Sandy in Minny: Honoring Him for That

When Hank Greenberg, the Detroit Tigers slugger and baseball’s first Jewish superstar, decided to sit out a game in the midst of the 1934 pennant race because it fell on the most solemn day on the Jewish calendar, Edgar Guest penned a poem to mark the occasion. Guest ended his tribute, “Speaking of Greenberg,” which appeared in the Detroit Free Press a few days after Yom Kippur, with the lines:

Greenberg played in an era when anti-Semitism was rife in America, thanks to people like Henry Ford—also a key figure in Detroit—and Father Charles Coughlin, a prominent radio preacher, so this acknowledgment of his courageous stance in the general media was most welcome.

A generation later, another Jewish superstar chose not to not pitch in baseball’s fall classic because it fell on the Day of Atonement.

Sanford Braun was born on December 30, 1935, in Brooklyn. His parents divorced when he was 3 and his mother married Irving Koufax when Sandy was 9. Unlike Greenberg, who grew up in an Orthodox home where the family kept kosher and regularly attended synagogue, Koufax had comparatively little experience with such traditions.

His early struggles with his command on the mound are well-documented, as are his arm problems. He came into his own in 1961, finishing with an 18–13 record. The following year began a streak of five ERA titles, even though he appeared in just 28 games in 1962 and 29 in 1964. Despite his health issues, Koufax tossed 658⅔ innings in his final two campaigns.

The 1965 season would be the penultimate for Koufax, the fourth in a string of five dominant years that would cement his place in the Hall of Fame. For the second time in three seasons, he won the pitcher’s triple crown, leading the majors with 26 wins, 382 strikeouts, and a 2.04 earned run average. (Amazingly, he would close out his career by repeating the feat.) And let’s not forget the 1–0 perfect game against the Chicago Cubs on September 9. His opponent, Bob Hendley, allowed just one hit and the only runner to cross the plate did so on an error. That was indicative of how little offensive support the Los Angeles Dodgers gave their pitchers as they finished eighth in the 10-team league in runs scored. They only clinched the pennant on the next-to-last day of the season. Care to guess who was on the mound for that one?

The Dodgers would face the Minnesota Twins in the 1965 Series. Formerly the Washington Senators before relocating to the Twin Cities in 1961, the Twins were a powerful club featuring the likes of Harmon Killebrew, Bobby Allison, Tony Oliva, and Jimmie Hall; shortstop Zoilo Versalles hit career highs in several offensive categories, led the league in doubles, triples, total bases, and runs, and would be named the AL MVP.

The Twins climbed into first place to stay on July 3 and clinched the flag on September 26 with a 2–1 win against their replacements, the expansion Washington Senators, finishing with a record of 102–60, seven games ahead of the second-place Chicago White Sox.

The Dodgers, on the other hand, had to wait until the 161st game of the season to clinch, beating the Milwaukee Braves, 3–1, with Koufax on the mound for the complete-game victory. Their record of 97–75 was just two games better than the second-place San Francisco Giants. Although they spent most of the campaign at the top of the standings, LA dropped into second place on September 9 and had to battle the rest of the way.

According to a UPI brief that appeared in the New York Times on October 5, “The Los Angeles Dodgers planned to open the World Series without the services of Sandy Koufax in the first game next Wednesday if they win the National League Pennant. … Koufax has always been excused on the Jewish holy day. It is written into his contract that he needn’t suit up on that day. The Dodgers owner, Walter O’Malley, said he would not let the 25-game winner pitch ‘under any circumstances,’ even if he could receive a dispensation.”2

The word “dispensation” is interesting because Greenberg actually did receive one when he decided to play on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, in 1934. In an interview for the Detroit News, “Rabbi Joseph Thumin, the religious leader of the city’s Temple Beth Abraham…explained that according to the Talmud— the discussion and interpretation of Jewish law—Rosh Hashanah was a day of celebration, so it was permissible for Greenberg to participate in those games” while Yom Kippur was much more somber and introspective.3

Unlike Greenberg, Koufax came of age in the post-World War II era, when anti-Semitism was less overt. Jews sought to assimilate more into American society, removed by a generation from parents who might have come over from the “old country.” In his autobiography, Koufax, written with Ed Linn in 1966, he devoted a scant two paragraphs to his abstention, which, he wrote, he thought was “played all out of proportion.”

“I had tried to deflect questions about my intentions through the last couple of weeks of the season by saying I was praying for rain,” he wrote. “There was never any decision to make, though, because there was never any possibility that I would pitch.… The club knows that I don’t work on that day.”4

Many fans don’t realize that this was not the first time Koufax sat out on Yom Kippur. It was just the most noteworthy because of the World Series implications. He pointed out in Koufax that in previous years, when Yom Kippur had fallen during the season, it had been easy enough to reschedule a start. But in the heated atmosphere of the World Series, it took on more prominence.

