click for pic source and another good Koufax article
Posted on 10/03/2011 4:59:47 PM PDT by rhema
For five memorable seasons, Sandy Koufax dominated baseball as no other major league pitcher ever had before. From 1962 to 1966, Koufax led the National League in earned run average, the only pitcher ever to do that. At the same time, he compiled a record of 111-34, a winning percentage of .766, that has never been equaled. Koufax led the National League in wins, ERA, and strikeouts for three consecutive seasons. He pitched 4 no-hitters, including a perfect game. In 1963, he threw 11 shutouts, more than any other pitcher has since in one season. In 1965, he went 26-8 and set a major league record by striking out 382 batters in one season. In 1972, he was elected to Baseball’s Hall of Fame, becoming Cooperstown’s youngest member at the age of 36. He remains today only the second Jewish player to enter the pantheon.
Born in Brooklyn on December 30, 1935, Koufax attended Lafayette High School in Bensonhurst, where one of his friends was the television talk show host Larry King. At Lafayette, Koufax played on the basketball team, earning a reputation as one of the best players in Brooklyn. He didn’t play on the baseball team until his senior year, and then usually as a first baseman who would sometimes pitch in relief of another friend, Fred Wilpon, Lafayette’s pitching star and later the co-owner of the New York Mets.
Koufax won a basketball scholarship to the University of Cincin-nati, where he planned to study architecture. In the spring of his freshman year, he became the overnight pitching sensation of the university’s baseball team, striking out 34 batters in his first two games and gaining the attention of sportswriters and baseball scouts throughout the country. Before long, close to a dozen major league scouts, including the Brooklyn Dodgers’ Al Campanis, converged on Cincinnati and offered him contracts. Accepting the Dodgers’ offer of $20,000—a salary of $6,000 and a signing bonus of $14,000—Koufax left college after his freshman year for Ebbets Field.
The Dodgers owners, as Koufax biographer Jane Leavy has noted, were overjoyed, regarding “the signing of a Jewish ballplayer the way others regarded the coming of the messiah. The Dodgers were so desperate for a Jewish presence, given the demographics of Brooklyn … Koufax was a marketing godsend.” The team’s owner, Walter O’Malley, proclaimed him “the great Jewish hope” of the franchise, telling a reporter: “We hope he’ll be as great as Hank Greenberg.”
At first, Koufax failed to meet such exalted expectations. His first few seasons were mediocre at best, a disappointment to management and fans alike. Koufax pitched in only 12 games in 1955, winning 2 and losing 2. In 1956, his second season with the Dodgers, Koufax won 2 games and lost 4. In 1957, his record was 5 and 4. Ironically, it was only after the Dodgers moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles that Koufax began his remarkable ascent to superstardom. In August 1959, pitching against the San Francisco Giants, who had also recently moved west from New York, Koufax tied the major league record of 18 strikeouts set by Bob Feller in 1938.
With the 1962 season, his metamorphosis complete, Koufax began to make baseball history, pitching the first of his 4 no-hitters, striking out 18 batters in a game for the second time in his career, and leading the major leagues with an ERA of 2.54. In 1963, the season in which he pitched his second no-hitter, his statistics were monumental. He led the National League with 25 games won, a 1.88 ERA, and 306 strikeouts, winning the pitcher’s Triple Crown. He was the unanimous winner of the Cy Young Award, as the National League’s best pitcher, and was voted the National League’s Most Valuable Player as well. In the 1963 World Series against the New York Yankees, during which he won two games, Koufax set a new World Series record by striking out 15 batters in one game, and was voted the World Series MVP.
For many baseball fans, Koufax’s meteoric rise symbolized the coming of age of baseball in the American West. A virtual unknown when the Dodgers moved to California in 1957, Koufax, by the time of his retirement in 1966, was a household name. He had become the greatest pitcher of his era, a baseball celebrity second only perhaps to Willie Mays.
In 1965, despite arthritis in his elbow, Koufax had what many consider the best season any pitcher ever had, leading the major leagues in victories, strikeouts, complete games, innings pitched, and ERA. Then on September 9, 1965, in a game against the Chicago Cubs, he pitched his fourth no-hitter and his first perfect game. Like Willie Mays’s over-the-shoulder catch during the 1954 World Series and Bobby Thomson’s home run “heard round the world” three years earlier, Koufax’s perfect game would become the moment for which he would be remembered.
