by Jane Leavy
Since his interest was in negotiating for individual rights, Miller was only too happy to agree and insisted that ownership draft the language. “Lee MacPhail, who was doing most of the writing, came in with language that prevented another Koufax and Drysdale. It said nothing about what the clubs were prevented from doing. I said, ‘We agree in principle with what you are saying but what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.’ With no argument and no delay, they agreed to language that said, ‘And no club shall have the right to act in conjunction with any other club.’”
That language would come back to haunt them. By 1985, Miller and the Players Association had revolutionized not only how players were paid but how professional athletes were perceived. The owners, under the leadership of commissioner Peter V. Ueberroth, tired of consistent defeats at the bargaining table and escalating salaries, agreed among themselves not to sign any free agents. In legal terms, that’s called collusion. Two arbitrators ruled that ownership had violated the provision they had sought in the 1976 Basic Agreement. Settlement talks ensued. As an indirect result of their abiding fear of Koufax and Drysdale, the owners agreed in 1985 to pay $280 million to players disadvantaged by the collusion. “We have Koufax and Drysdale and Bobby Bragan’s imaginary infield to thank,” Miller said.
By then, the Great Holdout was an asterisk in the avalanche of money and benefits coming down on players’ heads. Koufax and Drysdale, needing to make a living, had begun second careers. Both became sports broadcasters. Drysdale thrived in the public role, filling the small screen with his big personality. Koufax shriveled when the red light came on.
Drysdale remarried and had a new family with Anne Meyers, the former UCLA basketball star. When Koufax visited their ranch for a week in the early 1990s, she was surprised at how well they got along, given everything she had heard and read. “It was always ‘Don and Koufax didn’t get along.’ The media played them against each other. All those guys did was laugh. They had such a special connection.”
Koufax is not, as many former teammates believe, the godfather of Drysdale’s children. But they do call him Koo-foo, the name their father gave him. Drysdale died of a heart attack in 1993 at the age of fifty-six, alone in a hotel room in Montreal, where he had gone to broadcast a Dodger game. By then, Koufax had left television, as well as his career as an itinerant pitching coach in the Dodgers’ minor league system. When asked years later why he had quit TV, Koufax replied, “I didn’t want to die in a cheap motel.”
Chapter 20
THE NINTH INNING
FOR ONCE, NO ONE TRIED TO BEAT THE TRAFFIC. Ears pressed to transistor radios, thirty thousand static souls listened to Scully render the events unfolding before them. His words punctuated a vast communal hush, reaching into every part of the city and the stadium. He was no longer simply the voice of the Dodgers. He was the narrator of a collective aspiration.
Three times in his sensational career has Sandy Koufax walked out to the mound to pitch a fateful ninth where he turned in a no-hitter. But tonight, September the ninth, nineteen hundred and sixty-five, he made the toughest walk of his career, I’m sure, because through eight innings he has pitched a perfect game. He has struck out eleven, he has retired twenty-four consecutive batters, and the first man he will look at is catcher Chris Krug.
Dusting off home plate, Ed Vargo looked up at the scoreboard for the first time, and murmured to himself, “Whew, we got something going here.” Koufax conferred with Dick Tracewski on the infield grass between the mound and second base and confided in his roommate, “I could do this.”
Scully was at Ebbets Field the day Koufax tried out, when he was a raw young kid without a trucker’s tan and no idea how to pitch. As Koufax stepped to the rubber in search of his fourth no-hitter, Scully took a moment to call downstairs to the truck and tell the radio technicians to turn on the tape recorder. Whenever a pitcher had a chance for a no-hitter, be it a Dodger or a member of the visiting club, Scully would have the final inning recorded just in case. I’ve already done three for him, Scully thought. What can I do to make this a little extra special?
Baseball is distinguished by its lack of temporal imperatives. Nine innings take what they take. Scully intuitively understood that locating the game in time would attest to its timelessness. Always, he gave the date. This time, he decided to give the time on the clock, too, so that Koufax would remember the exact moment he made history.
Krug was the batter Torborg feared most—“a big right-handed batter,” Scully noted—“flied out to center, grounded to short.” Krug had motive and now the opportunity to atone for the run he had allowed. But not for long. Quickly, too quickly—no one had ever seen Koufax throw this hard—he found himself behind in the count, 0 and 2.
