Sandy Koufax
Mon., December 30, 04:56 PM
Even though I try to ignore it, I still mourn the loss of baseball. Do you realize that baseball is entirely different from all the other popular team sports? Football, basketball, hockey, soccer – even quiddich! – are all played on symmetrical fields with a goal of some sort at each end. Not baseball, which is a battle between a pitcher and a batter, and all the others on the field are accessories. And, like life, baseball doesn’t have a time clock. You play till you’re done.
Remembering that Sandy Koufax was my favorite baseball player of all time, my son bought me two recent biographies: Koufax, by Edward Gruver, and Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy, by Jane Leavy. As biographies, both books are what I call glorified term papers – mostly a rehash of what’s been published before. That’s kind of what I expected. The subject isn’t talking, and more and more of his contemporaries are no longer available. These two books are about baseball, and as baseball books, I found them very interesting indeed.
Both books center around one specific game, and then digress all over the place – to other games, other people, Sandy’s childhood, his character, and so forth. Gruver’s central game is the seventh game of the 1965 World Series, Koufax pitching against the Minnesota Twins on two days’ rest. Leavy’s central game is the fourth no-hitter, the Perfect Game against the Chicago Cubs.
The Gruver book is about pitching, that is, the physics and mechanics of throwing a baseball past a batter. It describes how Koufax is well suited to be a pitcher: the strong muscles in his back and legs, his exceptionally long fingers. Someone who can hold a baseball the way other people hold a golf ball can really control the spin as it leaves his hand.
The book reminds me of how I used to watch him pitch and wonder if I could do it too. I went through the motions – the wind-up and the follow-through – and the ball did go farther than I’d ever thrown one, but… Fortunately, only my dog was there to witness my humiliation. He had a good time running after that one.
Sandy Koufax was absolutely the most beautiful pitcher I ever saw. Not knowing of any baseball player that looked like that, I used to compare him to ballet dancers like Rudolf Nureyev. There are stop-action photographs that are very useful for teaching pitching, but none of them can convey the grace of a Koufax pitching motion. I wasn’t the only one to say I’d be willing to pay just to watch him warm up.
Leavy’s idea was to use the Koufax career as the basis for a commentary on the times and the changes that have taken place over the last forty years. When I read that she had never seen him pitch, a warning light went on in my brain. Either she was too young or, if she was around at that time, she wasn’t paying attention. As I read, I couldn’t decide whether she was focusing on the wrong things or focusing on the right things for the wrong reason. I kept thinking, “she just doesn’t get it.” But that didn’t stop me from enjoying the reading, even as I kept answering back.
I did get to see Sandy pitch, and not just on television. I actually flew out to Los Angeles so that I would be able to see him pitch, as I said, in his own backyard. Although that game was not particularly important in the greater scheme of the season, it is mentioned on page 229 of the book. Sandy pitched eleven scoreless innings, but so did Jim Bunning for the Phillies. He was removed for a pinch-hitter, and Phil Regan won in the twelfth. If I could dig deep enough, I’ll bet I would find the ticket stubs.
Jane Leavy places a lot of importance on anti-Semitism, but I don’t think she really understands that either. She grew up in New York, where Jews are not really a minority, and I think she was born later than the generation that felt so vulnerable. Oh, yes, anti-Semitism did and does exist, but mid-westerners and southerners mistrust almost any New Yorker, regardless of their religion. (The Bible Belt isn’t too fond of Catholics either.) In Sandy Koufax’ generation (and mine), not going to work or to school on Yom Kippur wasn’t about being religious; if you were Jewish you stayed out. Religious people (or those who were observant some of the time) went to the synagogue. People who were not religious stayed out anyway, in order not to make the others look bad. It had less to do with religion than it was a responsibility to the Jewish community, of which you would always be a part. The Nazis had taught us that it wasn’t something you could escape.
When Sandy Koufax didn’t pitch on Yom Kippur, it was a message to young people, but not about religious conviction. It was about loyalty, about standing up for yourself, your values and your people. We all did it, and there never was any question about it. There is no doubt that Koufax had a sense of teaching young people, and that was just one aspect of it.
Did he experience anti-Semitism among some of those rednecks? Probably. Was it important to him? Probably not; it happened. So he went about his business and spent time with people who experienced more prejudice than he did.
A corollary to the anti-Semitism question is the juxtaposition of Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax, the blue-eyed blond Californian and the dark taciturn (?) Mediterranean. I heard the same kind of garbage in comparing Captain Kirk to Mr. Spock. I guess it’s a matter of taste. Personally, I always considered Mr. Spock a sexy character, and as I got older, Captain Kirk seemed more and more shallow.
Since the pivot of Leavy’s book is the Perfect Game, she talks a lot about Bob Hendley, the opposing pitcher. (It’s no accident, I think, that Hendley is still available for her to interview.) Hendley pitched a one-hitter that night, and Leavy goes into great detail about his being unique… I agree, it was very unusual, and he pitched a very good game. But somewhere Leavy has forgotten about Harvey Haddix, who lost a perfect game in the fifties. Haddix is quoted as saying, “I probably got more famous from losing the perfect game in thirteen innings than if I had won it in nine!” Now that’s unique, but Haddix has died and can’t offer any new sound bytes.
Two books, written thirty-five years past his greatest triumphs, seem to come the same conclusion. Sandy Koufax is a nice guy, a loyal friend, a man of good character, a “mensch.” They can’t seem to find anyone to say something bad about him, despite the fact that he is supposedly “aloof” and has “few friends.” Sorry, I don’t believe that. I suspect that he has little patience for fools and hangers-on. Good for him.
According to Leavy, Sandy Koufax is teaching again. Not only is he coaching young pitchers, but he is speaking to scientists who are studying athletic motion and injuries. He made a diagram illustrating the motion – like a catapult. Now experts have made a computer model of it. He’s demonstrating what I’ve always said: nothing you ever learn is wasted. (You knew I would say that, didn’t you?)
Most interesting about the Leavy book is that it made me look back in a new way. The young man I admired is no longer young, though he’s certainly a good-lookin’ ol’ man. I have a son just about the age Sandy was when he retired from baseball. In other words, I’m old enough to be his (the young man’s) mother!
Now, as you may have read, I consider my son an exemplary young man, at least as nice as Sandy Koufax. As a matter of fact, I think the two of them have a lot in common and might just get along very well. But perfect though he may be…Son is no baseball pitcher!
