Sandy Koufax

by Jane Leavy

  Baseball has always been a numbers game. Owners routinely depreciated the value of their players as their bodies deteriorated. When clubs were no longer able to write them off as tax losses, they simply wrote them off. There was safety in the sheer number of people who wanted to play baseball. Players were fungible. “Just send ’em back to the farm or wherever they came from and bring up a new one,” Jobe said.

  “If a hundred guys went down with bad arms, you signed another one hundred,” Koufax says. “It was basically survival of the fittest. The guys who could do that kept going. We didn’t know any better and had some pride in running out there as often as you could.”

  So when fans clustered around Koufax at the fifteenth hole of Gibson’s tournament wanted to know his definition of a competitor, he didn’t hesitate. “It’s the guy who keeps coming back. It’s the difference between the grass and an oak tree. The oak tree, you cut it down, that’s it, it dies. You cut the grass, it just keeps coming back.”

  The Dodgers opened the 1965 season with worry. Doubt was compounded by panic when Tommy Davis, the former National League batting champion, fractured his ankle in May. Maury Wills’s invaluable legs began to hemorrhage a month later. Drysdale developed shingles. Koufax kept throwing. He was an improbable constant in a tremulous world.

  There was a sense that summer, in the clubhouse and the country, that events were careening out of control. America was on the precipice of something but no one was sure exactly what. Andy Warhol turned Brillo Pads into art. Martin Luther King won the Nobel Peace Prize. Malcolm X was assassinated. The Astrodome opened in Houston, making the world (but not players) safe for pretend grass. (Asked his opinion, Tug McGraw, of the Mets, replied: “I don’t know. I never smoked the stuff.”) Casey Stengel bade farewell to Shea Stadium. Branch Rickey died the day A Charlie Brown Christmas debuted. And Barry McGuire, a one-hit wonder, topped the pop charts with “Eve of Destruction.”

  There was civil war in the Dominican Republic and something close to it in Watts, the black neighborhood of L.A. known as South Central. On August 6, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act. Five days later, at 7:05 P.M., a young black man named Marquette Frye was arrested for drunk driving by a white L.A.P.D. policeman and a riot began. By the time it ended six days later, thirty-four people were dead. The National Guard arrived on Friday, the thirteenth, and King five days after that. He was shouted down and sent packing by rioters weary of his message of passive resistance.

  On August 14, the night a citywide curfew was imposed, Koufax won his twenty-first game—his twenty-ninth start of the season. The Dodgers were in first place, two and a half games ahead of the Braves. Los Angeles was in flames. Residents of Beverly Hills began arming themselves. Rioting spread south to San Diego and north to San Francisco. “It was the first time I began to pick up a paper and skip the sports section altogether,” Roseboro said. “Much of the time I was on the field I had to keep reminding myself that baseball was important. I’d wake up in the morning and say to myself, ‘Why are they playing games? Why can’t we do something about Watts and the people who live there?’”

  In consideration of the riots, Dodger management offered season ticket holders an opportunity to exchange their seats for the September 9 game against the Chicago Cubs. Koufax wouldn’t win again until then.

  It was a mean, raw time, punctuated by an ugly brawl on the field in San Francisco on August 22, when Juan Marichal hit Roseboro over the head with a bat. The Dodgers, who were in first place with a half-game lead over the Braves and the Giants, went into a collective swoon; the Giants won fourteen straight. On September 16, there were sixteen games left in the season and the Dodgers were struggling to stay in third place, four and a half games behind the Giants. When the players arrived at Wrigley Field that morning, there was a sign-up sheet for anyone wanting to purchase world series tickets as guests of the host American and National League cities. Wally Moon, the player representative, tore it up, saying, “We won’t need these.”

  Armed with that vote of confidence, Claude Osteen held the Cubs to five hits. It was a dour day in a very Windy City and when Osteen tired in the ninth, walking Billy Williams, only 550 paying customers saw Koufax come out of the bullpen to save the game. It was his second relief appearance of the season. “We were all upset at Walter Alston for using him,” Tracewski said.

  The Dodgers won fifteen of their last sixteen games—three of them Koufax shutouts. On September 18, he beat the Cardinals, 1–0. A week later, he beat them again, 2–0, breaking Bob Feller’s 1946 record for most strikeouts in a season. Feller was a last-minute no-show and missed the moment when Mike Shannon proudly became Koufax’s 349th victim.

