KOUFAX, SANDY

KOUFAX, SANDY (Sanford Braun; 1935– ), U.S. baseball player, one of the greatest pitchers in its history, and with   Hank greenberg one of only two Jewish players elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Koufax was born in the Borough Park section of Brooklyn to Jack Braun, a salesman, and Evelyn (Lichtenstein), a CPA. His parents divorced when he was three. When he was nine, his mother married Irving Koufax, a neighborhood lawyer, and though Irving never legally adopted Koufax, his stepson always referred to Irving as his father, and took his last name. After graduating Lafayette High School, Koufax accepted a basketball scholarship to the University of Cincinnati in the fall of 1953, and averaged 9.7 points on the 12–2 freshman team. Koufax then joined the varsity baseball team, and on December 14, 1954, two weeks before his 19th birthday, signed with his hometown Brooklyn Dodgers as a $14,000 bonus baby. Koufax made his debut on June 24, 1955, and played with the Dodgers from 1955 to 1966, first in Brooklyn and then Los Angeles. His first seven years were ordinary, with a wild fast-ball resulting in a 54–53 record. In 1961, Koufax went 18–13 and led the NL in strikeouts with 269, breaking by two the 58-year-old NL record in a remarkable 255 innings. But beginning in 1962, when the team moved to spacious Dodger Stadium, Koufax put together what some consider the most dominant five-year stretch in history: a 111–34 record while leading the National League in ERA all five years. Along the way, Koufax tied the then-ML record by striking out 18 players in nine innings on April 24, 1962; pitched a no-hitter each season from 1962 to 1965, the first major leaguer to pitch more than three no-hitters, with the last one a 1–0 perfect game against the Cubs on September 9, 1965; struck out 382 batters in 1965 to set a ML record, as well as going 26–8 with a 2.04 ERA, eight shutouts, 27 complete games, and setting the ML record for most innings pitched (323) without hitting a batter; and led the Dodgers to pennants in 1963, 1965, and 1966, winning the NL Cy Young Award each of the years as well as the MVP in 1963 following his 25–5 season. Koufax led the league in wins three times, strikeouts four times, shutouts three times, and in 57 innings in eight World Series games he posted a 0.95 ERA. He won the first game of the 1963 World Series while striking out 15 Yankees, then the World Series record, and won the fourth game as well, earning him the World Series MVP. In 1965, the first game of the World Series fell on Yom Kippur, a day on which Koufax never pitched. As greenberg had done 31 years before, Koufax instead went to synagogue, emerging as the Jewish sports icon. "By refusing to pitch, Koufax defined himself as a man of principle who placed faith above craft," Jane Leavy wrote in her biography of Koufax. "He became inextricably linked with the American Jewish experience. As John Goodman put it in the movie The Big Lebowski: "Three thousand years of beautiful tradition – from Moses to Sandy Koufax." Koufax pitched the next day and lost, but he shut out the Minnesota Twins in Games 5 and 7 – the last game on two days' rest – giving the Dodgers the Series and Koufax his second World Series MVP. Arthritis forced Koufax into premature retirement at the end of the 1966 season while still at his peak. In a 12-season career, Koufax compiled a 165–87 record with a 2.76 ERA, 2,396 strikeouts in 2,324⅓ innings, 167 complete games, 40 shutouts, was selected to seven All-Star teams, and is fifth all-time in strikeouts per nine innings pitched (9.28). In 1972 at age 36, Koufax became the youngest player voted into the Hall of Fame. He wrote his autobiography Koufax (1966) with Ed Linn, and is the subject of Sandy Koufax: Strikeout King (1964) by Arnold Hano, The Baseball Life of Sandy Koufax (1968) by George Vecsey, Koufax (2000) by Ed Gruver, and the bestselling Sandy Koufax, A Lefty's Legacy (2002) by Jane Leavy. (Elli Wohlgelernter (2nd ed.)