Wild Thing: Sandy Koufax from Cincinnati Bearcat to Dodger Bonus Baby

Sandy Koufax pitched one season for the University of Cincinnati baseball team in 1954. He posted a 3-1 record with a 2.81 ERA. (Courtesy of University of Cincinnati Athletic Department)

 

When you think of the nickname Wild Thing, which baseball player comes to mind? Perhaps it is Mitch Williams, who earned that moniker while pitching for the Texas Rangers due to his awkward delivery and frequent control issues. More likely, however, the name that pops into your head is Ricky Vaughn, the fictitious Cleveland Indians pitcher, played by actor Charlie Sheen in the classic 1989 movie Major League. Most certainly you aren’t thinking about Sandy Koufax, who in his 12-year career pitching to 9,497 hitters hit only 18 batters and threw 87 wild pitches.

But if you ask Koufax’s teammates at the University of Cincinnati how they would describe the young pitcher, “wild” might be the word most often used. Koufax was most certainly their “wild thing.”

It was just before the start of the Bearcats’ 1954 season that 18-year-old UC basketball player Sandy Koufax arrived between classes to hang out in the office of his coach, Ed Jucker, who also was the head coach of the varsity baseball team. Jucker was busy trying to quickly plan a trip to New Orleans for the baseball team. In Sandy’s words, “I heard those two magic words, ‘New Orleans,’ and I could think of no other place in the world I would rather be.” Koufax said, “Coach, I’m a baseball player. I’m a pitcher. I can pitch pretty good.”1

In 2000, when the university held a ceremony to retire Jucker’s jersey, he was asked about the day Koufax informed him of his pitching talents. “I didn’t even know he could pitch,” Jucker recalled. “At the end of the basketball season, he told me to come over to the gym to take a look at him. I was amazed. It was almost like the wonder man. It struck me in such a fashion. The way he could throw–the speed and the curve–you just didn’t find that.”2

UC captain and right fielder Ike Misali, who was in the office planning the trip with Jucker, later recalled, “All he needed was somebody to teach him control. A kid his age throwing 90 miles an hour–this was 1954. He was strong. He wasn’t at all cocky–just a nice guy.”3

Koufax pitched only one season for the Bearcats, finishing with a 3-1 record and a 2.81 ERA. He led the staff with 51 strikeouts in 32 innings. He also walked 30 batters. His only loss of the season came against the Xavier University Musketeers, in part due to three Cincinnati errors.4

To this day it remains a mystery as to what uniform number Sandy wore during that season, as existing individual and team photographs of him don’t show the back of his uniform where the number was displayed, nor did team rosters make note of player numbers. When asked by the Cincinnati Enquirer what jersey number he wore, Koufax couldn’t recall, and neither could his teammates.5 Perhaps even more a mystery than his uniform number, however, was where the baseball was going to go when he released his unbridled fastball or knee-buckling curve. Koufax later told the Enquirer that he didn’t have a specific strategy on the mound: “Just throw as hard and as long as you could.”6

In an exhibition game against a team from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Koufax walked the first three batters he faced before striking out the next three on nine pitches.7 Joe Miller, who was a sophomore catcher for the Bearcats in 1954, recalled, “Koufax was built like a superhuman on the mound, [but] he was damn wild. He couldn’t get the ball over the plate … with consistency.”8 Legend has it that Jucker would have Sandy warm up on the sideline to terrorize opposing teams.9

 

 

Koufax threw so hard that everyone refused to catch him except for his friend and basketball teammate Dan Gilbert. Thinking back, Gilbert, who was a freshman catcher that spring, said, “We realized early on that Sandy was not a pitcher. He was just a thrower. He was a hard, wild thrower. We practiced inside the old Schmidlapp Hall. There was not much room in there, and it was poorly lighted. I would work with pitchers on the corners. With Sandy, I held my mitt in the center of the plate and prayed that he could get it over or close. I will say this though, when he got the ball over the plate, he was unhittable.”10 Gilbert also recalled using a sponge inside his mitt to help absorb the shock of the baseball, finding it challenging to catch the ball in the webbing.11 He described the first pitch he witnessed from Koufax in the following way: “You ever take a sledgehammer and hit a knot in a piece of wood? You know how it bounces back? That’s how it felt.”12

There’s a story that circulates throughout Oldenburg, Indiana, in which Koufax was invited to come from the University of Cincinnati to Oldenburg and try out for the local semipro baseball team, the Oldenburg Villagers. The gentleman who asked was Ace Moorman Sr., a UC basketball player who had heard about Sandy’s pitching talent. “I told Charlie Koester [manager of the Oldenburg Villagers] that there might be a possibility we can get Sandy to come to Oldenburg, but we have two problems,” Moorman told the Indianapolis Star in 2022. “One, I don’t think we have anybody who can catch him, and secondly, that little chicken wire at the back of the backstop, that isn’t going to stop him either.”13 In truth, no evidence exists that Koufax ever went to Oldenburg for the tryout, but the myth continues that he was cut from the Villagers because he couldn’t throw strikes.

Despite all that wildness, the, 6-foot-1½-inch, 200-pound collegiate pitcher enjoyed some incredible highlights, possibly none greater than on Friday, April 30, 1954, when the hometown Bearcats played against the visiting University of Louisville. Coming off an already incredible 16-strikeout performance against Wayne University (now Wayne State University), the southpaw’s sizzling fastball and wicked curve stymied Louisville hitters as Koufax struck out 12 of the first 15 batters he faced, allowing only three hits on his way to an 18-strikeout performance,14 one he would equal at the major-league level five years later on August 31, 1959, against the San Francisco Giants.

