June 20, 1965: Sandy Koufax bests Warren Spahn, one-hits Mets

Sandy Koufax posted a career 57-15 won-loss record at Dodger Stadium and a 1.37 ERA. (SABR-Rucker Archive)

Sandy Koufax and Warren Spahn, two of the most accomplished left-handed pitchers in baseball history, started against each other six times. Their final faceoff was especially tight and well-pitched–the kind of game fans think about when they imagine two Hall of Famers going head-to-head.

In the first game of a doubleheader1 at Dodger Stadium on June 20, 1965, 44-year-old Spahn took the mound for the New York Mets, while 29-year-old Koufax started for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Spahn allowed just four hits and two runs in seven innings, with most of the Dodgers’ offense limited to the span of three batters in the sixth inning. But Koufax was better. Pitching a complete-game 2-1 victory, he struck out 12 Mets, and only a single mistake denied him his fourth career no-hitter.

The teams entered the game with almost opposite records. Walter Alston’s Dodgers were in first place at 41-24, 3½ games ahead of the Milwaukee Braves and four ahead of the Cincinnati Reds. Casey Stengel’s Mets were last in the 10-team National League at 21-43 with one tie, 19½ games back. The Dodgers had gone 7-3 in their previous 10 games; the Mets were 1-14 in their previous 15, including a four-game sweep by the Dodgers on June 11 through 13.

The matchup brought together two teams with popgun offenses. For the full 1965 season, the Dodgers and Mets both finished at or near the bottom of the NL in several key offensive categories, including runs per game, doubles, triples, home runs, RBIs, total bases, slugging percentage, and on-base plus slugging percentage (OPS).

Other season statistics, though, painted a fuller picture. The Dodgers were adept small-ballers, skilled at turning steals and sacrifices into run-scoring opportunities, as shown by their league-leading 172 stolen bases and 103 sacrifice bunts.2 After hustling their way to runs, they relied on formidable pitching to make leads stand up. The Dodgers’ staff led the NL in wins, ERA, complete games, and individual and team shutouts, and was second in strikeouts.

Koufax entered the June 20 game with a 10-3 record and a 2.04 ERA, plus a league-leading 135 strikeouts. He already had started twice against the Mets in 1965, spinning complete-game wins both times. Most recently, on June 12, he threw a five-hit shutout against the New Yorkers at Shea Stadium.

Since the hapless Mets entered the NL in 1962, Koufax had compiled an 11-0 record in 12 games against them, including his first no-hitter. June 20, 1965, happened to be Father’s Day,3 which provided another reminder of the early Mets’ futility. On Father’s Day the previous year–June 21, 1964–Jim Bunning of the Philadelphia Phillies had thrown a perfect game against the Mets.

Spahn, who served the Mets concurrently as pitching coach and starting pitcher, had won 360 games in a career that began in 1942–making him the all-time leader in wins among lefties. The wins dried up, though, after the Braves sold him to New York in November 1964. Spahn entered the game with a 4-8 record and a 3.72 ERA. On April 20 he beat the Dodgers 3-2, pitching a complete game on Opening Night at Dodger Stadium. Spahn pitched another complete game against Los Angeles on June 11, only to lose 2-1 on an eighth-inning homer by opposing pitcher Don Drysdale.

Other than the pitchers, the left fielders for each team were the most notable starters, as both were involved in the game’s decisive action.

The Dodgers had lost outfielders Tommy Davis and Willie Davis to injury. Lou Johnson and Wally Moon, inserted to plug the gaps, had also been hurt.4 So Alston started 36-year-old Jim Gilliam,5 who began the season as a Dodgers coach but was activated in late May to play third base when John Kennedy and Dick Tracewski hit poorly.6 Gilliam entered the game hitting .348. Stengel, meanwhile, started 20-year-old rookie Ron Swoboda. Swoboda swung a promising power bat, leading the 1965 Mets with 19 homers, but had a subpar defensive reputation.7

With a near-capacity crowd of 52,248 packing Dodger Stadium,8 the lefty aces set to work. Over the first three innings, Koufax was perfect with four strikeouts. Spahn allowed only a pair of infield singles to Maury Wills, who stalled at first base both times.

