Not Necessarily
kosherBruce Lowitt
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The deification of Sandy Koufax
OLDSMAR, Fla—It was 1957, a couple of weeks before my 15th birthday, as I helped set the seder table in our house back in Brooklyn, I set a juice glass filled with wine next to Elijah's cup.
My mother glanced up. "What's that for?"
"Sandy Koufax."
The Dodgers had lost yet another World Series to the Yankees in October, a
new season was about to start and Koufax was not far from supplanting Hank
Greenberg as my favorite Jewish major leaguer—not that I knew of any other
Jewish major leaguers, mind you.
Sure, Greenberg had been elected to the Hall of Fame in 1956, but he'd
stopped playing when I was 5 years old and he'd played in Detroit, which was
somewhere "out there," meaning west of Brooklyn. Greenberg was a face on a
baseball card and comments by my father and uncles. Koufax was real and he
played for us.
Okay, Don Newcombe had won the MVP and Cy Young awards in 1956 and we had Campy and Pee wee and Duke and Jackie and Gil and so on. They played for us, too —us meaning Brooklyn.
But
Koufax was different. So what if he wasn't particularly good in 1956? He was one
of us — meaning Jewish.The glass of wine stayed. My mother, who had learned to umpire arguments over the Dodgers between me and my older brother, understood.
Koufax's 1955 rookie card
(She also understood that if she'd demanded that I remove the glass, she'd
have had to deal with Manischewitz Malaga stains on the tablecloth —and
on maybe a wall or two.)
Thus began my serious deification of left-handed pitcher Sandy Koufax. From
1958 until 1969, when my New York Mets won the World Series and I finally
got over the Dodgers' desertion to California, I hated them. Not individually, but collectively.
Is "hated" too strong a word? I fantasized about the Dodgers and Yankees
getting ready for a World Series game in the Bronx and the stadium falling
down on them. Except not on Koufax. Or pitcher Larry Sherry and his brother,
Norm, a catcher. They were Jewish Dodgers, too. (Okay, and Ron Blomberg of
the Yankees, too.) But unlike Koufax, they were ordinary. Koufax wound up in
the Hall of Fame.
Obviously, I am not alone in my belief that the Brooklyn-born Koufax was the
best Jewish ballplayer to step onto a major-league field.
There is a six-team Israel Baseball League. It will begin its inaugural
season June 24. Last month the IBL conducted its player draft. The last
player selected by the Modi'in Miracle was Sandy Koufax.
By the way, the first draft pick, also by Modi'in, was Los Angeles-born
infielder Aaron Levin, 21, who played for Cuesta Community College in San
Luis Obispo, Calif., about 260 miles north of San Diego (and nine miles
north of Pismo Beach for you fans of Jack Webb's old Dragnet series on TV).
Koufax is 71 now, and not likely to throw a pitch for the Miracle —unless,
of course, you believe in Miracles.
"His selection is a tribute to the esteem with which he is held by everyone
associated with this league," Miracle manager Art Shamsky, who spent four of
his eight big-league seasons with the Mets, told The Associated Press. "It's
been 41 years between starts for him. If he's rested and ready to take the
mound again, we want him on our team."
Koufax pitched four no-hitters, one of them a perfect game, in his 12-year
major-league career. But he may well be as well known for a game he
didn't pitch: Game 1 of the 1965 World Series, in Minnesota, because if fell on Yom Kippur.
Koufax, by the way, never pitched during the High Holy Days, but until 1965
none had fallen on the opening of the World Series. Koufax never considered
his refusal to pitch that game particularly consequential. The Dodgers also
had Don Drysdale, their other ace.
But Minnesota jumped on Drysdale. He lasted less than three innings and gave
up seven runs. When Dodgers manager Walter Alston got to the mound, Drysdale
looked at him and said, "I bet you wish I was Jewish today, too, huh?"
Koufax then lost Game 2.
That 1965 World Series was, for me, the textbook definition of Mixed
Emotions. Y'know, like the old joke about seeing your mother-in-law drive
over a cliff in your brand-new car.
Koufax pitched twice more, shutouts in Games 5 and 7.
The Dodgers won the World Series.
One year later, at age 30, after arguably his best season, Koufax retired,
his left arm wracked by traumatic arthritis that threatened to leave him
disabled for life. "When I'm 40 years old," he said at the time, "I'd still
like to be able to comb my hair."
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Bruce Lowitt grew up short, fat, and Jewish in Bensonhurst, then a short,
fat, and Jewish section of Brooklyn (where Koufax, neither short nor fat,
had lived), and spent 36 years covering sports for The Associated Press and
St. Petersburg Times before retiring in 2003. Since then he has been a
freelance writer for various publications. He and his wife live in the Tampa
Bay area on Florida's Gulf Coast.
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