June 24, 1955: Sandy Koufax makes his major-league debut for Brooklyn Dodgers

Ten weeks into his rookie season, Sandy Koufax finally made his long-awaited debut.

Brooklyn’s $20,000 bonus baby1 had missed most of March with a sore back,2 and then the 19-year-old left-hander had a disastrous outing in an exhibition game against Brooklyn’s Double-A affiliate, the Fort Worth Cats, on April 3.3

Two weeks later, before Brooklyn’s fifth game of the season, Koufax sprained his right ankle during pregame warm-ups at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh,4 and then hurt his left ankle 11 days later at Ebbets Field.5 The Dodgers placed him on the 30-day disabled list on May 126 and reinstated him a month later.7 The move came at the expense of Tommy Lasorda, who was optioned to Montreal to make room.8 “It took the greatest left-handed pitcher in baseball history to get me off that Brooklyn club,” Lasorda later joked, “and I still think they made a mistake.”9

Dodgers manager Walt Alston wasn’t in a rush to get the bonus baby into a game. Perhaps he was waiting for a lost cause in which the rookie could get his feet wet, but on the 1955 Dodgers blowout losses were few and far between. In his first two weeks after coming off the disabled list, the Dodgers went 10-4, with two of their losses by one run and another by three runs. The only opportunity came on June 12.10 In an article in The Sporting News about how the Dodgers had gone 13-3 on their homestand between May 30 and June 12, Roscoe McGowen noted that they had primarily used just eight pitchers, with only two appearances given to a ninth pitcher–Karl Spooner, who been hampered by a sore shoulder since spring training.

The 10th pitcher on the roster, “the bonus southpaw kid,” hadn’t been used at all. Under the subhead “No Contributions by Koufax,” McGowen had written:

“Koufax contributed nothing–although the kid almost got into the June 12 first game against the Cubs when it appeared the Dodgers were well beaten. With the Cubs leading, 9 to 2, Sandy was put to work in the bull pen, but when Pee Wee Reese smacked a three-run homer in the eighth inning off Jim Davis to reduce the Bruins’ margin, Jim Hughes, the Chicago fireman, was hurriedly put to work by Alston.”11

Hughes pitched a scoreless top of the ninth, but the Dodgers lost the game, 9-5.

Koufax sat unused in the bullpen until June 24, the 10th day of a 12-day road trip. The Dodgers, riding a four-game winning streak, were comfortably in first place with a 14-game lead over their nearest pursuers, the Milwaukee Braves and Chicago Cubs. But this night, the Braves jumped ahead early on a home run by Eddie Mathews in the bottom of the first inning off Carl Erskine, then got three more in the second inning on an RBI double by Joe Adcock and a two-run home run by Del Crandall. The Dodgers finally got on the board in the top of the third on a sacrifice fly by Roy Campanella to score Jim Gilliam, but the Braves blew it open in the bottom half of the inning on a three-run home run by Henry Aaron.

Erskine was pulled after the Aaron home run and replaced by Jim Hughes, who closed out the third inning and the fourth without allowing a run. Hughes was scheduled to lead off the top of the fifth inning, but Alston sent up Johnny Podres to pinch-hit for him, and had Koufax warm up along with Clem Labine. Before this game, Alston had only warmed up Koufax as a decoy to dissuade opposing managers from sending up a left-handed pinch-hitter.12 But in the bottom of the fifth inning of the Dodgers’ 66th game of the season, in front of 43,068 fans at Milwaukee’s County Stadium, Alston asked for the bonus baby.

Taking the mound to open the bottom of the fifth inning–after the Milwaukee public-address announcer pronounced his last name as “KOO-fax”13–Koufax’s first pitch in the major leagues was a called strike to Johnny Logan. He missed with his next two pitches; Logan then blooped one off the end of the bat into right field for a base hit.14

The next batter was Mathews, and again Koufax got ahead with a first-pitch strike. The future Hall of Fame third baseman tapped the second pitch right back to Koufax for a tailor-made 1-4-3 double play, but instead the rookie threw the ball into center field.

Now with men on first and third, up stepped Aaron, Milwaukee’s cleanup hitter. In the first of 130 matchups between the two Hall of Famers,15 Aaron walked on four straight pitches. The bases were loaded with nobody out. Koufax fell behind the next batter, Bobby Thomson, 2-and-0, but battled back to a 3-and-2 count. He then struck out the Dodgers’ 1951 nemesis on a fastball.16 That brought up Adcock, who grounded a 2-and-1 pitch to Pee Wee Reese at shortstop for an inning-ending double play.

In the next inning, Koufax breezed through the bottom of the Braves lineup, getting Danny O’Connell to ground out to short, Crandall to fly out to center, and running the count full on Lew Burdette before ending the inning on a called strike three.

Due to lead off the top of the seventh, Koufax was pulled for pinch-hitter George Shuba, who singled to right field but was erased on a fielder’s choice. Rube Walker had a two-out single to knock in Gilliam for the Dodgers’ only other run of the game. Labine took over on the mound, giving up an unearned run on two walks and an error by Campanella, and Ed Roebuck pitched a scoreless eighth. Burdette went the distance for the Braves, giving up two runs on nine hits and four walks, as the Braves won, 8-2.

The first of Koufax’s 397 appearances was in the books. In two innings, he had thrown 33 pitches, 16 for strikes, and struck out two batters, walked one, and gave up a bloop single, without allowing a run.