In a biography published in 2000 and also titled Koufax, author Edward Gruver writes, “Though he has never talked extensively about his decision, newspapers reported that he spent the day of the opener attending services in a synagogue in St. Paul.”5

Jane Leavy was the more decisive in 2002 in Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy, asserting: “He was apocryphally seen at synagogues throughout the Twin Cities—and even in Los Angeles. … In fact, he did not attend services …that day or anywhere else.”6

Given his secular connection with Judaism, not to mention his affinity for privacy, it seems unlikely that he would go out of his way to attract attention. If he did attend services, it probably would have been at the Temple of Aaron Synagogue, the closest one to the hotel, but it’s most likely that Koufax simply remained in his room at the St. Paul Hotel, where the Dodgers stayed while in Minnesota.

Don Drysdale got the nod for the opening game but proved to be no match for the Twins batters. He left the game after just two and two-thirds innings, shelled for seven runs, including homers by Versalles and Mincher. When manager Walt Alston came out to give him the hook, Drysdale said to him, “Hey, skip, bet you wish I was Jewish today, too.”7 Final score: Twins 8, Dodgers 2.

According to a story in Sports Illustrated in 2015 marking the 50th anniversary of that fateful choice, Koufax was visited the following day by Rabbi Moshe Feller, an emissary of the Chabad movement, a subset of Hasidism, who reportedly gave him a set of phylacteries, or tefillin, which Jewish men traditionally don during morning prayers.8

Was it divine intervention that put Koufax in position to be the World Series hero? He lost Game Two, the day after Yom Kippur, 5–1, although he performed well, allowing just two runs, one unearned, in six innings while striking out nine. He may well have been weakened from fasting on the holiday.

Koufax returned to dominant form with a 7–0 victory in Game Five in front of the Dodger faithful on October 11, allowing just five batters to reach base on four hits and a walk while fanning 10. That gave the Dodgers a 3–2 series lead. The Twins came back to beat Claude Osteen, 5–1, to take Game Six, setting up the dramatic finale.

Pitching on just two days’ rest in enemy territory, Koufax was overpowering once again. The Dodgers scratched out two runs in the fourth inning and were never in any real trouble. The lefty gave up just three hits and walked the same number while once again striking out 10 in the complete game.

In the final frame, an understandably weary Koufax faced the heart of the Twins lineup. Oliva grounded out to third to start things off but future Hall of Famer Killebrew, who led the team with 25 home runs despite appearing in just 113 games because of various injuries, singled to bring the tying run to the plate. Catcher Earl Battey took a called third strike, setting up a showdown with outfielder Allison, who’d finished the regular season second on the Twins in home runs and third in RBIs.

When Allison struck out swinging on a 2–2 count to the end game, there was no chest-thumping or screaming by the victorious pitcher or his teammates. Just smiles and handshakes. To no one’s surprise, Koufax was named MVP of the Series, an apt reward for the sacrifice he’d made and the meaning it had for Jews of all ages, baseball fans or not.

Did Koufax join his fellow Jews in prayer in a formal setting? In the end, it doesn’t matter. Either way, dayenu—it would have been enough—that he took a stand not to play in one of the most important games of his career. It sent a message to Jewish youth (as well as their elders) that they could engage in all things American while at the same time—to paraphrase Guest’s tribute to Greenberg a generation before—being true to their religion.

One rabbi recalled a conversation he had with Koufax about the question of playing on Yom Kippur. “He said to me, ‘I’m Jewish. I’m a role model. I want [Jews] to understand they have to have pride.’ Not being observant and feeling a connection with his people, it’s an even greater sacrifice.”9

RON KAPLAN has been a member of SABR for more than 30 years. He is the author of 501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read before They Die and Hank Greenberg in 1958: Hatred and Home Runs in the Shadow of War. He is a former sports and features editor for the New Jersey Jewish News, where he created Kaplan’s Korner on Jews and Sports, which won the NJ Press Association’s award for best blog in 2014. He lives in Montclair, New Jersey, where he hosts Ron Kaplan’s Baseball Bookshelf, a blog about the literature and pop culture of the sport (RonKaplansBaseballBookshelf.com).

 

Notes

1 Edgar A. Guest, “Speaking of Greenberg,” Detroit Free Press, October 4, 1934, 6.

2 “Koufax Out Wednesday,” The New York Times, October 2, 1964, 10.

3 Ron Kaplan, Hank Greenberg in 1938: Hatred and Home Runs in the Shadow of War (New York: Sports Publishing, 2017), 147.

4 Sandy Koufax and Ed Linn, Koufax (New York: Viking, 1966), 252.

5 Edward Gruver, Koufax (Dallas: Taylor Publishing Company, 2000), 52.

6 Jane Leavy, Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy (New York: Harper Collins, 2002), 184.

7 Leavy. There are numerous variations of Drysdale’s comment.

8 John Rosengren, “Myth and Fact part of legacy from Sandy Koufax’s Yom Kippur Choice,” Sports Illustrated, September 23, 2015, https://www.si.com/mlb/2015/09/23/sandy-koufax-yom-kippur-1965-world-series.

9 Leavy, Koufax, 183.