You can almost taste the pressure now. Koufax lifted his cap, ran his fingers through his black hair, then pulled the cap back down, clutching at the bill. Krug must feel it, too, as he backs out, heaves a sigh, took off his helmet, put it back on, and steps back up to the plate.
Krug restrained himself long enough to allow Vargo to call the next pitch a ball. But in the Canoga section of Los Angeles, eleven-year-old Kevin Kennedy could restrain himself no more. He slipped out of bed and went to find his father, hoping that parental reprobation would be subverted by the news he brought: “It’s finally happening, Sandy’s throwing a perfect game.”
One and two, the count on Chris Krug. It is 9:41 P.M. on September ninth, the one-two pitch on the way.
As Krug gamely fouled off one pitch and then another, Kennedy’s father joined his son on the edge of the bed for the denouement.
The Dodgers defensively, in this spine-tingling moment: Sandy Koufax, and Jeff Torborg; and the boys who will try to stop anything hit their way, Wes Parker, Dick Tracewski, Maury Wills, John Kennedy, and the outfield of Lou Johnson, Willie Davis, and Ron Fairly. There are 29,000 people in the ballpark and a million butterflies.
No one wanted to touch the ball. No one wanted to make a mistake. Everyone was implicated in the result. In the Dodger dugout, the tension was compounded by the unstated fact of Koufax’s fragility. Koufax may not have been thinking, This is it, it’s almost over, but others were. Nate Oliver, who had the locker beside his, knew, the arm was getting worse. Who could say if Koufax would ever get this chance again?
Koufax into the windup. Fastball fouled back and out of play. In the Dodger dugout, Al Ferrara gets up and walks down near the runway. And it begins to be tough to be a teammate and sit in the dugout and have to watch.
Tougher still to be Gary Adams, Krug’s best friend. When the next pitch arrived wide of the plate, extending the drama and the count to 2 and 2, Krug and Vargo were inundated with a cacophony of boos. Scully scolded the crowd for calling pitches with their hearts. It was the loudest Dodger crowd ever, louder, Steve Soboroff thought, than the Coliseum filled to 100,000 capacity—too loud for him to hear Scully. He felt almost as if he were missing something by being there in person. Determined to hear, Rich Procter pressed his nine-dollar transistor to his ear, the volume obliterating the sense of being in his own body. It felt like he was in the game.
Adams held his breath as Koufax delivered yet another fastball, the one he knew Krug was hoping for. Like so many batters before and after him, Krug had the sensation that the pitch was an offering. It was there for him. It looked like a big balloon, in and down, just where he liked it. He took what felt like the best swing of his career. He thought he was on it.
Fastball got him swinging! Sandy Koufax has struck out twelve. He is two outs away from a perfect game.
“Twenty-five,” Zev Yaroslavsky said.
Adams wondered what in God’s name to say to Krug. Amalfitano, waiting on deck to pinch-hit for Kessinger, had as good an answer as any: “What the hell? He’s famous.”
Three times this season, he had pinch-hit against Koufax, getting on base twice. “He hit my bat two times,” Amalfitano liked to say. He had been replaying those at-bats since the seventh inning,
trying to outthink Koufax. “He knows I’m a first-ball, fastball hitter,” Amalfitano reminded himself. “First pitch gotta be a curveball.”
A 100-mph fastball refuted that logic. “That ball sounded inside,” Amalfitano told Vargo and the umpire laughed. “Holy go to hell, Eddie, this guy is really throwing the damn ball.”
Watching from the sanctuary of the dugout, Kessinger thought: If he doesn’t have it tonight, I ain’t playing next time.
Koufax could win without his curve if he had to; with it, he rarely lost at all. Sometimes in the late innings he didn’t bother throwing it. When people asked why, he would reply, “Because I didn’t have to.” Now Torborg called for the curve. But even as he gave the sign, he regretted it. If he loses his perfect game ’cause I made a dumb call…
The thought trailed off as Amalfitano’s swing produced a foul in the dirt. Torborg pounced on it like a writer on a perfect simile.
And Amalfitano walks away, and shakes himself a little bit and swings the bat. And Koufax with a new ball takes a hitch at his belt and walks behind the mound. I would think that the mound at Dodger Stadium right now is the loneliest place in the world.
