August 16, 1964: Sandy Koufax blanks Cardinals but receives ominous medical diagnosis

“On August 8 I won a tough game in Milwaukee,” Sandy Koufax recounted of his second victory over the Braves in 1964. “Tougher than I thought.”1 Indeed, the star Los Angeles Dodgers lefty had to struggle through a complete game after jamming his throwing arm while diving back to second base and avoiding a fifth-inning pickoff attempt. Despite battling the resulting pain and swelling, four days later he went the distance again in an impressive win over the Cincinnati Reds. And on August 16 the reigning Cy Young Award winner loosened up his ailing arm enough to start the first game of a twin bill against the St. Louis Cardinals. Although tossing what he called one of his “better games of the year,” it turned out to be his last appearance of the season–and portended the premature end of a Hall of Fame career.2

Both Los Angeles and St. Louis entered the contest in the middle of the National League pack after having finished first and second respectively in 1963. Koufax on the other hand–leading the league at the time in the pitching Triple Crown categories–remained in top form. Rookie left-hander Gordie Richardson was given the challenging task of squaring off against Koufax, who was riding a 24⅓-inning scoreless streak at home against the Cardinals. A reported 38,072 spectators were on hand at Dodger Stadium for the afternoon tilt.

Neither club could muster a serious offensive threat until the Dodgers broke through in the bottom of the fifth. Ron Fairly led off with a walk and advanced to third on a wild pitch and stolen base. Third baseman–and the season’s eventual MVP–Ken Boyer argued with umpire Chris Pelekoudas that he tagged out the sliding Fairly on the theft, but to no avail. After Nate Oliver walked, Koufax’s batterymate, John Roseboro, delivered an RBI single and ended up at second on Gold Glove center fielder Curt Flood’s uncharacteristic errant throw to third. After the play Boyer, still stewing from the earlier call on Fairly, was ejected from the game after he “renewed his complaints” with Pelekoudas.3 Richardson was able to retire the next pair of batters but fell victim to Dick Tracewski’s two-out single that scored Oliver. On the same play, Roseboro was cut down at the plate by burgeoning star left fielder Lou Brock to end the damage.

After Koufax blanked St. Louis in the top of the sixth, the home team added to its lead in the bottom of the inning when two-time batting champion Tommy Davis connected on a solo home run to left field. With neither club able to manufacture any runs the rest of the way, Los Angeles secured a 3-0 triumph.

Richardson, making only his fourth big-league start, performed admirably in his six innings of work against the reigning World Series champs before handing the ball to reliever Ron Taylor, who delivered two scoreless frames. But it was Koufax who was truly magnificent in his complete-game blanking that improved his record to 19-5 and lowered his ERA to 1.74. “He’s a great, great pitcher,” Cardinals manager Johnny Keane said of Koufax after the game. “He’s just ahead of the field.”4 Dodgers pitching coach Joe Becker quipped that he wished his team “had a couple more like him.”5

Koufax’s 13 strikeouts tied a season high for him and produced a major-league-record 61st time that he fanned 10 or more batters in a game. “I held my stuff right through the ninth inning,” he said.6 Although some lauded the experimental forkball recently added to his arsenal after having trouble with the straight change, Koufax downplayed its role in his success in the game. “The forkball had nothing to do with it,” he said. “I threw it only four times all afternoon. It’s nothing special. Speed and the curve are still my pitches.”7

In any case, St. Louis’s offense managed to collect only one walk and seven scattered hits. “So it’s not the real good hitters you’ve got to get out,” Koufax once opined. “It’s the others. They’re the ones that’ll beat you.”8 In line with his philosophy, the southpaw allowed four of the hits to Flood, who also flirted with the record books over the course of the day. The veteran star–en route to back-to-back seasons with 200 or more hits–added another four in the second game of the doubleheader to fall just one short of major-league records for the both most hits and most consecutive hits in the same day. “Flood’s always tough,” Koufax admitted. “It was one of those days with him. He was hitting good pitches.”9 Flood had an opportunity to tie the marks in the ninth inning of game two but struck out against workhorse Los Angeles reliever Ron Perranoski. “I’m mighty happy to have gotten eight hits even though I couldn’t get that last one,” Flood said. “I’ve never been able to hit Perranoski very well and I guess I might have had a negative attitude facing him in that one inning.”10

Some off-field excitement ensued for both clubs shortly after the day’s contests. While leaving the stadium parking lot, coach Leo Durocher got into a verbal and physical altercation over an autograph request that sent a fan to the hospital with an injured jaw.11 Although no charges were filed, the scuffle resulted in a civil lawsuit against the fiery Dodgers coach.12 The next day, news broke that longtime St. Louis general manager Bing Devine and Cardinals business manager Art Routzong had resigned. Later it was uncovered that Cardinals owner Gussie Busch had actually fired the two executives for what Devine believed was mainly due to “the Redbirds’ inability to win a pennant.”13 Devine was nevertheless named major-league Executive of the Year by The Sporting News for the second consecutive season when St. Louis went on to win the 1964 World Series with the team he had constructed. However, nothing could top the postgame drama surrounding The Left Arm of God.

