June 12, 1965: Sandy Koufax remains undefeated against the Mets in 12th start

The ever-dominant Sandy Koufax owned a 10-0 career record in 11 starts against the New York Mets when he faced them on June 12, 1965. The expansion team — in its fourth season under future Hall of Fame manager Casey Stengel — had scored just 11 earned runs off the Los Angeles left-hander, whose domination included a 2-1 victory in April at Dodger Stadium on John Roseboro’s walk-off single against Jack Fisher.1

On this sunny Saturday afternoon with temperatures in the mid-70s, a crowd of 38,915 showed up at Shea Stadium to see if the Mets might finally beat their nemesis.2 The ballpark was filled to capacity as the Mets had advertised free admission to women and children for the game. Al Jackson — at 2-7 — took the mound for New York, which at 20-36 was en route to its fourth consecutive 100-loss season. Koufax was 8-3 after a complete-game victory against Philadelphia five days earlier for the Dodgers, who led the National League at 35-22 and would win their second World Series in three years in October.

Through three innings, the pitchers battled each other. The Dodgers left men in scoring position in all three at-bats but Jackson held firm. Koufax was equal to the challenge as he struck out the final two batters in both the second and third innings with runners on base.

The Dodgers finally scored in the top of a “nightmarish fourth, in which the Mets made three errors (and) saw the Dodgers score three times.”3 Lou Johnson reached on a miscue by Mets shortstop Roy McMillan, then scored on Jim Lefebvre’s double. Al Ferrara singled Lefebvre to third to set up Jeff Torborg’s RBI bunt base hit. Third baseman Charley Smith then booted Koufax’s grounder that loaded the bases ahead of Maury Wills, who bounced to third only to have Mets catcher Hawk Taylor mishandle Smith’s throw for another error as Ferrara scored.

“That fourth inning was so bad that the only way that (Jackson) could get an out was to do it himself. He fanned the side while facing nine men,” wrote Frank Finch of the Los Angeles Times.4 When Jackson finally struck out Willie Davis for the third out, the Dodgers led 3-0.

“Nobody expects them to hit much but they could field at least,” wrote the New York Daily News’ Joe Trimble. “[T]hey looked a lot like themselves while wearing the holes in their gloves palm upwards. Four errors, three in the fourth inning, made it easy for the Dodgers.”5

Ron Fairly led off the fifth with a short pop fly to center. Mets fans watched as the ball just cleared the glove of shortstop Roy McMillan. It then popped out of left fielder Danny Napoleon’s glove as he raced in to try to make the catch. McMillan grabbed the ball as on one hop and threw it to Jim Hickman at first. Fairly had already rounded first and was headed for second. Hickman threw to second baseman Bobby Klaus who just tagged Fairly “by a whisker. The scoring: E7-6-3-4 – in other words a routine out, as they go at Shea.”6

The afternoon became painful for Johnson in the fifth when Jackson hit him with a pitch on the right thumb, breaking it and keeping the outfielder out of the starting lineup for almost two weeks.

“The Dodgers scored twice more in the sixth, this time supplying all the momentum themselves.”7 Torborg led off with a double down the left field line. After Koufax fouled out while trying to bunt, Torborg reached third on Wills’s single to left. Wills stole second, his second steal of the game and his 38th in 50 attempts. After Jim Gilliam lined out, Davis brought both runners home with a single up the middle, giving the Dodgers a 5-0 lead.

Not that Koufax needed the insurance as he continued to paralyze the Mets, who managed five singles and one walk for the afternoon. The Mets put two runners on base in the second on a pair of singles by Hawk Taylor and Napoleon. “Koufax’s answer was to strike out Jim Hickman and Bobby Klaus.”8

The Mets also put two runners on base in the sixth with consecutive singles. But they came with two outs and Koufax “put an end to the nonsense”by getting Taylor to pop out to third.9

Stengel replaced Jackson in the eighth with left-hander Tug McGraw. Jackson fanned seven batters over that stretch but his “support was of little more assistance than a broken crutch.”10

Koufax led off the eighth with a single, the only hit off McGraw in two innings of relief. It was Koufax’s eighth hit of the season, besting his total from 1964.

Koufax retired the last seven batters and finished with eight strikeouts as his career mark against New York improved to 11-0 with a 1.00 ERA. It was a performance that impressed those in attendance despite seeing their Mets “waltzing in a fog…and can’t get the act finished.”11 Koufax told reporters afterward that he “didn’t have a good curveball, he said. So he just held the cellar club to five singles, three of them scratchy, by overpowering them with his fastball.”12

The Mets would lose twice more to Koufax that year and lower their record against him to 0-13 over four years before finally winning 5-2 on August 26 before nearly 45,950 at Shea. The Hall of Famer played one more season and retired with a 17-2 record and a 1.44 ERA against the Mets. And no club did worse than New York’s .170 batting average, .226 OBP, and .461 OPS in 20 games versus the Brooklyn native.13

New York’s team fortunes continued with losing seasons the norm until the Amazin’ Mets captured the 1969 World Series. Stengel’s dugout career would end exactly six weeks after the June 12 game when he busted his hip following Old-Timers’ Day.14 He was less than a week shy of his 75th birthday and had finished last every year with the Mets after 10 American League pennants in 12 seasons with the crosstown Yankees.