Mets second baseman Bobby Klaus entered the game with a .206 average, lowest among qualifying NL batters, but was in the lineup against Koufax because he hit right-handed.9 With one out in the fourth, Klaus drew a walk on a full count. Mets radio broadcaster Ralph Kiner took pains to note that the New Yorkers wouldn’t be perfect-game victims for a second straight Father’s Day. Koufax got Charley Smith on a pop and Joe Christopher on a fly to right to end the inning. The Dodgers went down on three grounders in the bottom half.

With one away in the fifth, Mets first baseman Jim Hickman came to the plate. He’d been one of the team’s steadier contributors in its first three seasons but was hitting only .143 in 1965 while bouncing between duty at first base, third base, and all three outfield positions. He’d hit three home runs thus far in the season–all off Chicago Cubs pitchers and all at Wrigley Field.10

Koufax hung a curve and Hickman jumped on it, drilling the ball over the 390-foot marker in left-center field to give the Mets their first hit and a 1-0 lead. After the game, Koufax told reporters that he “didn’t have too good a curve” that day–although he caught the next batter, Roy McMillan, looking on a curve.11

Spahn and Koufax swapped one-two-three innings in the bottom of the fifth and the top of the sixth. It looked as though the Dodgers might continue the pattern in the bottom of the sixth: Koufax grounded out, and Hickman made a good play to field Wills’ bunt and beat him to the bag.

Gilliam, who hit .267 in 86 career at-bats against Spahn, broke the lefty’s streak of nine straight outs by popping a single into “uncatchable territory” in short left-center field.12 With fans applauding rhythmically,13 Wes Parker drew a walk, moving a Dodger into scoring position for the first time. Lefty-swinging center fielder and cleanup hitter Ron Fairly was next. He smacked a high slider14 solidly to the opposite field, where it landed between Swoboda and the left-field line.

On the Mets’ radio broadcast, Lindsey Nelson told listeners that the ball took an unexpected hop and Swoboda slipped while changing direction, falling back onto his hand to steady himself. The next day’s New York Daily News and New York Times said the rookie overran the ball, while the Los Angeles Times simply said he “let a hit … get away from him.”15 Whether it was bad fielding or bad luck, Swoboda’s stumble gave Parker just enough opportunity to steam all the way around from first and follow Gilliam across the plate with the go-ahead run. With Fairly on second base and Galen Cisco warming in the bullpen,16 Spahn struck out John Roseboro to end the inning, but Los Angeles had moved ahead, 2-1.

Fairly was the game’s final baserunner, but more drama was still to come. Spahn worked a perfect seventh with help from right fielder Christopher, who dived in the right-center-field gap to make a rolling, tumbling, inning-ending catch of Tracewski’s liner. “There’s the play of the ballgame, by far and away … a beautiful play by Joe Christopher,” exulted Bob Murphy, the third member of the Mets’ radio team.

In the top of the eighth, McMillan struck out for the third time in three at-bats, giving Koufax at least 10 strikeouts in a game for the 68th time in his career.17 Spahn was scheduled to hit third, but Stengel sent rookie Danny Napoleon–the only right-handed bat on his bench18–to hit for the pitcher. Koufax set down Napoleon on three pitches for his 11th strikeout. Righty Larry Bearnarth worked a perfect eighth for New York, and Koufax returned to finish off his masterpiece. Billy Cowan popped foul to Kennedy, and Klaus struck out for Koufax’s 12th and final whiff. Smith ended the game with a routine fly to Fairly, wrapping up the game in 1 hour and 52 minutes.19

