A TALE OF THREE CITIES: NEW YORK, L.A. AND SAN FRANCISCO IN OCTOBER OF ‘62 (25 page)

"I figured, why waste three pitches?" he said.

"It's rough batting against him," said Robinson.
"You can't get set. Other pitchers throw faster but nobody fights
harder."

"My success as a pitcher determines the size of my
salary," Drysdale reasoned. "My salary buys food for my wife and
daughter." His adage was "one of ours, two of yours . . . you don’t
have to go to Harvard to figure it out." Drysdale said he never
intentionally hit a batter, but after retirement he told the
Los
Angeles Times
, "Sure I hit guys." He also threw Vaseline balls
and spitters with the best of them.

He used gel on his stylized Hollywood hair. "A
little dab'll do ya," Mickey Mantle said in a Brylcreem commercial,
and that was all Big D needed to make the ball dance and dive.
Drysdale may have looked for every advantage, whether it be the
psychology of beanballs or illegal substances, but he was an
incredible talent with a 90-mile per hour fast ball. He threw a
natural sinker and had one of the great sliders in the game. He
also threw a "heavy" fast ball. Koufax undoubtedly threw
faster
, but his rising heat tended to land lightly in
Roseboro's glove. Drysdale's spin, causing a downward spiraling
sinker action, would leave Roseboro's hand black and blue. It also
was responsible for many a broken bat, double-play grounders,
jammed thumbs, stinging fingers, and of course great pain when the
ball plunked into a hitter's side.

Drysdale was a great athlete, a cat-quick fielder
with a great pick-off move, and may have been the best-hitting
pitcher other than Babe Ruth. It is not an exaggeration to say
that, had he not been a pitcher, he could have played first base in
the Major Leagues.

He was a workhorse, always in great shape, dedicated
to his craft, and a team leader. Everybody admired him as well as
liked him. Opponents who hated him met him at All-Star Games or
after their playing days, discovering a prince of a man. But during
his impetuous youth, he developed a reputation as a loud
complainer.

In the first year in Los Angeles, Drysdale adjusted,
like all his teammates, to the odd Coliseum dimensions. He was
batted about in the opener at San Francisco's Seals Stadium and
struggled to a 12-13 record with a 4.17 earned run average. The
club finished seventh (71-83).

"My knuckles are scraping that wall every time I
throw a pitch," he muttered about the Coliseum's left field
dimensions.

In 1959 he re-established himself as the staff ace
and one of baseball's best pitchers, winning 17 games to lead L.A.
to the World Championship. While the Giants collapsed in September,
Drysdale's clutch pitching made the difference. He won game three
of the World Series in front of more than 90,000 fans at the
Coliseum, besting Chicago's Dick Donovan, 3-1. He engendered
controversy when umpires accused him of throwing beanballs.

But Drysdale's complaints about the Coliseum
irritated some people. Buzzie Bavasi sent him a plaque that read:
"To be seen, stand up. To be heard, speak up. To be appreciated,
shut up."

Drysdale said he believed that keeping anger inside
contributed to ulcers, but Walter Alston liked his fiery attitude,
which he wished Koufax had. "I like a player who gets a red neck
once in a while," said the manager. Alston also liked the contrast
between the workhorse, ready-every-start Drysdale, vs. the
perennially injured Sandy.

In 1960 Drysdale led the league with 246 strikeouts,
had a 2.84 ERA, but in what would amount to the story of so much of
his career, received little support in a 15-14 season. Los Angeles
failed to repeat. In 1961 he was 13-10, but the Dodgers finished a
disappointing second to the Reds. Drysdale hit 20 batters in 1961,
mostly out of frustration.

Entering the 1962 campaign, Drysdale was the biggest
name on the team, an established All-Star and fan favorite. He was
the unquestioned ace of the staff despite Koufax's presence and
emergence as a budding star after years of struggle. As good as he
was, however, his career had not taken off the way it should. The
reason was the Coliseum. First the bandbox Ebbets Field, then the
crazy Coliseum; Drysdale had been forced to pitch with a short left
field fence.

