Sandy Koufax: The Present and the Future

November 6, 2023

(This is the 31st and final post in my series about the 1963 Dodgers.)

By Glen Sparks

Amid all the hoopla and champagne showers after the Dodgers swept the New Yankees in the 1963 World Series, Sandy Koufax spoke about a future that he foresaw as grand. The left-hander wanted to continue pitching for a long time.

“My goal is to go on and on, like Warren Spahn” said Koufax, who was 27 years old and had 93 career wins. He told George Lederer of the Long Beach Independent, “My goal is to be the biggest winner in history. I’ll probably have to pitch 30 years to do it, but right now I feel like I can go on forever. The day you can’t do the job, the hitters will let you know before anyone else.”

Spahn, another great lefty, had just completed his 19^th season and had won 350 games. As a 42-year-old with the Milwaukee Braves in 1963, he went 23-7 with a 2.60 ERA. He would pitch two more years and win 13 more games before being ushered into the Hall of Fame on the first ballot. (Spahn had 44 wins through his age-27 season. He missed three seasons due to his service in World War II.)

Koufax’s career took different turns, of course, and, as most baseball fans know, did not last nearly as long as Spahn’s. He still established himself as baseball royalty and collected plenty of hardware.

He took home both the Cy Young Award and National League MVP honors in 1963 after leading the circuit in wins (25). ERA (1.88), strikeouts (306), shutouts (11). WHIP (0.875) and more. Koufax earned the first pitching triple crown (leader in wins, ERA, and strikeouts) since the Detroit Tigers’ Hal Newhauser in 1945 and was the first pitcher to win an MVP award since the Dodgers’ Don Newcombe in 1956.

Until 1970, the writers only placed one pitcher onto the Cy Young ballot. So, in 1963, Koufax got all the votes. Baseball Commissioner Ford Frick said to an Associated Press reporter, “I can understand why the vote was unanimous. Koufax not only is a wonderful pitcher, but he has a wonderful personality and a terrific hold on the baseball public.” (Another important note: Baseball gave out just one Cy Young award in those days. The award was not given to the top pitcher in each league until 1967.)

The Dodgers ace also won the MVP with relative ease. Writers gave him 14 of 20 first-place votes, or 10 more first-place votes than MVP runner-up Dick Groat of the St. Louis Cardinals. Koufax got three second-place votes, a single third-place vote and a six-place vote. He got 237 total votes, while Groat earned 190.

One writer left Koufax off the ballot. Braves slugger Henry Aaron finished third overall (135 votes), while Los Angeles relief pitcher Ron Perranoski was fourth (130 votes) and infielder Jim Gilliam finished sixth (62 votes). Tommy Davis (eighth place), Maury Wills (17th) and Don Drysdale (21st) also got votes.

Koufax told Frank Finch of the Los Angeles Times, “I didn’t think I was going to win it because I didn’t think a pitcher would get the vote. I felt Dick Groat would be up there, but I’m amazed that Jim Gilliam didn’t finish higher than sixth. Junior never gets what he deserves. He deserved to be higher.”

Gilliam, in turn, passed on some compliments of his own. “He’s one of the greatest of all time,” Gilliam said, referring, of course, to Koufax. “He deserves every honor he gets. He’s an overpowering pitcher. I hope I never have to hit against him.”

“A perfect game!”

Koufax pitched three more years. He opened the 1964 campaign by blanking the St. Louis Cardinals, 4-0, but later that month, also against St. Louis, he “felt something let go” in his left arm and missed three starts. In August, he woke up one morning with his elbow “as big as his knee” and missed the rest of the season. He still posted a 19-5 won-loss record in 29 games and once again led the National League in ERA (1.74) and shutouts (seven). Koufax also topped the circuit with a 0.928 WHIP and allowed a league-low 6.2 hits per innings.  

The Los Angeles ace hurled the third no-hitter of his career on June 4, against the Philadelphia Phillies at Connie Mack Stadium. Koufax struck out 12 and faced the minimum 27 batters (Dick Allen walked in the fourth inning but was caught trying to steal second base.)  Bob Feller, who also threw three no-hitters in his incredible career, predicted additional no-no’s for Koufax. “The way this guy is going, he has a good chance to pitch several more,” Feller said. Koufax finished third in the Cy Young voting, but the Dodgers fell to sixth place in the National League.

