Seventy-two-year-old Sandy Koufax came out to Los Angeles in 2008 to throw the ceremonial Opening Day first pitch, and 56,000 fans had the same thought: Get this guy his uniform. He still looked superhuman.
Hitting against Sandy Koufax was like staring into the sun…with the sun coming at you at around 100 miles per hour. Hitting against him was Armageddon. It was as hopeless an experience as any Dodger opponent would ever face on a regular basis.
Three of the five lowest ERAs for starting pitchers in Dodgers history came from Koufax: 1.88 in 1963, 1.74 in 1964, and 1.73 in 1966 (a 190 ERA+ for the latter, second-highest by a starting pitcher in Dodgers history behind Dazzy Vance’s 1928 season). In his career, Koufax struck out 2,396 batters in 2,3241/3 innings. One quarter of the batters he faced in the major leagues whiffed.
This lefty, who could have been sold down the river by a wildness that was either the cause or result of sporadic use in his early years, owned Los Angeles. By the early ’60s, Koufax’s control improved dramatically. After walking 405 batters in 6912/3 innings through 1960, he walked 412 batters in 1,6322/3 innings for the remainder of his career. So the good news was you knew where to look for the ball, even if you couldn’t see it.
For a Dodger fan, Koufax provided a kind of nirvana that, for all the excitement that would follow him, would never be repeated. In 86 career games at Dodger Stadium—7151/3 innings—Koufax allowed 109 earned runs (a 1.37 ERA). Some of that, surely, was a product of the stifling environment that Dodger Stadium offered hitters of that era, but there’s little need to adjust the emotional ledger. Koufax was indomitable. He was FDIC-guaranteed.
“The team behind him is the ghostliest-scoring team in history,” columnist Jim Murray wrote in the Los Angeles Times. “This is a little like making Rembrandt paint on the back of cigar boxes, giving Paderewski a piano with only two octaves, Caruso singing with a high school chorus. With the Babe Ruth Yankees, Sandy Koufax would probably have been the first undefeated pitcher in history.”
Following his retirement in 1966, a mystique was added to Koufax’s persona as he eventually retreated to a great extent from public view, and the full weight of what he had endured to succeed crystalized among the Dodger faithful. It’s not that it was any secret that Koufax’s pitching arm should have been protected from baseball by a restraining order, but while he was still active, the consoling thought was, “Who are we to argue if he can bear it?” After all, that’s what men were supposed to do, right? Koufax, the soft-spoken Jew from Brooklyn, was the Marlboro Man and John Wayne when it came to steely bravery on the ballfield.
But with time to reflect on the torture of his left elbow, Koufax became something even greater, something more than just a man. Whatever ego Koufax does have, it’s hard to imagine a more selfless and talented performer for this team. If God ever put on a Dodger uniform, he wore No. 32 and threw left-handed.