Koufax surrendered only the homer to Hickman and two walks, while Spahn yielded just four hits and one walk. The New York Times described Koufax as “overpowering,” adding that the Mets were “completely at the mercy of the hard-throwing Dodger left-hander.” Spahn, the Times added, “deserved no worse than a tie.”20

Koufax ended 1965 as the NL leader in wins, ERA, complete games, innings pitched, and strikeouts (a career-high 382). He picked up his fourth no-hitter on September 9, beating the Cubs 1-0 in a legendary game in which the teams combined for a single hit. Koufax won the NL Cy Young Award and placed second in Most Valuable Player voting behind Willie Mays. To top it off, he won two games–both shutouts–in the World Series as the Dodgers defeated the Minnesota Twins in seven games. One of the few blemishes on Koufax’s season for the ages came on August 26: The Mets finally hung a loss on him, 5-2, as Koufax was outdueled by not-quite-21-year-old lefty Tug McGraw.

The Mets finished the season in the basement, but two of their key figures at the start of the year weren’t around to see the end. Stengel, the team’s manager since its inception, broke his hip after the game of July 24 and was forced into retirement. Spahn beat him out of town: The Mets announced his release as both pitcher and coach on July 14, when his record stood at 4-12.21 The San Francisco Giants signed him a few days later, and he picked up three more wins in 16 appearances to close his career with 363 victories.

Addendum

Brief summaries of the five other games in which Sandy Koufax and Warren Spahn started against each other:

• July 30, 1958: Braves 4, Dodgers 3, in Milwaukee: Spahn scattered six hits in a complete game; Koufax yielded six hits, five walks, and four runs in 7⅓ innings and took the loss.
• June 17, 1959: Dodgers 10, Braves 2 (first game), in Los Angeles: Spahn lasted one-third of an inning and was charged with five runs on four hits and a walk. Koufax yielded just five hits–but six walks–in a complete-game win.
• September 2, 1961: Braves 4, Dodgers 0, in Milwaukee: Spahn went all the way, giving up seven hits but no walks. Koufax gave up seven hits and four runs–only two earned–in seven innings and took the loss.
• September 15, 1961: Dodgers 11, Braves 2, in Los Angeles: Spahn was yanked after facing five batters in the second inning and retiring none; he was charged with five earned runs in an inning-plus of work. Koufax went all the way in a five-hit, 10-strikeout performance.
• June 13, 1962: Dodgers 2, Braves 1, in Milwaukee: Koufax pitched a three-hitter, with the only run coming on a homer by Roy McMillan. Spahn was good but not as good, giving up seven hits and two runs in eight innings while striking out seven.

SOURCES

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author used the Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org websites for general player, team and season data and the box scores for this game:

www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/LAN/LAN196506201.shtml

www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1965/B06201LAN1965.htm

The New York Mets radio broadcast of the game was available on the Internet Archive at the time this story was written in January 2023. It served as a general source of background information, in addition to the specific items cited in the endnotes. The author thanks the unidentified person who recorded this game, and numerous other 1960s Mets games, off station WGY in Schenectady, New York, as well as those involved in digitizing the tapes.

NOTES

1 On the Mets’ radio broadcast, Lindsey Nelson reported that the four scheduled starting pitchers in the doubleheader–Koufax and Don Drysdale for the Dodgers; Spahn and Frank Lary for the Mets–had combined for 761 career wins.

2 Shortstop Maury Wills accounted for 94 of those steals, leading the NL in that category for the sixth and final season in a row.