And yet, Koufax’s contribution to baseball that season cannot be measured by statistics alone. Less than a month after the perfect game, Koufax achieved, as Jane Leavy put it, “another kind of perfection by refusing to pitch the opening game of the World Series because it fell on the holiest day of the Jewish year,” Yom Kippur. By refusing to pitch, “Koufax defined himself as a man of principle who placed faith above craft.” Like Hank Greenberg’s similar decision 31 years earlier, this became a defining moment for a new generation of American Jews, and a source of inspiration for Jewish baseball fans. Bruce Lustig, the senior rabbi at the Washington Hebrew Congregation in Washington, D.C., and a fan since childhood, has pointed to Koufax’s decision not to pitch “as a transforming event, providing the catalyst” for many Jews “to acknowledge and honor their religion.” Koufax’s action “both reinforced Jewish pride and enhanced the sense of belonging—a feat as prodigious as any he had accomplished on the baseball field.”
So, too, his successful joint salary holdout with his teammate Don Drysdale, in their 1966 preseason contract negotiations with the Dodgers, as several baseball historians have pointed out, was a “transforming event” that paved the way for Marvin Miller’s challenge to the reserve clause and the beginning of free agency. In hiring an attorney to bargain for them and in demanding contracts of more than $100,000 annually—a salary ceiling no player had ever exceeded—Koufax believed they were fighting for a basic principle: “That ballplayers aren’t slaves, that we have a right to negotiate.”
The Dodgers gave in to Koufax’s contract demands, and in 1966 he earned $135,000, the highest salary ever paid a baseball player. That was his last season, and he won 27 games, with a phenomenal 1.73 ERA, and received his third unanimous Cy Young Award, despite the fact that the chronic arthritic condition in his pitching arm that had afflicted him through much of his pitching career had worsened. At season’s end, in constant pain and warned by physicians that if he continued pitching he might lose the use of his left arm, Koufax shocked the baseball world with his announcement that he was retiring at the age of 30.
Today, 45 years after his retirement at the top of his career, Sandy Koufax should be remembered as the last of the greatest pitchers of baseball’s golden age. Now 75, Koufax should also be admired for his refusal to pitch on Yom Kippur and his role in winning the right of a baseball player to negotiate over salary—achievements off the field that have done much to shape his enduring legacy.
I remember that 68 series. Denny McClain had a sore arm but they gave him a cortisone shot and he won one of the World Series games.
I think Denny won 31 that year.
A couple of years later he was pitching for the Birmingham A’s. I saw him pitch against Asheville. They must have had orders to let him pitch as Asheville bombed him 12-0 and they left him in the whole game. A former pro player was with us that day and he said McClain still had a good fastball but that he was simply throwing them all right over the plate.
I remember that 68 series. Denny McClain had a sore arm but they gave him a cortisone shot and he won one of the World Series games.
I think Denny won 31 that year.
A couple of years later he was pitching for the Birmingham A’s. I saw him pitch against Asheville. They must have had orders to let him pitch as Asheville bombed him 12-0 and they left him in the whole game. A former pro player was with us that day and he said McClain still had a good fastball but that he was simply throwing them all right over the plate.
I know the feeling. I never got to see Koufax pitch in person but did watch many times on TV. I did however get to see Satchel Paige pitch in person when he came to the Miami Marlins AAA team back in the '50s. I will never forget his "hesitation" pitch. That of course is now illegal but it was a thing to behold. He could even at his advanced age at that time still surprise the hitter with a pretty good fast ball... when he felt like it. That was not often. :-) Those were the days for sure, never to return I fear.
Is that you, Tony?
Was it ever!
I went to see him square off with Atlanta's left-hander, Denny Lemaster (who only had two remarkable games....both against Koufax. Lost there, won here.)
I had to Google to make sure I got my facts right as I remembered them... and I am happy to say I did get it (mostly) right. It was a baseball lover's dream and.... if you were a Braves fan.... Heaven.
Both threw masterpieces (Koufax, - 3 hitter, Lemaster - 2 hitter) won by the Braves on a walk-off homer in the ninthth by my favorite player.... Eddie Matthews. Final 2-1.
Sold out....all due to Sandy.
Koufax had an amazing 5 year run..but his earlier years were so-so at best...I think the best pitcher I ever saw ( over 55 years watching baseball) for a career was Bob Gibson. Had he played on either coast..in a major media market..he’d be a god today.
Should have named him 32.
It doesn’t show in the pictures, becuased the uniforms of the day were loose fitting, but Koufax had huge upper body musculature..that’s where he got the armstrength for hius velocity..also, he had very long fingers....gave him a grip that caused that wicked curveball..
