Baseball: K Is for Koufax

He stood proudly at the plate in his pin-stripe New York Yankee uniform, listening to the roar of the huge hometown crowd. “It’s a hell of a thing,” said Pinch-Hitter Harry Bright. “I wait 17 years to get into a World Series. Then I finally get up there, and 69,000 people are yelling—yelling for me to strike out.” Whiff he did, thus capping a spectacular performance—for someone else.

The achievement belonged to Pitcher Sandy Koufax, 28, who, in his nine seasons with the Los Angeles Dodgers, has known his share of trouble. Only last year, a mysterious circulatory ailment called Raynaud’s Phenomenon almost caused doctors to amputate the forefinger on his pitching hand.* But this year Koufax won 25 games, lost only five, set a record with 306 strikeouts, and was the key man in the Dodgers’ drive to the National League pennant. Yet all that seemed nothing compared to last week.

With artistry and audacity, Koufax beat the New York Yankees 5-2 in the first game of the World Series. He not only beat the fearsome Yankees; he humiliated them.

Sometimes it was a smoking fastball, sometimes a tantalizing curve that dropped like an overripe apple across the center of the plate. Whatever it was, the Yankees could not hit it. The top of the Yankee order, producers of 73 home runs this year, did not get the ball in front of the plate until the sixth inning. Mickey Mantle had two Ks beside his name in the scorebook before he managed an infield pop-up—and drop-kicked his batting helmet halfway to the dugout. At last, Tommy Tresh got to Koufax for a two-run homer. But Bobby Richardson, who struck out only 22 times all season, whiffed three times. “That,” muttered a Yankee, “is an act of God.” Finally, with two out in the ninth, Koufax fogged the final fastball past Harry Bright. That made the total 15 strikeouts, and a new Series record.

As Good a Way As Any. The Dodgers had other heroes. Catcher John Roseboro hit a three-run homer off Whitey Ford, and First Baseman Bill Skowron, a Yankee discard, bedeviled his old teammates with two run-producing hits. But none could match Koufax. In the dressing room, he rubbed a little salt in Yankee wounds. “I would have been satisfied with 14 strikeouts,” he said, “but I had to end the game some way, and that seemed as good a way as any.”

The bookies still picked the Yankees to win the second game. Dodger Manager Walter Alston’s pitcher for this engagement was Johnny Podres, who at 31 is getting a trifle thick around the waist. There are those who joke that Bachelor Podres pitches harder off the field than on (“He’s done all the things that Bo Belinsky says he has,” goes one gag), but among his peers he has a reputation as a “money” pitcher who is toughest under pressure. Over 81 innings, he gave up only six hits and one run; then he handed the ball to Relief Pitcher Ron Perranoski, and tipped his cap to the fans.

Meanwhile, the Dodgers made the Yankees look like a farm club. Marvel ous Maury Wills blithely stole second on a pick-off play. Tommy Davis clouted two triples and ran his Series batting average to .625; “Moose” Skowron, still drinking thirstily at the well of revenge, put the game away with a wrong-way homer into the rightfield stands. Final score: Dodgers 4, Yankees 1.

CAN’T ANYBODY HERE BEAT THESE DODGERS? asked the New York Herald Tribune. Nobody seemed to know, least of all the Yankees. “I’ll tell you one thing,” growled Manager Ralph Houk on his arrival in Los Angeles. “We haven’t thrown in no damned towel yet. We gotta start hitting soon, and I think we’ll do it against that righthander—what’s his name?—Drysdale?”

Waving Feathers. Yes, Don Drysdale, the towering (6 ft. 6 in.) part-time TV actor who lost almost as many games as he won during the long summer (record: 19-17). But by now the mighty Yankees, the never-choke champions, the team that does not accept defeat, could only imagine what horrors were in store for them. Right at the start of the third game, the Dodgers scraped up a run. And once again, the Yankee sluggers might have been waving feathers for all the wood they got on the ball. Mickey Mantle got his first hit of the series—a bloop bunt single. There were only two other Yankee hits, and nine more horrendous strikeouts, and it all ended in a 1-0 shutout.

After three games, the Yankees had managed 16 base hits, just three runs. And then, there on the mound for the fourth game stood Koufax again. Mickey Mantle finally hit a fast ball into the bleachers. It was the only Yankee run. Sandy Koufax’s teammates got him two runs—and that was all he needed to make the Los Angeles Dodgers the first team in history to sweep the Yankees four straight in the World Series.

* Last week Dodger Physician Robert Woods disclosed that Koufax’s finger had been saved by the use of four drugs: Coumadin (an anticoagulant), fibrinolysin (used to dissolve clots in blood vessels), Ilidar and Priscoline (both used to dilate arteries).