  “Uecker was hitting in front of me,” Shannon said. “And he had two strikes on him and he’s trying to do anything but strike out. He’s taking half swings and stuff. So finally he strikes out. So as he walks by me, he says, ‘Okay, it’s your turn, big boy.’ And I said, ‘Well, I’m going down fighting. I’m not going down like you did.’ So I went up there and I took my strikeout and I got a standing ovation from thirty thousand people at Chavez Ravine and I tipped my cap.”

  Collier reported the next day: “Koufax and Feller have met two or three times socially. A person present at one of the meetings says Feller, a man never noted for tact or diplomacy, embarrassed Koufax by contending that the hitters were better in his day than they are now…. When Feller set his record in 1946, many of the established major league hitters had not yet returned from the war and those who had were below form as a result of their diamond layoffs.”

  Slightly mellowed forty years later, Feller commented: “I’ll say only this. He is the best pitcher I ever saw in my lifetime.”

  The second-to-last game of the regular season was broadcast nationally from Dodger Stadium. Four hundred and twenty miles north in San Francisco, the Giants were facing the Reds. If the Giants won and the Dodgers lost, a play-off would decide the pennant. Again, Koufax pitched on two days’ rest. Alston was hesitant to start him. Doc Anderson prevailed upon him in a closed-door meeting prior to the game to allow Koufax to pitch.

  The Dodgers, the weakest-hitting championship team in the modern era, scored three runs—two on bases-loaded walks and another on a wild pitch. Koufax allowed one run on four hits, striking out thirteen, and the Dodgers won their most improbable pennant. “I’ve never seen him that tired before,” Roseboro said. “He pitched the last four innings on nothing but guts.”

  Sometime in August, Collier wasn’t sure exactly when, Koufax asked him to hang around the locker room after the other reporters had gone. “We went into the clubhouse lunchroom at the front end of the Dodger clubhouse,” Collier said. “He says, ‘I made a very important decision tonight. Next year is going to be my last.’ I said, ‘Oh, my God, that’s going to be a helluva story.’ He said, ‘If you won’t tell anybody, I won’t.’”

  Collier kept Koufax’s confidence, sitting on the biggest story of his career for more than a year. He wrote a draft of the piece and locked it away in his desk. But he saw what the medicine was doing to Koufax. “Because of the Bute,” Collier said, “he had to eat four or five meals a day just to keep his stomach from rotting out. He took codeine before he pitched. Because of the codeine, it affected his reaction time. He was afraid sooner or later someone was going to hit him in the head with a line drive.”

  In years to come, many young pitchers would try to emulate Koufax’s grand overhand motion, how his arm looked like the cathedral at Chartres rising out of the mist. They quickly understood why it hurt as it did. Among them was thirteen-year-old Al Meyers, who took Koufax’s autobiography out of the library in hopes of mastering the curve, and never returned it. He never threw the curve, either. It hurt too much.

  By the seventeenth hole at Shadow Ridge, the gallery following Koufax had thinned to a hardy scrum, Meyers and two oily-looking guys lugging equipment bags full of athletic memorabilia not yet signed. His surgically repaired knee was beginning to bother h
im and he was looking forward to refreshments at the nineteenth hole. On the last tee, Meyers finally summoned the courage to ask Koufax for an autograph for his dad.

  Having signed every ball and magazine cover proffered, Koufax was about to sign his scorecard when he noticed one of the autograph merchants arming local boys with cases of balls, promising they could keep one for every three they got signed. “You’re a professional,” Koufax said to the bleach-blond stalker. “You changed your clothes. You didn’t have a cane before.”

  “You smartin’ off at me?” the stalker replied, shaking his cane for effect. “You want to see my medical records?”

  Koufax limped off down the fairway rather than lose his temper. Meyers was glad he had never returned the book to the library.

  Chapter 16

  THE SEVENTH INNING

  IN THEIR RESPECTIVE DUGOUTS, benchwarmers John Kennedy and Joey Amalfitano contemplated the immediate future. “JK,” as he was known by his teammates, was a late-inning defensive replacement for Junior Gilliam at third base. Kennedy’s sole reason for being on the roster was to provide a defensive edge, to help maintain an invariably slim lead. Oh, my God, I’ve gotta go in there and he’s got a perfect game going, he thought. Am I gonna screw this thing up for him?

