April 14, 1964: Sandy Koufax stifles Cardinals in his only career Opening Day start

Sandy Koufax shut out the Cardinals in the only opening-day start of his big-league career. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)

“A full season of pitching stretches the muscles of the arm. Over the winter, the muscles relax back into place, and whatever little injuries may have occurred in either the stretching or the relaxing develop scar tissue or, as they are more commonly called, adhesions. … When the scar tissue tears away, a certain amount of bleeding and swelling will take place, and the pitcher may be out of action for ten days to two weeks. In 1964, my adhesions did not tear loose during spring training. I got to pitch the opening game, finally.” — Sandy Koufax1

While he did not overpower the St. Louis Cardinals in the way he had tortured so many teams during the previous campaign, Sandy Koufax put the Los Angeles Dodgers in the win column on April 14 by throwing the National League’s only Opening Day shutout of 1964.2 Allowing six hits, Koufax struck out a modest five batters, but he did not issue a walk and allowed only one runner to reach second base at Dodger Stadium in a 4-0 victory.

“He belongs in a higher league,” said St. Louis pitcher Roger Craig, Koufax’s former Dodgers teammate, now in his first season with the Cardinals.3

But others from the Cardinals organization suggested that Koufax had lost some of the pizzazz that made him the National League MVP and the first unanimous Cy Young Award winner in 1963. Five of St. Louis’s six hits came on Koufax’s curveball, a pitch that had wiped out scores of hitters since he debuted as a 19-year-old in 1955.

Cardinals manager Johnny Keane noted that his players hit Koufax “surprisingly hard,”4 even though he allowed only singles and Bill White reached second base only due to a wild pitch. “I thought Koufax was very ordinary,” added St. Louis coach Howie Pollet. “He got by on reputation, as Warren Spahn and others often do. Even when a great pitcher doesn’t have his good stuff, the batters keep looking for it.”5

Regardless, Koufax ended the Cardinals’ three-year winning streak in season openers by tossing the Dodgers’ first Opening Day shutout since 1940.6

“I’ve been getting worked up for days. It’s a thrill,” Koufax said. “We’re all charged up. I always get excited before every start, but the first game of the season is something extra.”7

But before the umpires yelled. “Play ball!” on the first-ever Opening Day meeting between the Dodgers and Cardinals, a litany of unusual incidents spoiled the ambiance. Due to a traffic snafu outside the ballpark, officials delayed the game five minutes to allow fans more time to get into their seats. Then, during the National Anthem, Wagnerian opera tenor Lauritz Melchior lost power in his microphone, allowing only the final line of the song to come through the stadium speakers. Finally, future major leaguer Larry Yount,8 a member of the Woodland Hills Pony League national runner-up squad, delivered the ceremonial first pitch–six months later than scheduled. The Dodgers initially planned Yount’s first pitch for Game Five of the 1963 World Series, but LA’s sweep prevented it.

After inducing a fly out on the second pitch of the game, Koufax cut down Dick Groat and White on back-to-back strikeouts to energize baseball’s largest Opening Day crowd of the season (50,451). But St. Louis starter Ernie Broglio–four years removed from an NL-leading 21-win season–showed some of that old spark, holding back LA’s offense in the early going.

Dodgers rookie Johnny Werhas singled in his first career at-bat in the third. Werhas became the seventh straight different Opening Day third baseman for the Dodgers since the franchise relocated to Los Angeles in 1958.9 He also started LA’s only double play of the game with no outs in the ninth and wore a “grin that covered the entire dressing room”10 after a dazzling debut in front of a hometown crowd.11

Offensive action otherwise remained quiet until the Dodgers broke a scoreless tie in the sixth when Willie Davis singled, stole second, moved to third on a groundout, and scored on Ron Fairly’s single up the middle.

“I should have caught that ball Fairly hit through the box to score Davis,” Broglio said. “That was the turning point. You give Koufax a run, and he gets pretty tough.”12

LA’s offense used the small-ball approach to produce another tally in the seventh as John Roseboro reached on an error, moved to second on Koufax’s sacrifice, advanced to third on a Maury Wills single, and scored when Jim Gilliam poked a grounder through the right side. In the eighth, Frank Howard–happy to see Broglio lifted from the game–delivered a crushing blow, launching reliever Ron Taylor’s low fastball more than a dozen rows up into the left-field bleachers for a two-run home run, the 100th of his career.

