Mondays with Murray

Here’s another Jim Murray treat for you, a 1961 column on Sandy Koufax, one of the greatest left-handers in baseball history. It is presented courtesy of the Jim Murray Memorial Foundation. . . . Enjoy! . . . And feel free to visit www.jimmurrayfoundation.com . . .

THURSDAY, AUGUST 31, 1961, SPORTS
Copyright 1961/THE TIMES MIRROR COMPANY
 
JIM MURRAY
Sandy Rare Specimen
CHICAGO — For Sanford Koufax, left-handed pitcher, the 1961 baseball season opened on an unusual note — with the manager pounding on his door at 2 o'clock in the morning demanding to be let in at once.
   This was unusual because the manager usually wasn't out after curfew. Neither, ordinarily, was Sandy Koufax, but this was a night both longshots came in. Well after curfew, as it happens.
   The next high spot in Sandy Koufax's banner year came one August night in the Coliseum when he was betting against the Reds' Bob Purkey. Sandy swung at a thrown ball — and expected to miss it as usual. Instead, the ball rocketed out to right field.
   Koufax stood there for a moment. Then he looked around to see who did it. By this time, his teammates were on their feet in the dugout waving their hats and pointing frantically to first base. Sandy set sail. But in the outfield, Frank Robinson casually picked up his base hit and threw him out at first.
   The tragic part is that if Sandy Koufax had gotten that hit, he would be batting .077 today instead of .062.
  Sandy Koufax is not exactly a character invented by Al Capp. But he is a rare specimen for baseball. In a game where the vocabulary runs to four-letter words and the vocal range registers from loud to hoarse, Sandy is articulate and soft spoken. Where the musical tastes run to rock 'n' roll or hillbilly gut-bucket, Sandy prefers Mendelssohn and Beethoven. Where plenty of players only act like bachelors, Sandy is one. And doesn't act like it.
   Where teammates seek out the nearest cowboy picture, Sandy looks for the foreign art film. Where other players' raiment makes them look as though they're trying to be sure the deer hunters see them, Sandy's is subdued — but expensive. There are those who think Sandy's salary just pauses briefly in his pocket on the way to the alpaca sweater industry. On road trips, Sandy can be found either at the ballpark or in a men's store. He stands in line waiting for them to open in the morning, and some suspect he asks for autographs of the owners whose stock he most admirers.
   Sandy Koufax didn't even particularly want to be a ballplayer and had not even played a great deal of baseball on the streets of Brooklyn where he grew up. Sandy wanted to be an architect, and there are still days when he feels he has made a terrible mistake — almost as if Frank Lloyd Wright had decided to become a rodeo rider.
   The trouble was, Sandy Koufax was such a natural pitcher that baseball couldn't afford to let him turn to mere bridge-building. Sandy's fastball was so fast some batters would start to swing as he was on his way to the mound. His curveball disappeared like a long putt going in a hole.
   Koufax has never pitched an inning of minor league ball, which doesn't make him unique but makes him a member of a very small club. As a result, he has learned his craft slowly. And it's as exasperating as hay fever: one day you have it, the next day you don't. Sandy thinks it is basically a problem of rhythm. You don't know till you hear the music of the first pitch smacking in the catcher's glove — or off the center-field fence — whether you're going to dance or trip over our feet.
   The Dodgers have persevered a long time with Sandy Koufax. On the other hand, he has given baseball lots of second chances, too, when you consider the building boom in this country. Players who have batted against him have been waiting confidently for him to elbow Lefty Grove to one side in the Hall of Fame.
   This year, both have had their patience rewarded. Koufax has not only won 15 games, a personal high, but he was the man who caught the falling Dodgers on the way down the side of a cliff and held them by their heels till they could scramble to the second-place ledge. If Koufax hadn't defeated Cincinnati last Friday his team would now be as far out of it as the Andrea Doria.
   When they dropped a doubleheader and came into Chicago like a drowning man with a rock in his lap, Koufax pitched a virtual no-hitter. A catchable fly ball and a half-hit ground ball to right field represented the entire offensive thrust of the Chicago Cubs for the afternoon. A good thing, because the Dodgers didn't make anybody forget the 1927 Yankees either.
   Koufax has struck out so many batters, he is approaching records set by pitchers in the prehistoric ages of baseball like Rube Marquard and someone named ‘Noodles’ Hahn. He is a victim of his own stuff — he averaged 155 pitches a game last year, largely because batters get so little wood on the ball they can't even pop it up and foul it back instead. He has fanned 895 batters in 898 innings.
   Sandy is now sure he wants to stay in baseball. And the batters wish he'd go build something. Success may go to his pocketbook — or to Hart, Schaffner & Marx. But it won't go to his head. Joe Frisco once said of Irving Berlin that he had a nice voice but you had to hug him to hear it. With Koufax even that wouldn't help. When Sandy is shouting, he sounds as if he's talking to himself.
   When the Dodgers get to Chavez Ravine, Sandy Koufax may finally put the game of baseball on the run. He has won nine, lost two on the road, won six, lost seven in the Coliseum. Even if he does rout the record book, you will never know by looking at him. He will be the nice young man with the gentle brown eyes standing in the corner looking as though he had come in for an autograph.

Reprinted with permission by the Los Angeles Times

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