  Across the field, Joey A. was hoping for the chance. He was described in Chicago’s newspapers as the Cubs’ “best emergency swinger.” Twice before he’d come to bat in the ninth inning of a no-hit game. Twice he had done nothing to spoil the occasion. Twice before this season, he had successfully pinch-hit against Koufax. He knew he would hit in the ninth.

  Koufax always wanted to pitch a perfect game. But perfection is relative. If he was working on a ten-hitter, perfection meant not giving up the eleventh hit. If he surrendered two first-inning home runs as he had earlier in the year in Pittsburgh, perfection meant no more scoring. Torborg was catching that night, too. Alston blamed him for the two home runs. He was convinced that the tendons in Torborg’s arm wiggled when he called for a curve and ordered the young catcher to change into one of Koufax’s atomic-balmed sweatshirts. It felt like he was being electrocuted. Torborg told himself he’d better learn to do things right or be burnt alive.

  Now, Koufax needed only nine more outs for a perfect perfect game. The stadium was amped; Torborg was gunned up; Zev Yaroslavsky was still counting. Some of his neighbors were counting with him. As Don Young came to bat in the top of the seventh inning, Torborg promised himself nothing was going to happen around the plate to cost Koufax his chance at perfection.

  The game was only one hour and eleven minutes old. Quick, Danny Ozark thought, as he returned to the first base coaching box. Everybody’s swinging. Nobody’s walking nobody.

  In Palo Alto, Bliss Carnochan was grateful for the game’s exquisite economy—he might hear the whole thing without resorting to the car radio. Home in bed in Los Angeles, Garry Jones was fighting to stay awake long enough to hear it.

  Koufax threw one nervous pitch that sailed past Young and went all the way to the backstop, betraying his anxiety; when the next batter, Beckert, hit a timid fly ball to right, fans gasped, betraying theirs.

  “Two down, Billy Williams coming up,” Doggett said calmly. “He has struck out twice.”

  Torborg called for a curve and then another one. Both were low, the first bouncing in the dirt. When a 2-and-0 fastball sailed high, Doggett said, “Koufax is really in the hole now.” The next two pitches were fastballs right down the middle of the plate; cripples, pitchers call them. Williams allowed one to go by and fouled off another. The count was full.

  You don’t get to Cooperstown by just standing there. Williams swung late at a third calling-card fastball, flying tepidly to left for the final out. “Twenty-one,” Yaroslavsky said, exhaling.

  Well, now, maybe there’s a chance, Koufax thought as he left the field.

  It was the first time he had gone this deep into a no-hitter without being reminded of it. Sometimes, an opposing coach will mention it, as Solly Hemus did (every chance he got) during the 1962 game against the Mets. Sometimes, a guy will make a rookie mistake, as Dick Calmus had when he stood up in the dugout to applaud in 1963 and Leo Durocher told him to sit down and shuddup. Sometimes, a pitcher will break the silence himself. Okay, let’s knock this off, I know what’s going on. Koufax didn’t do that. And no one said a word to him about it. No one talked to him at all.

  No one said anything to Hendley either. It wasn’t a matter of superstition. What was there to say? He was pitching a no-hitter and losing 1–0. He was vying not just with Koufax but with the memory of his former self. In 1961, he was a fireballing young lefty, “a big old country boy who could just turn it loose.” The previous season in Triple A, he won sixteen games, including the final game of the Little World Series. He was sure his time had come. He spent the off-season in the Army at Fort Knox and reported late to the Braves’ spring training camp. His first day on the mound, he felt something pop in his elbow. “Like a string snapped,” he would recall. “I just went too quick. I was not ready. We did a lot of strength things in the Army, pull-up types of things. Probably had something to do with it. The next day was the real problem because my elbow was like a balloon. They sent me to the team doctor in Milwaukee. He said it was a strain and with time it would heal.”

  By the time he was called up to the majors in June 1961, he was a completely different pitcher. He tried not to think about the fastball he once had, the curve he once threw. He came up with a compensating repertoire: a slider, a slip pitch, a knuckle curve. He knew all too well what it meant to stay within himself. He had adjusted.