3 The Mets’ radio broadcast team made several mentions of this.

4 Tommy Davis broke his ankle on the basepaths on May 1 against the San Francisco Giants and appeared in only 17 games that season. Willie Davis suffered a cracked rib in June in a collision with Mets first baseman Hawk Taylor and missed about two weeks. Johnson suffered a thumb injury against the Mets on June 12 when hit on the hand by a pitch from Al Jackson and did not bat again until June 22. Moon, in his last big-league season at age 35, was suffering from a pulled thigh muscle. Paul Hirsch and Mark Stewart, “Tommy Davis,” SABR Biography Project, accessed January 19, 2023; Joe Trimble, “Pitching, Speed Could Send LA All the Way,” New York Daily News, June 23, 1965: C26; Retrosheet box score for Dodgers-Mets game of June 12, 1965; Bill Miller, “Sandy’s One-Hitter Gets Split with Mets,” Pasadena (California) Independent, June 21, 1965: 16.

5 Gilliam is most often thought of as an infielder, but he had played the outfield extensively early in his career with the Dodgers. He made 46 outfield appearances in 1955, 56 in 1956, and 75 in 1958. In the latter season, he made more appearances in left field than at any other position. At the time this story was written in spring 2023, Baseball-Reference and Retrosheet had minor discrepancies regarding Gilliam’s game appearances in 1965. According to Baseball-Reference, Gilliam made 80 appearances at third base, 22 in the outfield, and 5 at second base. Retrosheet’s breakdown was 82 games at third base, 22 in the outfield, and 3 at second base.

6 Jeff Angus, “Jim Gilliam,” SABR Biography Project, accessed January 19, 2023.

7 Swoboda’s SABR biography, written by Len Pasculli, makes several references to his struggles in the field, including a quote from manager Stengel: “He will be great, super, even wonderful. Now if he can only learn to catch a fly ball.” Several of the news stories cited in these endnotes also mention Swoboda’s reputation as a poor fielder.

8 This was the Dodgers’ fifth-largest home crowd of the year. They’d had one larger crowd earlier in 1965 (52,357 on June 15 against the San Francisco Giants) and subsequently hosted three more (53,604 on July 28 against Cincinnati; 53,581 on September 6 against San Francisco; and 52,312 on September 29 against Cincinnati.)

9 According to the Mets’ radio broadcast, the other second baseman on the team’s roster that day was Chuck Hiller, a lefty hitter.

10 Hickman went deep on May 31 off Cal Koonce, then hit two homers on June 1, off Bob Buhl and Lindy McDaniel. Hickman closed 1965 with an average of .236, 15 homers, and 40 RBIs.

11 United Press International, “Koufax 1-Hits Mets as Dodgers Split,” Santa Maria (California) Times, June 21, 1965: 6. The Mets’ radio broadcast specified that McMillan struck out on a curve in the fifth.

12 Joe Trimble, “Mets Nip Drysdale, 3-2, After Koo 1-Hits ’Em, 2-1,” New York Daily News, June 21, 1965: 54.

13 From the Mets radio broadcast.

14 Miller, “Sandy’s One-Hitter Gets Split with Mets.”

15 Trimble, “Mets Nip Drysdale, 3-2, After Koo 1-Hits ‘Em, 2-1”; Joseph M. Sheehan, “Mets Down Dodgers, 3-2, After Koufax’s 2-1 One-Hitter,” New York Times, June 21, 1965: 39; Sid Ziff, “Swoboda Real Met,” Los Angeles Times, June 21, 1965: Sports: 1. Sheehan and Ziff specified that Parker would have had to stop at third had Swoboda fielded the ball cleanly. At least one reporter also quoted Spahn as saying, “It looks like (Swoboda) overran the ball.” Miller, “Sandy’s One-Hitter Gets Split with Mets.”

16 Mets’ radio broadcast.

17 Frank Finch, “It’s Bachelor’s Day, Too, as Koufax Spins 1-Hitter at Mets,” Los Angeles Times, June 21, 1965: Sports: 1.

18 Mets radio broadcast.

19 The Mets won the nightcap, 3-2.

20 Sheehan, “Mets Down Dodgers, 3-2, After Koufax’s 2-1 One-Hitter.”

21 United Press International, “Ask Waivers on Warren Spahn,” Stockton (California) Record, July 14, 1965: 56.