Later in the season, on May 14, in a contest against Lockbourne Air Force Base, Koufax came into the game in relief of starter Bill Norris. He struck out the final two batters he faced in the seventh inning and got three easy taps back to the mound in the eighth before striking out the side in the ninth inning for the victory, his third without a defeat.15 This was Sandy’s final victory as a member of the UC baseball team.

The next day, May 15, 1954, Dodgers scout Bill Zinser noted on his report of the player listed as Sanford Koufax: “A+ arm. Very good prospect. Tall, muscular, quick reflexes, well-coordinated. Going to U. of Cincinnati on Scholarship–not interested in pro ball until he graduates.” Moreover, Zinser gave Koufax an A for hitting with a notation that he played first base because of his hitting ability. Sandy himself stated, “I hit better for Cincinnati than I have ever hit in my life.”16 In fact, Koufax’s batting average for the 1954 season was a whopping .429, making him the second-best hitter on the team.17 (Koufax was a famously poor hitter as a major leaguer: just .097 in 776 career at-bats.)

It may seem unbelievable, but Koufax never told his parents of his collegiate baseball endeavors. Sandy explained that “my father got the good word when Gene Bonnibeau, the Eastern scout for the Giants, dropped into his office with a clipping about me from one of the Cincinnati papers.”18

Koufax recalled Jucker trying very hard to get the Cincinnati Reds interested in him but had heard that their scout, Buzz Boyle, “apparently thought I was too wild.”19 Dodgers scout Al Campanis invited Koufax to try out for the organization at Ebbets Field in front of manager Walter Alston and scouting director Fresco Thompson.20 In December 1954 Koufax said he would talk to Brooklyn and other interested clubs during his school’s Christmas vacation, but “I will not leave school unless I get a bonus to sign.”21 Shortly after, he went from being a UC Bearcat to becoming the Brooklyn Dodgers’ $20,000 “bonus baby.”22 For Dodgers fans, “wild thing” Sandy Koufax would eventually make everything “groovy.”

RUSS SPEILLER lives in Cincinnati with his wife and two children. Russ has a chemical engineering degree from the University of Pennsylvania. He is an avid New York Yankees fan and has been a SABR member since 2023, having contributed stories to SABR books and the SABR BioProject, as well as journals. Though not his first article published by SABR, the Koufax piece represents the first article he penned for submission as a SABR member.

 

NOTES

1 Sandy Koufax with Ed Linn, Koufax (New York: Viking Press, 1966), 43.

2 John Bach, “Bearcat Sports, University of Cincinnati.” Magazine–October 2020 | University of Cincinnati, 2000, https://magazine.uc.edu/issues/0500/sports.html.

3 Mike Dyer, “Sandy Koufax’s Season with UC Bearcats Remembered,” Cincinnati Enquirer, April 30, 2014, https://www.cincinnati.com/story/sports/college/university-of-cincinnati/2014/04/30/sandy-koufax-season-with-uc-bearcats-remembered/8512237/. Accessed March 11, 2023.

4 “XU Wins, 5-2, Over UC 9; Koufax Beaten,” Cincinnati Enquirer, May 18, 1954: 29.

5 Mike Dyer, “Sandy Koufax’s Cincinnati Uniform Number a Mystery.” Cincinnati Enquirer, April 30, 2014, https://www.cincinnati.com/story/sports/college/university-of-cincinnati/2014/04/30/sandy-koufax-uniform-number-a-mystery/8515119/.

6 Dyer, “Sandy Koufax’s Season with UC Bearcats Remembered.”

7 Gregg Doyel, “Sandy Koufax Made the Hall of Fame, but Not This Semi-Pro Team in Oldenburg, Indiana,” Indianapolis Star, June 30, 2022, https://www.indystar.com/story/sports/columnists/gregg-doyel/2022/06/30/sandy-koufax-baseball-indiana-semipro-cut-mlb-hall-fame-pitcher/7703165001/. Accessed March 11, 2023.

8 Dyer, “Sandy Koufax’s Season with UC Bearcats Remembered.”

9 Gary Cieradkowski, The League of Outsider Baseball (New York: Touchstone, 2015), 6.

10 Bach, “Bearcat Sports, University of Cincinnati.”

11 “Sandy Koufax’s Season with UC Bearcats Remembered.”

12 Jane Leavy, Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy (New York: HarperCollins, 2002), 49.

13 Doyel.

14 “Koufax Fans 18,” Cincinnati Enquirer, May 1, 1954: 16.

15 “Wilson, Koufax Star as ’Cats Nine Wins,” Cincinnati Enquirer, May 15, 1954: 16.

16 Sandy Koufax with Ed Linn, 45.

17 “Brooks Sign Koufax, Pitching Star at UC,” Cincinnati Enquirer, December 15, 1954: 28.

18 Sandy Koufax with Ed Linn, 45.

19 Sandy Koufax with Ed Linn, 45.

20 “Sandy Koufax Biography & Los Angeles Dodgers Career,” Dodger Blue, https://dodgerblue.com/sandy-koufax-biography-los-angeles-dodgers-career-stats/. Accessed March 11, 2023.

21 “Koufax Denies Brooklyn Deal,” Cincinnati Post, December 14, 1954: 20.

22 Koufax actually had two higher bonus offers, from the Pittsburgh Pirates and Milwaukee Braves; however, as his father, Irving, had been in frequent contact with the Dodgers, it was decided to sign with Brooklyn. See Marc Z. Aaron, “Sandy Koufax,” SABR BioProject, at https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/sandy-koufax/.