Resolutely, Joey A. stepped back up to the plate. The count was 0 and 2. He was not optimistic. “Here comes the third pitch. I swing. I go after it. It was a low pitch but it had enough zip on it that it moved up and went away from me.”
“Strike three!” Vargo said.
He is one out away from the promised land!
“Twenty-six,” Yaroslavsky said.
As Amalfitano retreated to the dugout, Harvey Kuenn, who had come out on deck to pinch-hit for Hendley, asked, “How’s he throwing, Joe?”
“You better be ready because it’s getting up there real good,” Amalfitano replied.
“Wait for me,” Kuenn said. “I’ll be right back.”
Kuenn was a lifetime .300 hitter, the 1959 American League batting champion, a man with nearly 7,000 major league at-bats. What are the odds that twice he would be the last man to face Sandy Koufax in the ninth inning of a no-hit game? And that twice Amalfitano would bat ahead of him in the inning? “Harvey, you’re back,” Torborg started to say, and then thought better of it.
The time on the scoreboard is 9:44, the date, September the ninth, 1965. And Koufax working on veteran Harvey Kuenn.
Kuenn took the first pitch, a fastball, for strike one. Scully pointed out that Koufax had struck out five consecutive batters. “A fact that has gone unnoticed.” The next ball was thrown so hard and soared so high it nearly yanked Torborg’s shoulder from its socket. He couldn’t feel the bones inside his mitt at all.
He really forced that one. That’s only the second time tonight where I have had the feeling that Sandy threw instead of pitched, trying to get that little extra. And that time, he tried so hard his hat fell off. He took an extremely long stride toward the plate and Torborg had to go up to get it.
Hendley watched, passively, from the end of the Cubs’ bench, keeping his thoughts to himself; his hopes were long gone. Now his teammates joined him on the dugout steps, in solidarity and awe. They saw what he saw: “A guy literally coming out from under his hat, just blowing people away.”
Another high fastball gave Kuenn a momentary reprieve, 2 and 1.
You can’t blame a man for pushing just a little bit now. Sandy backs off, mops his forehead, runs his left index finger along his forehead, dries it off on his left pants leg, all the while Kuenn just waiting. Here’s the pitch.
Swung on and missed! “By a foot!” Torborg estimated. It was the greatest margin of error he had ever seen on a major league baseball field. As he threw the ball back to Koufax (remembering not to throw too hard), he thought back to the first inning. The game paralleled the arc of Koufax’s career. Nine innings: from nothing special to never better.
It is 9:46 P.M. Two and two to Harvey Kuenn. One strike away.
One more time, Koufax wedged his back foot into the pitching rubber. His front leg reared up. His torso turned like a matador evading a charging bull. His eyes never left Torborg’s target. His arm came forward and the ball headed toward home like an eighteen-wheeler appearing down the highway out of a mirage.
Sandy into his windup. Here’s the pitch! Swung on and missed! A perfect game!
For the next thirty-eight seconds, Scully allowed the crowd to have its say. Zev Yaroslavsky said nothing, having forgotten to count the twenty-seventh out. The sky rained Dodger blue, seat cushions cascading down from the upper reaches of Blue Heaven. People in the stands were jumping up and down, hugging people they didn’t know. Santo had a word with his chagrined roomie, Beckert. “You don’t know shit about this game.”
Jess Whitehill Sr. put the finishing touches on an unblemished scorecard. He made no errors, either: “Sept. 9, 1965—NIGHT—CUBS, SANDY KOUFAX PITCHES “PERFECT GAME” NO-HITTER, WINS 1–0, KOUFAX BECOMES FIRST PITCHER IN HISTORY OF MAJOR LEAGUES TO HURL FOUR (4) NO-HIT, NO-RUN GAMES.” Jess Jr. was too excited to write and filled in the last three outs at home later.
On the scoreboard in right field, it is 9:46 P.M. in the City of the Angels, Los Angeles, California, and a crowd of 29,139 just sitting in to see the only pitcher in baseball history to hurl four no-hit, no-run games. He has done it four straight years. And now he capped it. On his fourth no-hitter, he made it a perfect game.