But while the Dodgers handled the Mets that year (12-6 vs. the New Yorkers), the Mets cashed in when the Los Angeles club visited Flushing. The Mets were doing well at the gate anyway, with overall ticket sales up more than 60 percent since their first two seasons at the Polo Grounds.15 In ’65, an average of 42,238 fans watched LA play its nine games in eight dates at Shea. That accounted for just over 19 percent of New York’s attendance of 1,768,389 in the 10-team NL.16

As the Mets struggled on the field, the good times continued for the Dodgers, who won 15 of their final 16 games to erase a 4½-game deficit and capture the NL flag by two games over their archrivals, the San Francisco Giants. Koufax had three shutouts and a save during the late surge and would finish that ’65 season with the pitching Triple Crown (26-8, 2.04 ERA, career-high 382 strikeouts, plus a career-low WHIP of 0.855). The effort earned him his second of three Cy Young Awards. After shutting out the Minnesota Twins in Game Five of the Series, Koufax put a bow on the season as Series MVP with another shutout in Game Seven on two days’ rest.17

Exactly five weeks before that season-ending victory, Koufax had thrown a perfect game against the Chicago Cubs as umpires Bill Jackowski, Chris Pelekoudas, Ed Vargo, and Paul Pryor called the action. Interestingly, those same men in blue were in New York that Saturday in June to watch Koufax dominate the Mets again.

Author’s note

This was the first major-league game attended by the author. The author’s father, a former Brooklyn Dodgers fan, became a Mets fan after the team began play in 1962 and raised the author to be a loyal fan as well.

Sources

The author accessed baseball-reference.com, retrosheet.org and baseball-almanac.com for play-by-play, box-score, umpire assignments, attendance, standings, and player and manager career data.

baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYN/NYN196506120.shtml

retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1965/B06120NYN1965.htm

Notes

1 Koufax eventually was 17-2 with a 1.44 ERA in 20 games against the Mets. He also did well against the Mets’ 1962 expansion partner, the Houston Astros, going 14-2 with a 1.90 ERA in 22 appearances. Only the Cincinnati Reds (20-19 in 57 games) had a winning record against Koufax. (baseball-reference.com/players/split.fcgi?id=koufasa01&year=Career&t=p).

2 Weather information from wunderground.com. wunderground.com/history/airport/KJFK/1965/6/12/DailyHistory.html?req_city=&reqstate=&req_statename=&reqdb.zip=&reqdb.magic=&reqdb.wmo

3 Joseph Sheehan, “Dodgers Triumph Over Mets by 5-0,” New York Times, June 13, 1965: S1.

4 Frank Finch, “Koufax Zeroes in on Mets Again,” Los Angeles Times, June 13, 1965: C1.

5 Joe Trimble, “LA’s Koufax Blanks Mets, 5-0, to String 11-0 Mark,” New York Daily News, June 13, 1965: 144.

6 Sheehan.

7 Sheehan.

8 Sheehan.

9 Sheehan.

10 Finch.

11 Trimble.

12 Trimble.

13 Johnson did not play for 10 days, and then only as a pinch-runner, before returning to the starting lineup on June 25.(retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1965/B06120NYN1965.htm) and (baseball-reference.com/players/gl.fcgi?id=johnslo01&t=b&year=1965).

14 Accounts differ slightly on details of Stengel’s broken hip. His SABR profile (Bill Bishop, sabr.org/bioproj/person/bd6a83d8, SABR BioProject) says he suffered the injury when he slipped at the New York pub Toots Shor’s. The New York Times obituary from October 1 1975, added that he also fell later that night getting out of a car. (Joseph Durso, “Stengel’s Death at 85 Widely Mourned,” New York Times, October 1, 1975: 93).

15 Joe Trimble of the New York Daily News wrote: “About the only place the Mets can do themselves any good is at the box office. The paid attendance was 38,915 – the rest ladies and kids – and brought the six day total for three with the Giants and two with L.A. to 200,715, which is believed to be the biggest one-week attendance in baseball history.” Joe Trimble, “LA’s Koufax Blanks Mets, 5-0, to String 11-0 Mark,” New York Daily News, June 13, 1965: 144.

16 Despite finishing in last place in the National League in 1965, the Mets had the third best attendance behind the Los Angeles Dodgers (2,553,577) and the Houston Astros (2,151,470). https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/majors/1965-misc.shtml

17 Koufax was in the midst of a fantastic career-ending four-year run in which he went 97-27 (.782) with a 1.86 ERA, four ERA titles, three strikeout crowns, 31 shutouts, one MVP and two other second-place finishes for NL MVP.