced their intention to move to San Francisco. In September, Jack Kerouac published his ode to mobility, On the Road. Dislocation was the new national pastime, a restlessness facilitated by technology. The country was souped-up, tail-finned, and grilled. Chrysler debuted a high-end sedan with a 162?3
rpm hi-fi built into the dash. Ford marketed prudence, introducing a safety package on some of its ’57 models (seat belts, padded dash, safety door latches). It didn’t sell. America was going places and didn’t want to be constrained.

  The first week of October, the Soviet Union launched the first Sputnik satellite, initiating the space race. The sky was no longer the limit. On October 7, the L.A. City Council awarded the Dodgers 315 acres of land on which to build their gleaming new stadium in exchange for the Angels’ old ballpark. O’Malley wired the mayor: “Get the wheelbarrow and shovel. I’ll see you at Chavez Ravine.”

  What Paul Zimmerman described in the Los Angeles Times as “a forbidding, hilly, useless piece of real estate” had once been home to many Mexican-American families. Michael Levett, then an impassioned thirteen-year-old baseball fan with liberal Jewish parents, remembers watching on television as one last family was forcibly removed by police. “It was so indelibly imprinted on my mind, I remember the name of the family, the Arechigas,” he said. “My family was appalled.” (Later, baseball historian Michael Gershman would discover that the family was a front for groups filing taxpayer lawsuits.) Levett was ambivalent for other reasons. He lived only four blocks from the minor league ballpark that was home to the Hollywood Stars. A kid with moxie could always talk his way into the game, free. All he had to do was get a willing adult to pass as his mother or father. That was okay with Levett’s parents. They never even thought to warn him about talking to strangers.

  The arrival of major league baseball inaugurated a new star system. The first game was played at the Los Angeles Coliseum on April 18 before 78,672 fans, including Gene Autry, Nat “King” Cole, John Ford, “Tennessee” Ernie Ford, Georgie Jessel, Danny Kaye, Burt Lancaster, Jack Lemmon, Gregory Peck, Buddy Rogers, Danny Thomas, and Alfred Hitchcock, who took up a seat and a half. Ray Bolger and his wife wore Army surplus helmets, his and her “Los Angeles Dodger beanball protectors.” The players arrived in a caravan of shiny, new convertibles like new age Roman conquerors. Koufax and Pignatano brought up the rear.