Torborg leaped into Koufax’s arms, an embrace he wouldn’t remember until he saw the photograph. The rest of the team followed, piling on top of the man who had carried them all season. Koufax saved a special hug for Lou Johnson and a special word for John Kennedy. “When I looked over and saw you there,” Koufax told him, “I was gonna make sure nobody hit the ball.”
Then he disappeared into the dugout. Summoned for a curtain call, he came out, tipped his cap, and disappeared again. It wasn’t enough. Upstairs in the cheap seats Barry Pinsky and his friends refused to leave, wanting to relive what they’d just seen. In the left-field pavilion, Gary Figge snapped one last frame, congratulating himself for having had the forbearance to save some film.
The stands and the dugouts finally emptied. Krug sat alone on the visitors’ bench for half an hour contemplating the irrefutable numerals on the scoreboard. “They left that thing up there a long time,” he told Adams later.
When finally he went inside he couldn’t bring himself to speak to Hendley. What do you say? “Nice game, tough luck.” That’s what the veteran catcher Bailey had to say. Probably it was the only thing to say.
Having lost, the Cubs cheerfully allowed themselves to enjoy being part of history. Banks sought out the shell-shocked rookies, Browne and Young, wanting to know, “You sure you guys want to play in the National League?”
At his locker, Kuenn was surrounded by reporters. Amalfitano was surprised to see such a crowd; he figured they’d all be over in the Dodger clubhouse. When the writers left, Amalfitano asked, “What the hell are they doing here?”
“They asked me about the difference between this game and the San Francisco game,” Kuenn replied.
“What did you tell ’em?”
“About two years,” Kuenn said.
The Cubs packed up quickly. They had a late flight to San Francisco. There was little time for sleep, less for reflection. Later, Hendley would conclude, “You can’t say all is lost. If I’m remembered in baseball, I’m remembered for that.” But it was too soon for that.
On the postgame show—“The Sandy Koufax Scoreboard,” Scully called it—Koufax offered his sympathy. In the background, Elsie the Cow, the sponsor’s emissary, mooed contentedly. “It’s a shame that you have to get beat that way,” Koufax said. “But I’m glad we got the run or we might have been here all night.”
In the ebullient Dodger locker room, a bottle of chilled champagne was waiting at his stall. Baseball champagne, an unworthy and undrinkable vintage. Koufax gave it to the clubhouse guys to put in the refrigerator, but gladly accepted Walter O’Malley’s giddy embrace. The old man hadn’t seen a perfec
t game since Don Larsen beat his boys back in the 1956 World Series. “I hope I can slip Koufax an extra five hundred before Bavasi gets back,” the owner said with disingenuous largesse. “He might fire me.”
At his locker, Koufax was surrounded by reporters, photographers, and smiles, none bigger than his own. He posed with two baseballs in either hand, each indelibly marked with a fat, black zero, one for each of the no-hitters he had thrown. “A zero is at once the perfect emptiness and the most complete sense of possibility,” the poet Joseph Brodsky wrote. Koufax was still sweating, his fingernails caked with the mound’s dirt. His satin warm-up jacket shimmered in the sodium glare of the camera’s flash. Four no-hitters, four consecutive years, each better than the last. “Do you think they’ll take the uniform off him before they bronze it?” Drysdale wondered aloud. “Or will they leave him in it?”
Reporters had other questions. Was there any pitch he wanted back? There was one in the second inning, he allowed, to Byron Browne. “I didn’t want it back as soon as I threw it,” he said. “I wanted it back as soon as he hit it.”
What had he thrown to Kuenn? the reporters asked.
“Everything I had left,” Koufax said.
Who had given him the most trouble?
“Torborg,” Koufax replied, referring to the young catcher waiting eagerly for an autograph.
Not everyone got the joke.
Yosh Kawano, Nobe’s brother, brought Ken Holtzman over from the Cubs’ locker room to get an autograph for his mother. Richard Hume, the young lawyer working for Bill Hayes, came in and got his scorecard signed. Koufax autographed the official lineup card for Alston, who gave it to his grandson, and had his picture taken with Torborg and Uncle Miltie. When the sycophants and the deadline guys cleared out, Koufax went to the umpire’s dressing room to congratulate Vargo. “He had a perfect game, too,” Hendley said.