“That Broglio was fooling around with me,” Howard said of striking out to end the second and sixth innings. “He was licking his chops. He knew he had a big fish up there. He got me out both times with his curve. His curve is as good as anyone’s in the big leagues.”13

Koufax allowed a hit in each of the final three innings, but the Cardinals never got a chance to start a rally. The victory gave Koufax 10 straight wins, dating to August 17, 1963, and including his two victories as the Dodgers swept the New York Yankees in the World Series.14 Dating to June 5, 1963, the Opening Day triumph marked his 21st victory over his past 23 decisions and his fifth straight winning decision against the Cardinals, who had not scored off Koufax in 24 innings.15

“Koufax pitched a heckuva game,” said Dodgers manager Walter Alston. “He held his stuff real good. He made a few more bad pitches than he will a month from now, but any time you shut out the Cardinals, you’re doing a whale of a job.”16

Eight days later, this time at Busch Stadium in St. Louis, Koufax faced the Cardinals again, and Keane, Pollet, and others learned why he did not dominate on Opening Day. After throwing a curveball to White that bounced in front of the plate, Koufax knew his adhesions had ripped away. He felt “something tear in my forearm,”17 and Alston pulled him after he allowed three runs in the first inning. It marked a tough break for Koufax, who certainly wanted to put on a show for the fans a day after the St. Louis chapter of the Knights of the Cauliflower Ear and the St. Louis Baseball Writers Association presented him with the J. Roy Stockton Award for outstanding achievement during the 1963 season.18

“Sandy told me his arm had been hurting on and off since spring training,” recalled Cardinals doctor I.C. Middleman. “He hadn’t bothered to report it, feeling he could work it out. He is extremely tender and has a swelling on the inside of his left forearm. It is rigid and just like a hot dog.”19

Koufax returned 12 games later, throwing a 13-strikeout, 10-inning gem to seemingly leave his arm troubles in the past. He won 15 of his 16 decisions between Memorial Day and his final start in August. He fired a no-hitter on June 4 and reeled off shutouts in two of his next three starts in one of the most dominating four-game stretches of his career. But as the season wore on, arthritic pain seeped in and cut Koufax’s season short in August after his NL-leading seventh shutout gave him 19 victories on August 22. But even though his season ended with some disappointment, he forever had the memory of his only Opening Day start and ultimately finished his career with back-to-back Cy Young Awards and World Series appearances in 1965 and 1966.

SOURCES

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted the Baseball-Reference.com, Stathead.com, and Retrosheet.org websites for pertinent materials and the box scores noted below. He also used information obtained from coverage by The Sporting News, the Los Angeles Times, and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/LAN/LAN196404140.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1964/B04140LAN1964.htm

NOTES

1 Sandy Koufax with Edward Linn, Koufax (New York: Viking Press, 1966), 218-219.

2 Juan Marichal was the only other NL pitcher to fire a complete game on Opening Day, outdueling Warren Spahn in San Francisco’s 8-4 win over the Milwaukee Braves.

3 Paul Zimmerman, “He’s Better Than ‘Big League’–That’s What Cards Call Sandy,” Los Angeles Times, April 15, 1964: 44.

4 Zimmerman.

5 Neal Russo, “Power-Short L.A. Short Circuits Cardinals’ Opening Streak, 4-0,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 15, 1964: 4E.

6 In that game, on April 16, 1940, Brooklyn’s Whit Wyatt surrendered five hits during a 5-0 win over the Boston Bees.

7 John Hall, “Just a Human,” Los Angeles Times, April 15, 1964: 47.

8 Larry Yount suffered an injury while firing warm-up pitches for his major-league debut in 1971, and he never appeared in another big-league game. His brother, Robin, built a Hall of Fame career with the Milwaukee Brewers.

9 The other six, listed chronologically: Dick Gray, Jim Baxes, Jim Gilliam, Tommy Davis, Daryl Spencer, and Ken McMullen. The streak continued with John Kennedy in 1965, before Jim Lefebvre made consecutive starts in 1966 and ’67.

10 John Hall, “Werhas Rates Raves in First Game,” Los Angeles Times, April 15, 1964: 48.

11 Though born in Michigan, Werhas played high-school baseball in Los Angeles at San Pedro Prep and in college at the University of Southern California.

12 Zimmerman.

13 Russo.

14 Koufax had four no-decisions down the stretch of the 1963 season. The Dodgers finished 3-1 in those games.

15 St. Louis last scored against Koufax in the sixth inning on August 21, 1963. He pitched the next six frames of an eventual 16-inning win for the Dodgers. Koufax also fired a shutout against the Cardinals on September 17.

16 United Press International, “Old Pro Dodgers Display Enthusiasm for Opening,” Lompoc (California) Record, April 15, 1964: 4-A.

17 Koufax with Linn, 219.

18 The game served as Opening Day for Busch Stadium, and the 31,410 fans who attended marked a St. Louis record for the first home game of a season.

19 Jane Leavy, Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), 150.