Even better days were to come.

SOURCES

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org, and the SABR BioProject biography of Sandy Koufax written by Marc Z. Aaron.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/MLN/MLN195506240.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1955/B06240MLN1955.htm

https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/sandy-koufax/

NOTES

1 Edward Gruver, Koufax (Dallas: Taylor Publishing, 2000), 84-85. Koufax was signed to a $6,000 contract with a $14,000 bonus. Under league rules in effect from 1953 to 1957, any player signed for more than a $4,000 bonus had to remain on the roster for his first two seasons. The Associated Press, in an article on December 15, 1954 in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and The Sporting News on December 22, 1954, both agreed that Koufax was signed for $20,000, but The Sporting News kept changing the figure over the next few months: It was reported as a $40,000 bonus on March 2, 1955, and a $25,000 bonus on April 13, 1955.

2 “Sandy Koufax, Dodger Bonus Kid, Shows Strikeout Pitch in Debut,” The Sporting News, March 30, 1955: 26. “Sandy Koufax, the 19-year-old bonus baby lefthander, restored a lot of confidence in himself one night recently in Vero Beach. The young man, who has pride–or perhaps youthful vanity–had been fretting because he had done no pitching and had a sore back.” Koufax, facing “the minor league farm clubs’ All-Stars,” in two innings of work struck out five, walked two, and “nobody hit a fair ball off him.” No date was given for the game.

3 “Fort Worth Kayoes Koufax,” The Sporting News, April 13, 1955: 48. “Taking over in the sixth inning, the youngster gave up a run on a single, sacrifice, and wild pitch. Two more singles and a wild pitch added a counter for Forth Worth in the seventh and, in the eighth Koufax walked six batters in a row to force in three runs and Dick Williams followed with a single for two more tallies before Glenn Mickens relieved to end the inning.” The 1955 Fort Worth Cats roster was studded with 11 future major leaguers, including Maury Wills, Joe Pignatano, and Dick Gray, and four future major-league managers, Sparky Anderson, Danny Ozark, Norm Sherry, and Dick Williams.

4 “Major Flashes: National League,” The Sporting News, April 27, 1955: 25. “Sandy Koufax, Brooklyn bonus hurler, suffered an ankle sprain when he stepped in a hole chasing a long fly in pre-game drills at Pittsburgh, April 17. X-rays proved negative, but the southpaw was advised to remain off his feet for three days.”

5 “Major Flashes: National League,” The Sporting News, May 11, 1955: 23. “Sandy Koufax, Dodger bonus pitcher who twisted his right ankle when he stepped in a hole at Forbes Field, two weeks earlier, stepped in another depression at Ebbets Field, April 28, and injured his left ankle. X-rays were negative.”

6 “Koufax Placed on Disabled List in Dodgers’ Cut-Down,” The Sporting News, May 18, 1955: 11. Teams were required to cut their rosters to 25 players by May 12. As a bonus baby, Koufax was required to be on the major-league roster until the end of 1956, but the newspaper reported that every day Koufax spent on the disabled list added another day to his bonus-baby status, extending it into 1957.

7 “Pale Hose Lead Swap Pace as Deadline Nears for Deals,” The Sporting News, June 15, 1955: 9. “In other National League moves … the Dodgers released Southpaw Tommy Lasorda to their International League farm at Montreal and reinstated their bonus pitcher, Sandy Koufax, who had been on the disabled list. …”

8 Bill Plaschke and Tommy Lasorda. I Live for This!: Baseball’s Last True Believer (San Diego: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2007), 83. Lasorda said Dodgers general manager Emil “Buzzie” Bavasi asked him whom the Dodgers should cut, and Lasorda responded: “Koufax. That kid can’t win up here.” Bavasi evidently disagreed.

9 Joe Resnick (Associated Press), “Lasorda Remembers Being Replaced by Koufax,” June 7, 2005, as quoted by Marc Z. Aaron in Koufax’s SABR BioProject biography.

10 Roscoe McGowen, “Dodgers Support Rickey Dictum: ‘8 Pitchers Enough,’” The Sporting News, June 22, 1955: 7. “As things turned out, Smokey might as well have let Koufax do his first major league pitching. But, since a four-run deficit frequently means nothing to these Dodgers, Alston wasn’t taking any chances.”

11 Roscoe McGowen, “Dodgers Support Rickey Dictum: ‘8 Pitchers Enough.’”

12 Gruver, Koufax, 102.

13 Jane Leavy, Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy (New York: Harper Perennial, 2010), 74. The mispronunciation was despite The Sporting News on April 13, 1955, publishing a list of “uncommon names” and how they were pronounced, with Koufax’s last name listed as “KO-fax.” Meanwhile, according to Gruver in Koufax (page 83), Dodgers scout Al Campanis thought Koufax’s last name was “Kovacs,” like the pioneering television comedian Ernie Kovacs.

14 Gruver, Koufax, 103.

15 Retrosheet.org, Selected Pitcher-Batter Matchups for Sandy Koufax. Aaron was 42-for-116 with 6 doubles, 3 triples, 7 home runs, 14 walks, and 12 strikeouts against Koufax, a .362/.431/.647 line, the best OPS of any batter with at least 18 at-bats.

16 Gruver, Koufax, 103.