"At the Coliseum his best pitch, a fastball on the
fists, became a fastball into the seats," wrote Steve Gelman in
Sport
magazine. Drysdale complained long and loud about the
Coliseum, stating. "I'll never win in this place as long as I
live," he said. The hometown hero even asked for a trade . . .
anywhere. His blustery attitude engendered some boos in the
Coliseum years. Finally, after the 1961 season, Dodgers pitchers
came to the Coliseum and symbolically tore down the left field
fence once and for all.

Now, at Dodger Stadium, he was in his element. He
talked less, worked more, and pitched marvelous baseball, winning
11 in a row at one point. On August 3 he reached 20 victories for
the first time.

Aside from his Hollywood gigs, Drysdale did public
relations work for a local dairy and opened restaurants. "The
Meanest Man in Baseball" donated hours to charity, dressing as
Santa for a Christmas party at an orphanage, among many of his good
deeds. He had it all. His wife, Ginger was literally a beauty
queen. The former Tournament of Roses princess told the writers
that tough guy Don helped around the house, waxing floors, doing
dishes, and "I never have to ask him to do a thing."

"If you had seen Sandy Koufax the first time I saw
him, you never would have imagined that he would become what he
became - the greatest pitcher I've ever seen and possibly the
greatest ever," recalled Duke Snider of his old teammate.

Koufax was a long, long ways from becoming "the
greatest ever" when he was growing up in Brooklyn. His birth
father's name was Braun, but his mother divorced and married a man
named Koufax who was "the only real father I ever knew," according
to Sandy. Koufax's upbringing is steeped in myth and legend, some
of which is true, some of which is false. It was said that he grew
up in an "intellectual Jewish household," that he was raised on the
opera and classics; that his parents knew nothing of sports.
Perhaps his mother had little interest in athletics, but Koufax
made great pains to dispute the notion that he was "an
intellectual," or that his baseball career was an accident.

Certainly, he was gifted with great athletic
skills. He was 6-2, 210 pounds, with enormous hands, powerhouse
legs, excellent jumping ability, dexterity and strength that belied
the notion of physical weakness that, perhaps out of some sense of
anti-Semitism, has pervaded the Jewish stereotype.

Koufax starred for the local Jewish Community
House basketball team that took the 1952 National Jewish Welfare
Board title. He was a hoops star at Lafayette High School in
Bensonhurt, and in his senior year held his own against the New
York Knickerbockers' Harry Gallatin in a charity exhibition.

"I'm going to be looking for you in future
years," Gallatin told him after the game ended.

Koufax never played high school baseball
until his senior year, when he was used at first base. He earned a
basketball scholarship to the University of Cincinnati, where he
scored 10 points per game for the freshman team. When the season
was over it was still winter time and the weather was freezing
cold. Koufax never liked the cold. He heard that the Cincinnati
baseball team was planning a trip to New Orleans for a series of
games against colleges there. Trying to finagle a free trip to
paradise, Koufax approached the baseball coach during a practice
held in the gymnasium. He was given a try-out as a pitcher. After
warming up, he took the "mound," which was the free throw line with
a catcher approximately 60 feet, six inches away. He wore
basketball sneakers and had no elevation. Told to air one out, he
wound up and delivered a blazing fast ball. According to the
legend, the impact of the ball caused the catcher to slide
backwards, the slickness of his sneakers sliding on the wood floor.
It was like a scene from the comedy baseball movie
The
Scout
, where the superhuman Brendan Fraser delivers a pitch
that blows the catcher away as if by hurricane force winds.

Koufax won a spot on the roster and
accompanied the team to New Orleans, but was wild and ineffective.
Nevertheless, word of the speed of his fastball spread like
wildfire throughout baseball circles. The Dodgers' scouting staff
included the likes of Buzzie Bavasi, Al Campanis and Fresco
Thompson. Here was an 18-year old Jewish kid from Brooklyn reputed
to throw 100 miles per hour. He was a basketball star, not a
baseball player. His family were people of education, not sports.
It was something out of novel. A legend. His religious background
made him especially attractive to the Dodgers, since Brooklyn had
the largest Jewish population in America. It made him less
attractive to teams like St. Louis and Cincinnati, whose
populations were not as . . . enlightened.

