Baseball: Best of the Better

If baseball were the stock market, hitters would be selling short this year. With the 1963 season just past the halfway mark, the fine old art of pitching is enjoying its biggest revival since the day of the spitball. Team batting is down 15 points from 1962. Home run production is off 20% in the National League, 6% in the American League. Part of it is the newly enlarged strike zone that stretches all the way from a batter’s knees to the top of his shoulders. But mostly pitchers just seem to be better than before. “Day after day, club after club,” says Manager Alvin Dark of the San Francisco Giants, “I’ve seen nothing but good pitchers.”

Dead Aim. Best of them all is the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Sandy Koufax, 27. So far this season, Koufax has pitched one no-hitter (against Manager Dark’s Giants), two two-hitters and four three-hitters. His earned run average is a lean 1.64, and he leads both major leagues with 163 strikeouts. He started last week by blanking the Cincinnati Reds on three hits, 4-0. Five days later, he picked up another shutout (his ninth) at the expense of the New York Mets, 6-0, and became the first pitcher in either league to win 15 games.

A sturdy (6 ft. 2 in., 205 Ibs.) lefthander, Koufax has a baffling overhand motion and a bewildering arsenal of pitches. His fastball comes in like a 20-mm. cannon shell; his curve breaks so sharply that it acts, says Dodger Catcher John Roseboro, “like a chair whose legs suddenly collapse.” Control? “When an umpire calls my pitch a ball,” says Koufax casually, “that means it is either high or low. It’s never outside or inside.” All in all, agrees St. Louis Cardinals’ Slugger Ken Boyer, “Koufax is just too damned much.”

A Problem. Sanford Koufax is a lawyer’s son who stumbled into baseball by chance. At Brooklyn’s Lafayette High School basketball was his game; he won a scholarship to the cage-crazy University of Cincinnati, turned out for baseball just to liven up a dull freshman spring. “I have one problem,” Sandy told the coach. “I can’t hit.” “Well,” said the coach, “maybe you can pitch.” In his first two games, Koufax struck out 34 batters, and big-league scouts began pounding on his dormitory door. The Dodgers got there first, with a contract that called for a $14,000 bonus and a salary of $6,000.

For a while it looked like $20,000 too much. His control was atrocious. But because he was a bonus baby, baseball rules prohibited the Dodgers from farming him out for seasoning. So for six years he warmed the bench, pitching only occasionally, compiling a record of 36 wins and 40 losses. Finally, one night in 1960 before a Dodger-Giant game, he buttonholed General Manager Buzzie Bavasi. “I want to pitch,” stormed Sandy, “and you guys aren’t giving me a chance.” Inquired Bavasi: “How can you pitch when you can’t get the side out?” Yelled Koufax: “Who the hell can get the side out sitting in the dugout?” Taking it all in was San Francisco’s Willie Mays. “Listen to ’em go,” chuckled Mays. “Maybe they’ll get mad enough to trade him. I just hope they trade him to us.”

A Phenomenon. Fat chance. The next year Koufax finally learned where the plate was, wound up with 18 victories and broke Christy Mathewson’s 58-year-old National League record by striking out 269 batters. Last season he threw a no-hitter against the New York Mets and struck out 18 Chicago Cubs in one game. By midseason his record was 14-4, and he was leading the National League in earned run average (2.06) and strikeouts (209).

Then Koufax’s luck went sour. The index finger of his pitching hand turned white and numb; layers of skin began to peel off. Doctors decided he had Raynaud’s Phenomenon, a circulatory ailment resulting from a blood clot in his palm. Unable even to grip a baseball properly, Koufax did not win another game all year.

Koufax finally seems to have out-pitched his own luck. The Dodgers are paying him $30,000. He owns a bulging stock portfolio, part of an FM radio station and a motel. His $30,000 San Fernando Valley home is equipped with a well-stocked library (Aldous Huxley, Thomas Wolfe), stereo cabinet (Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky) and bar. Bachelor Koufax tools around Hollywood in a shiny gold Oldsmobile convertible with an assortment of beauties at his side, picks up extra change by appearing on-stage in nightclubs, and playing bit roles on TV.