The morning after his league-leading seventh shutout, Koufax was unable to straighten his throwing arm. “The joint squished,” wrote author Jane Leavy in Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy. “Pockets of fluid protruded from beneath the skin like hard-boiled eggs. His elbow was as big as his knee. The only difference was his knee bent.”14 Quickly running tests and X-rays, the Dodgers team physician (and famed pioneer of sports medicine), Dr. Robert Kerlan, identified the injury as traumatic arthritis, an incurable ailment degrading Koufax’s elbow cartilage. Because the diagnosis was not publicly disclosed until just before the following season, hope still sprang eternal among fans for his quick return despite the missed starts that piled up, but Koufax and his “waterlogged log” of an arm were done for the year.15

The jammed elbow Koufax suffered on the basepaths against the Braves eight days earlier was most certainly the flashpoint that eventually led to his premature exit from the campaign. However, in his 2013 book Baseball Injuries: Case Studies, by Type, in the Major Leagues, W. Laurence Coker, MD, surmises that it was a pitch tossed back on April 22 that may have hastened the onset of his arthritis symptoms. “As I came over the top to throw a curve ball [to Cardinal Bill White], I could feel something tear in my forearm,” Koufax recounted of the incident that caused him to leave the game after only one inning and be shut down for 12 days.16 Coker contends that this likely signaled a partially torn ulnar collateral ligament, which “makes the elbow more unstable and speeds up the arthritis process.”17 Unfortunately, medical MRIs were not yet available at that time to confirm the cause.

Despite missing the final month and a half of the season, Koufax nonetheless finished in third place in the National League Cy Young Award voting. At season’s end, he led the NL in a number of rate statistics, including ERA, ERA+, FIP, won-lost percentage, and WHIP. And he was even among league leaders in several counting statistics, finishing first in shutouts, second in pitching WAR, fourth in wins and strikeouts, and sixth in complete games. Enduring frequent and severe pain, Koufax managed to make it through the 1965 and ’66 campaigns–amazingly winning the Cy Young Award in each–before his Hall of Fame career was cut short due to the arthritis that plagued him.

SOURCES

The author accessed Baseball-Reference.com (https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/LAN/LAN196408161.shtml) for box scores/play-by-play information and other data, as well as Retrosheet.org (https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1964/B08161LAN1964.htm). In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author accessed GenealogyBank.com, NewspaperArchive.com, Newspapers.com, Paper of Record, and Stathead.com.

NOTES

1 Sandy Koufax and Ed Linn, Koufax (New York: Viking Press, 1966), 222.

2 Koufax and Linn, 224.

3 “Flood Tides Cards Over in Split,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 17, 1964: 4C.

4 “Flood Tides Cards Over in Split.”

5 George Lederer, “Koufax, Simmons Swap Shutouts,” Long Beach (California) Independent, August 17, 1964: C-5.

6 Lederer.

7 Bob Hunter, “Sandy Makes Hay With a New Pitch–It’s His Forkball,” The Sporting News, August 22, 1964: 11; John Hall, “Please, Please–Sandy Is NO Fork-Baller,” Los Angeles Times, August 17, 1964: Part III-2.

8 “Koufax on Koufax,” Sports Illustrated, December 20, 1965: 38.

9 Hall.

10 Alex Kahn, “Sandy Nabs 19th Victory,” Los Angeles Citizen-News, August 17, 1964: B-2.

11 “Fan Says Leo Hit Him in Lot,” Pasadena Star-News, August 17, 1964: 14.

12 Associated Press, “No Charges Filed Against Durocher,” Palo Alto (California) Times, September 1, 1964: 3.

13 Bob Broeg, “Bing Devine, Routzong Resign Card Jobs,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 17, 1964: 4C.

14 Jane Leavy, Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy (New York: Perennial, 2003), 153.

15 “Koufax Sidelined by Elbow Arthritis,” Los Angeles Times, April 3, 1965: Part II-1; Leavy, 153-154.

16 Koufax and Linn, 219.

17 W. Laurence Coker, M.D., Baseball Injuries: Case Studies, by Type, in the Major Leagues (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2013), 81-83.