The Dodgers figured they had best grab the
kid now instead of leaving him available to another club. Koufax
realized his financial potential and ran a hard bargain. Brooklyn
was "forced" to sign him to a $14,000 bonus. Big league rules of
the time required that he had to go straight to the Majors. A
"bonus baby" had to be kept on the Major League roster for two
years. He could not be sent to the minors. The idea was to prevent
wealthy franchises - like the Dodgers and Yankees - from
stockpiling talent. It could easily have been the undoing of
Koufax. The agreement guaranteed the 19-year old could return to
college, and over the next few years there were many times when
that appeared to be his best option.

Koufax was a prospect of untold potential,
but desperately needed seasoning. Had he pitched three or four
years in college, then a few more years in the minor leagues, he
probably would have made a smooth transition to the big leagues.
Instead, he sat on the Dodgers' bench for years, his progress
stilted by lack of work or even attention. He was 19 years old in
1955, officially a member of the first World Championship club in
franchise history. In reality, he took a roster spot that could
have been given to a worthy player.

"Facing him in batting practice was like
playing Russian roulette," joked Snider. At Vero Beach, Koufax was
too embarrassed to pitch in the regular bullpen, preferring to hide
his wildness in sessions held on a distant practice field
mound.

He pitched in 12 games and never
demonstrated that he was close to big league readiness. On a
pennant-contender, he could not be used in meaningless games, since
there were never any. Manager Walt Alston resented Koufax's forced
presence. An old school Midwesterner, Alston could not relate to
Koufax at all. Alston was devoutly Christian. Some claimed he was
an anti-Semite, but in truth he simply could not understand
Koufax's personality. Alston understood tobacco-chewing,
gutter-mouthed, hardcore baseball types. Koufax sat in the dugout
watching the games as if he was at the opera. He was not a yeller
or screamer. His quiet demeanor was mistaken for a lack of resolve
or competitive fire.

Perhaps this was Koufax's nature, but his
youth and distance from his famous teammates made it difficult to
exert himself in any way, on the bench or off. The veteran Dodgers
observed him with curiosity and some resentment, since he took up a
roster spot that could have gone to an important pinch-hitter, a
defensive replacement, or a middle inning reliever. But
The Boys
of Summer
were a worldly lot. They had lived through the "great
experiment" of Jackie Robinson's breaking into the bigs, and were
well-acculturated by their Flatbush environment.

For three years in Brooklyn it went on like
that. When the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles, Koufax felt a sense of
relief. He was no longer the homegrown "Jewish hope." Don Drysdale
had befriended him and in Los Angeles showed him a fun new culture.
He was also pleased to learn that a large Jewish population lived
in the San Fernando Valley. L.A. Jews were much different from
their Brooklyn brethren; they were far more assimilated and did not
place all their hopes and dreams on the "nice Jewish boy" as
Brooklynites had.

Slowly but surely, inch by inch, Koufax
developed. It was at times agonizing, and more than a little
difficult for Alston to deal with. In 1958, the 22-year old Koufax
was 11-11 on a seventh place team in the Coliseum. With the club
out of the pennant race early, he was able to get more mound time;
26 starts and 40 appearances.

In 1959, Koufax seemed to take a step back.
The club was on its way to a pennant in a season in which every
game counted (it took a play-off to beat Milwaukee), and he could
not be coddled. "He's either awfully good or awfully bad, just the
way I play pool," said Alston.

Shortly before the All-Star break, Koufax
struck out 16 Philadelphia Phillies in a night game. In August, San
Francisco visited the Coliseum. Koufax, facing the likes of Willie
Mays, Orlando Cepeda and hot rookie Willie McCovey, broke the
National League record for strikeouts in a single game (previously
held by Dizzy Dean), while tying Bob Feller's big league standard
of18. Koufax struck out the side in the ninth, but the game was
tied. A notoriously bad hitter, Koufax was not pinch-hit for in the
bottom of the ninth. He singled, and Wally Moon's "Moon shot" home
run over the short-but-high left field fence won the game, 5-2.

On the season, Koufax was 8-6, getting 23
starts in addition to 12 relief appearances. Los Angeles rallied to
win the pennant. In game five of the World Series at the Coliseum,
Koufax started against Bob Shaw, a notorious spitball artist with
the Chicago White Sox. Koufax was dominant but touched for a run in
the fourth when Nelson Fox scored on a double-play grounder hit by
Sherm Lollar. Despite his five-hit performance over eight innings,
it was not enough to match the shutout pitching of Shaw, Billy
Pierce and Dick Donovan in a 1-0 Chicago victory.