I think Sutton came up right at the end of the Koufax-Drysdale era. It was Claude Osteen who was the #3 starter, I think, for most of the ‘62-’66 years. And I think the Dodgers also had Larry and/or Norm Sherry. Perranoski in the bullpen. At least that’s what I remember from those years.
I have two autographed baseballs from an all-star game played in Mpls from that era - I forget what year. My brother-in-law had some connections for good seat, meet and great afterwards, etc.
Lots of great names from my childhood - although I was not a diehard fan. But Sandy Koufax, Ernie Banks, Harmon Killebrew, Catfish Hunter, etc. are some of them.
click for pic source and another good Koufax article
Obituary: William Zinser loved work, sports
As a scout, he discovered Sandy Koufax
By Nicole Hamilton
The Cincinnati Enquirer
GROESBECK - When knee problems forced William J. Zinser to start walking with a cane this year, his family assumed he had stopped working. Because he was 81 years old, they thought he had retired from his job at the Shell station in Colerain Township.
That's why his son, Steve Zinser of Loveland, was surprised to get a call Thursday that his father had collapsed from a heart attack while helping a customer.
William Zinser, a longtime Groesbeck resident, died early Thursday morning from an apparent heart attack, doing one of the things he loved most - working.
Raised in Wyoming, he found his other passion while at Wyoming High School - as a star baseball and football player.
After graduating from Wyoming High School in 1940, Mr. Zinser served in the Army during World War II. Honorably discharged in 1945, he returned to Cincinnati and married his high school sweetheart, Mary Egbers.
He also started his longtime career at National Distillery in Carthage, where he worked until 1987, before he started working the counter at various Shell stations.
It was also after the war that he began acting as a regional scout for the Brooklyn Dodgers, Chicago Clubs and Cleveland Indians.
"He greatest success in sports as a scout came when he discovered Sandy Koufax pitching as a freshman at the University of Cincinnati and was instrumental in getting him signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1954," his son said.
In 1958, he managed the amateur team in Glendale and led it to the AABC World Series championship of 1958 in Battle Creek, Mich.
He also served as past president of the Mid-American Conference of Basketball and Football Referees and the Ohio Valleys Officials Association.
"He always said, 'I can still throw the odd curveball.' I wish I could pitch a few with him now," his son said.
Gibson was great, but there was a pitcher in ‘67 and ‘68 who led the majors in ‘67 among all players with 25 games or more in slugging average, ahead of Frank Howard, Ron Santo, Orlando Cepada, Willie McCovey, Al Kaline, Roberto Clemente, Harmon Killibrew, Dick Allen, Hank Aaron, Frank Robinson, and Carl Yasrtzemski. His team lost the pennant by one game that year.
In ‘68 the team won the World Series, the manager Manager of the Year, and the ace pitcher the Cy Young. The same pitcher led the majors among all pitchers with 25 games or more in ERA with 0.69 - 8 runs in 25 games. But not the Cy Young, as he had been traded to the National League and Gibson had his career best that year.
And the original post is incorrect in saying Koufax led the majors in ERA in 1962. Koufax led the National League, but this same pitcher led the American League and the Majors in ‘62 with 2.21 to Koufax’s 2.54. He only won 16 that year, but that was out of 22 starts. So no Cy Young votes ever for him.
And for his career, he had only 1.5 K per nine innings pitched, but 0.09 BB per nine innings pitched, for a career K/BB ratio of 16+. Hank Aguirre gets no respect.
Because Koufax was a bonus baby, the rules dictated that he had to be put directly on the Dodgers' roster (at age 19) for at least two years; he never spent any time in the minors. Gibson had the benefit of minor league experience before he made the majors at age 23.
Obviously, a Book of Koufax must be added to the Old Testament!!
I was and am a huge Koufax fan. I, however, would like to throw a couple of names in the mix. Nolan Ryan and Randy Johnson.
I would pay anything to see any of them pitch again!!!!!
Pitchers always look like they're pulling themselves through the eye of a needle.
1962: Don Drysdale, Johnny Podres, Stan Williams, Sandy Koufax
1963: Drysdale, Koufax, Podres, Bob Miller
1964: Drysdale, Koufax, Phil Ortega, Joe Moeller
1965: Drysdale, Koufax, Claude Osteen, Podres
1966: Drysdale, Koufax, Osteen, Don Sutton
So Johnny Podres and Claude Osteen were the starters with the most GS during those years. Larry Sherry was in the bullpen for some of those years. Ron Perranoski was the main reliever during those years.
Glad to know my memory is not failing me.
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