Sport: The Kid from Brooklyn

From the first inning on. the San Francisco Giants were straggling back from the plate with their bats dragging. By the middle innings, the crowd of 82,794 at Los Angeles’ Memorial Coliseum was beginning to realize that the husky (6 ft. 2 in., 205 Ibs.) Dodger southpaw might be heading for a record. Out on the mound, Sandy Koufax, 23, wiped away sweat and bore grimly down with each pitch, firing a fast ball that hopped as though magnetized, a crackling curve that dipped down and out.

Going into the ninth, the Dodgers’ Koufax knew he had to fan the side. Giant Ed Bressoud was strike-out No. 16. Danny O’Connell was No. 17. Finally, swinging haplessly, Pitcher Jack Sanford was the big No. 18, and Koufax had broken the league record of 17 strikeouts set by the Cardinals’ Dizzy Dean in 1933, tied the major-league mark set by Cleveland’s Fireballer Bob Feller in 1938. To cap his performance, Koufax singled in the rally that won the game 5-2.

Harried Dodger officials have often wondered if the strong-armed kid from Brooklyn was worth the strain on their nerves. An architecture major at the University of Cincinnati, Koufax was signed as a $14,000 bonus baby at 19. In his second start, he struck out 14 Cincinnati Reds. But he soon developed streaks of harrowing wildness, last year led the league in wild pitches with 17 (but hit only one batter). Explains one Dodger coach: “When Koufax is wild, the ball not only is not near the plate—it’s not near the batter.”

Early this year Bachelor Koufax was hampered by a sore shoulder that restricted him for five weeks to little more than pitching batting practice and lifting the arm of his hi-fi set (he likes Liszt, Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky). Overall, he has a record of only 8-4. But with Koufax now at his blinding best (31 strike-outs -in his last two games) and crossfiring Don Drysdale leading the league in strikeouts (207), the second-place Dodgers have the fastest staff in the majors as they settle down for the September stretch fight with the Giants. To prove the point. Dodger pitchers last week breezed past the major-league-team strikeout record of 896 set by the Detroit Tigers in 1946.