  As he took his warm-up pitches, Helen Dell, the Dodger Stadium organist, tried to interest Dodger fans in the Mexican Hat Dance. But they were thinking about only one thing: the first potential double no-hitter since 1917, when “Hippo” Vaughn of the Cubs and Fred Toney of the Reds each pitched nine innings of no-hit ball. “Bob, who had to go out to Salt Lake City in midseason to try to regain his pitching form, apparently found it out there,” Doggett said. “Hendley’s pitching one of the finest games we’ve ever seen him pitch against the Dodgers, and he’s pitched some good ones, especially when he was with Milwaukee.”

  He could pitch a no-hitter and lose, Barry Pinsky thought.

  Once before, when he was with the Braves, Hendley had taken a no-hitter this far into the night. In the ninth inning, someone hit a slow roller to Frank Bolling at second, who threw the ball away. Then Curt Flood hit a triple. Hendley gave up one earned run and won 9–3. Everyone in Dodger Stadium was rooting for him to get this no-hitter—including Walter O’Malley. Now that his boys had a run, it was okay to cheer for baseball.

  There were two outs in the bottom of the seventh when Lou Johnson came to the plate, not sure what to look for. It wasn’t this. Hendley threw him a letup of an off-speed slip pitch. Johnson reached out and poked the ball toward right field, a ball so poorly hit it seemed in slow motion. Hendley watched aghast as it landed just beyond the second baseman, Beckert, and just out of reach of Banks at first. The ball barely carried to the outfield grass, hit in fair territory, and trickled across the foul line. By the time Banks retrieved it, Johnson was at second.

  It was variously described as a bloop, a flare, a humpbacked liner, just one of those things. “A duck fart,” Krug’s friend Gary Adams called it. In the scorecard, it was a double. Hendley allowed himself a moment of disappointment, backing off the mound, pausing a few extra seconds between pitches, trying to put the what-if behind him. The no-hitter’s gone, he told himself. I can’t bring it back. I can only face what’s in front of me.

  Which was: Johnson on second with Fairly at the plate, the Cubs down by a run. What was required was a kind of tunnel vision that admitted neither the past nor the future. He had to ignore the voice inside telling him it was Koufax’s night. But it was hard and he fell behind in the count, three balls and one strike. He reminded himself to do his job, stay in the present, prevent the run from scor
ing.

  He got Fairly to bounce out to short—a routine play that was for him anything but routine. History and Sweet Lou were left stranded at second base.

  Chapter 17

  KING OF THE JEWS

  ZABAR’S, THE FOOD EMPORIUM ON MANHATTAN’S WEST SIDE, isn’t just a delicatessen. It is a Jewish institution, a locus of ethnic tastes and smells, aspirations and celebrations that can be traced back to King David. Smoked salmon (fifteen varieties, not including seasonal designer salmons) and creamed herring! Bagels and bialys! And on Friday nights fresh-baked challah.

  The aisles at Zabar’s are always crowded before sundown on Friday like a Reform synagogue on the High Holidays. Observant Jews hurrying home for Sabbath vie for the counterman’s attention. One such Friday evening, George Blumenthal, a New Yorker who made his fortune early in the cellular phone revolution, edged his way through the crowd, a cardboard box from Air Express under his arm. Inside was Sandy Koufax’s 1955 rookie jersey: road gray, “Hall of Fame Flannel,” size 44, with the name Koufax stitched in red script. Just below the tail of the “s” on Dodgers was an inky inscription: “My first uniform, 1955, Sandy Koufax, 11/22/89.”

  Blumenthal, chairman of NTL Inc., purchased it at auction for $25,000. He is a fan, certainly, the son of Holocaust survivors. He grew. up in Cleveland playing bad baseball. He owns Hank Greenberg’s rookie jersey and Shawn Green’s, too. For him, Koufax’s uniform was no mere totem. It was an investment in the preservation of his faith. He would use it as a fund-raising tool in a campaign to build the Center for Jewish History.

  “So, I’m in Zabar’s,” Blumenthal said. “I give this woman a Sandy Koufax ball. Big deal, these things go for seventy-five dollars. I’ve got tons of them. I give ’em away. A fella standing next to me says, ‘Sandy Koufax? Sandy Koufax!’ He starts talking about Koufax. I said, ‘Wait a second, I have Sandy Koufax’s uniform right here. Let me take a picture of you.’ These people are levitating. This man is so symbolic.