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Out of Left Field |
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Sandy Koufax ...Well, Almost |
Koufax may not have been
the greatest of all time
By STAN ISAACS
of TheColumnists.com
Four years ago, Dave Hirshey, an editor at HarperCollins, suggested that Jane Leavy do a book on Sandy Koufax, the elusive pitching immortal. Jane, an outstanding writer and reporter in sports and features for the Washington Post, agreed. The result was “Sandy Koufax,” the unauthorized biography that has had Koufax fans rushing to the book stores, which put it high up on the New York Times best seller lists in a short time.
For those who are awed by Koufax, and those who are curious about him it is a terrific book. Koufax, who is a mysterious character in many ways, didn’t agree to sit down one-to-one with Leavy, but he cooperated to the extent of permitting friends to talk to her and arranged for her to be in places where he was, i.e. golf tournaments, banquets.
Leavy dug deep and the book is a treasure trove of inside information about Koufax, about events involving him, about his greatness as a pitcher and the phenomenal hold he has on many admirers--most of whom have never met him. Leavy spoke at her hometown library in Roslyn, Long Island, last week and was a delight culling many of the stories about Koufax.
With all that, there is
something of a generation gap problem here.
Leavy is 50. That means she was 11 years old when Koufax first
emerged as a a pitcher of promise; that she was an impressionable
13 to 16 in Koufax’ last four seasons, when he was at his
greatest, the time people of that generation remember most.
Koufax had six outstanding seasons, four great ones. He won more than 20 games three times. Compare that with Warren Spahn, another lefty, and something of a contemporary, who won 20 or more games 13 times and won 23 games at the age of 42. Spahn is too frequently overlooked by today’s sports mavens because he was not a dominant strikeout pitcher.
We remember the athletic stars who shone brilliantly when we were most impressionable. Though I wouldn’t argue the point too avidly, deep in my heart I have always believed that Bob Feller was the greatest pitcher of all time. Why? Because I was seven years old and just beginning to be a baseball fan when Feller came to the big leagues as a boy wonder of 17. And I was a most impressionable lad just short of my teens when he won more than 20 games four years in a row from 1938 through 1941.
Feller won 20 or more games six times, missing four years in his prime because of military duty in World War II. Leavy quotes Koufax’ pal Fred Wilpon, owner of the Mets, a childhood buddy, saying Sandy was the greatest pitcher of all time. But there is no mention of Spahn and Feller, Lefty Grove, Walter Johnson or Christy Mathewson in this context.
In that sense I was struck by this line from Leavy: “Modern myth-making is by definition retrospective; the accretion of detail produces a portrait so outsized it seems petty to question the particulars.”
Consider the fact that Koufax is celebrated as a Jew for not pitching on Yom Kippur during the 1965 World Series. Jews adore Koufax for this. Leavy makes this a significant part of her own adoration for the man. She admits it even influences her not to work on Yom Kippur.
But Hank Greenberg, another Hall of Fame Jewish player, preceded Koufax by 25 years in not playing in the World Series on Yom Kippur. This at a time when Hitler was crucifying Jews in Europe. Leavy devotes one paragraph to Greenberg, noting that he hit two home runs when he played on Rosh Hashonah and that “No one objected when he chose not to play a week later on Yom Kippur, the more solemn day of observance.”
When I suggested to Leavy that Greenberg’s action had just as much impact if not more because he was an every day player staying out of the lineup while Koufax could pitch the next day, she said a rabbi told her that Koufax made a greater impact. I suspect the rabbi wasn’t born when Greenberg played and may have well been a teenager like Leavy when Koufax was the idol of Jews.
This reminds me of a book somebody put out that was a compilation of the Hundred Most Influential Jews in history. The only athlete to make it--along with Einstein, Jesus Christ, Maimonides among others-was Sandy Koufax. There was no mention of Greenberg and, more significantly, the lightweight boxing champion of the 1920s, Benny Leonard, the first athletic idol of the immigrant generation to belie the stereotype of Jews as passive non-athletic types. I suspect that author was a Johnny-Come-Lately to sports as well.
Leavy is not only a good writer and reporter, she is fair. She notes that Koufax’ greatness coincided with pitching in Dodger Stadium, “a pitchers’ paradise with generous foul territory and a terrible hitting background configured to enhance Dodger pitching. And it did. In his first season at Chavez Ravine, Koufax lowered his home earned-run average from 4.29 to 1.75; Don Drysdale lowered his from 2.83 to 2.11.
She also quotes Bob Gibson saying he is “unwilling to take a back seat [to Sandy] as a pitcher.….It bothers me somewhat, just as I’m sure it bothers [Juan] Marichal, to hear and read so often that Koufax was the leading pitcher of our generation. A generation lasts more than five years.”
What emerges here as much as anything else is Koufax’ likeability. He is a sweet, humble, caring, friendly man who is universally popular. I suspect nobody has ever said a bad word about Koufax.
The worst thing anybody has ever said about him is that he is a recluse. Sandy refutes this as does Leavy, pointing out that he is there for all to see where he lives in Vero Beach, the Dodgers’ spring training base, and that he is visible working with Dodger pitchers, and also the pitchers of his pal Wilpon’s Mets, every spring.
But Sandy is Sandy. “As
far as I know,” Leavy said at her library talk last week,
“except for a few pages, he hasn’t read the book, yet.”
© 2002 by Stan Isaacs. The Stan Isaacs caricature is ©
2001 by Jim Hummel.
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