At some point in 1964, Dodgers team doctor Robert Kerlan diagnosed Koufax’s ongoing arm ailment as traumatic arthritis. Koufax began taking anti-inflammatory pills, while trainers rubbed a nasty goop called Capsolin onto his arm on pitching days. Capsolin–a chili pepper salve—encourages circulation but burns the skin. Other pitchers also used Capsolin but not to the extent Koufax did. “Most pitchers diluted it with cold cream or Vaseline,” Jane Leavy wrote in her 2002 Koufax biography. “Koufax used it straight, gobs of it.” Once, teammate Lou Johnson wore one of Koufax’s sweatshirts onto the field on a cool night in Pittsburgh. “First, he began to sweat,” Leavy wrote. “Then his skin blistered. Then he threw up.”

Koufax pitched the greatest game of his career on September 9, 1965, against the Cubs at Dodger Stadium. That night, he threw not just the fourth no-hitter of his career but also a perfect game. He struck out 14 batters, including the final six. “A Michaelangelo among pitchers, Sandy Koufax produced his masterpiece Thursday night,” Frank Finch wrote in the Times. This is the game famous for Vin Scully’s play-by-play account. His ninth-inning narration is included in some books on great sports writing. “There are 29,000 people in the ballpark and a million butterflies. … Sandy into his windup. Here’s the pitch: swung on and missed, a perfect game!”

A few weeks later, Koufax wrapped up another incredible campaign. He won 26 games and led the league in most important pitching categories. He struck out a major-league record 382 batters and posted a career-low 0.855 WHIP. The Dodgers won 97 games and the NL pennant. They faced the Minnesota Twins in the World Series. Koufax pitched three games, went 2-1 and posted a 0.38 ERA. He struck out 29 batters in 24 innings and allowed just 13 hits. Koufax beat Jim Kaat, 2-0, in Game Seven.

Following a well-publicized holdout, teamed with Don Drysdale, Koufax put together another fantastic season in 1966 when he won a career-high 27 games and boasted the lowest ERA in the National League for the fifth straight year (1.73). Koufax struck out at least 300 batters (317, to be exact) for the third time and, of note, led the league in starts (41), innings pitched (323), complete games (27, for the second straight year) and shutouts (five). He looked as good as ever.

The Dodgers won a second straight pennant and met the Baltimore Orioles in the World Series. In a surprising upset, Baltimore won in four games. Koufax pitched Game 2 against 20-year-old Jim Palmer and took the loss. He went six innings and gave up four runs, just one of them earned. The last batter he faced, Andy Etchebarren, grounded into a double play.

Koufax, who won his third Cy Young award and finished runner-up in MVP voting for the second straight year, announced his retirement on November 18, a few weeks after he threw that final pitch. He was just 30 years old and had won 165 games, far short of Spahn’s mark as the winningest left-hander in major-league history. Despite pitching for parts of just 12 seasons, he retired with the seventh most strikeouts of all time (2,396) and the ninth most shutouts (40). Koufax had a dazzling 0.95 ERA in World Series action.

He and a host of media members gathered at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills. “There’s not much to say,” Koufax began. The pitcher described how he took between 15 and 18 hydro-cortisone shots and “a large quantity of pills” to get through the 1966 season. “I pitched only one game in which my arm didn’t hurt. I needed a shot every other game to kill the pain. … The arthritis got to the point where I was told there could be permanent physical damage. I didn’t want to take the chance of disabling myself for the rest of my life.”

No one from the Dodgers’ coaching staff or front office attended the press conference. Team owner Walter O’Malley was in Japan, where his ballclub—minus a superstar left-hander—had just wrapped up an 18-game tour. O’Malley sent a message: “We wish Sandy great happiness and good health in retirement.” Manager Walter Alston said, “He was possibly the greatest pitcher ever in baseball. I hate to see him go.”

Los Angeles, winners of four pennants and three World Series championships over the past eight years, slipped to eighth place in 1967 and rose only to seventh in 1968. Koufax, meanwhile, entered the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1972, his first year on the ballot, with 86.9 percent of the vote.

In June 22, the Dodgers unveiled a statue of the former pitcher. The statue stands next to one of another all-time great, Jackie Robinson. According to one count, the 86-year-old Koufax thanked 46 former teammates, friends, and others during a 10-minute speech. He called the statue “one of the great honors of my life.”

Clayton Kershaw, a future Hall of Famer, who will surely be honored with a statue of his own at Dodger Stadium after his career ends, also spoke. He said, “In the years and generations to come, I hope a kid sees this statue and asks his mom or dad about Sandy Koufax, and I hope they tell him he was a great pitcher, but more than that he was a great man who represented the Dodgers with humility, kindness, and passion and class.”

Written by Glen Sparks Posted in Uncategorized