September 25, 1966: Ken Holtzman, Sandy Koufax meet on the mound just once for the ages

It was a sunny afternoon on the North Side of Chicago with seasonal temperatures hovering in the low 60s on that last Sunday of September, the first Sunday of autumn. The last-place Chicago Cubs hosted the first-place Los Angeles Dodgers for their last home game of the 1966 season. It was a time when $3 could take you out to the old ball game.1

With a week to go in the season, there was a pennant race going on in 1966. The Dodgers led the pack by 1½ games just ahead of the second-place Pittsburgh Pirates. The San Francisco Giants were lurking in the shadows waiting for a break, trailing by just four games. The Cubs were 34 games behind with 99 losses.2

Two shining stars were pitching that day at Wrigley Field. The sun was just beginning to rise on one, while it was setting on the other. A 20-year-old rookie faced a 30-year-old veteran of 12 big-league seasons and some of the game’s highest honors, but they had much in common.

Both pitched their first games in the big leagues at age 19. Both were lefties. Both were Jewish.  Both had declined to pitch that weekend on Saturday (the Sabbath) to honor Yom Kippur. (Koufax famously had also declined to pitch Game One of the 1965 World Series on October 6 the year before which was scheduled on Yom Kippur.3)  Their devotion had shuffled pitching rotations – and precipitated their only ever meeting on the mound.4

The rookie, Ken Holtzman, also a business administration student at the University of Illinois, strode to the mound for the 1:15 P.M. start, his 32nd of the season. His 10 wins included two complete-game victories over Los Angeles, outdueling star Don Drysdale and fellow rookie Don Sutton. He retired the Dodgers one-two-three in the first inning.

The veteran, Sandy Koufax, seemed invincible in 1966. He had a 25-8 record and a 1.76 ERA, despite needing frequent cortisone shots in his arthritic left elbow. Twelve months earlier he had pitched a perfect game against the Cubs.

It’s often a harbinger of good things when the leadoff hitter gets on base. Chicago’s Don Kessinger drew a walk to open the home half of the first inning. Glenn Beckert stroked a line drive into the left-field corner, and Dodgers left fielder Tommy Davis struggled with what the Chicago Tribune reported as “a tricky bounce out of the vines.” Kessinger scored on Beckert’s triple.5

“It was the kind of hit that usually results in a situation where there are runners at second and third base, but leftfielder Tommy Davis let the ball get by him for a ‘triple’ that drove in Kessinger,” asserted the San Diego Union.6 

Koufax recovered to strike out Billy Williams and induce a grounder by Ron Santo back to the mound. The damage appeared to be controlled when Ernie Banks hit a popup to second base that was described by the Chicago Tribune as the “easiest sort of pop fly … an automatic out.”7

But second baseman Jim Lefebvre dropped it for an error. Beckert scored and the cellar-dwelling Cubs had a two-run lead in the first inning. Koufax reared back and struck out Randy Hundley to end the inning.

Holtzman retired the Dodgers in order in the second inning. In the third, he yielded a leadoff walk to Dick Schofield,8 who became the first Los Angeles baserunner of the game. Schofield was erased by a 4-6-3 double play off the bat of John Roseboro, executed by what would continue to be a classic Cubs double-play combination for years to come, Kessinger, Beckert, and Banks. Next up was Koufax. Holtzman caught him looking at strike three for the third out.

Holtzman retired the Dodgers in order in the fourth, fifth, and sixth innings. When the seventh inning started, it became apparent that something special was happening. A crescendo of excitement began to rise for the Cubs and Holtzman every time he walked to the mound and after each pitch. According to Santo, “They were really behind him.”9

Holtzman retired the Dodgers in order again in the seventh inning. Wills grounded to Kessinger. Willie Davis grounded to Beckert. Lou Johnson struck out.

Meanwhile, for the Dodgers, Koufax scattered just two singles and no runner advanced beyond first base while the Cubs scored no more runs from the fourth inning through the seventh.

Hundley singled to left field in the fourth but was erased by a force out. Williams’s leadoff single in the sixth was also fruitless. Koufax whiffed Santo and Banks, and Hundley hit a routine fly to left field.

As the eighth inning began, the Cubs were still leading 2-0 and the Dodgers still had no hits. Most of the fans in Wrigley Field knew Holtzman had “one of those things” happening.10  

All three Dodgers hit the ball, and all balls were caught. Lefebvre popped to Kessinger. Tommy Davis flied to Adolfo Phillips in center field. Wes Parker lined to Williams in left field.

Likewise, in the bottom of eighth all the Cubs hit the ball, but they yielded nary a run. Kessinger led off with a single to right field for the Cubs’ fourth and last hit of the game. Beckert bunted Kessinger to second. With a runner in scoring position and one out, Williams flied out to right field and Santo flied to left.

The game moved to the ninth. The crowd was on its feet. The Andy Frain Ushers11 were “sent to the playing wall to deter people from going over to the field of play.”12 Holtzman was on the brink of a historic outing against Koufax, his childhood idol.

The atmosphere was electric, enough to light up the only big-league ballpark without artificial illumination 22 years before those lights were installed at Wrigley Field in 1988.

In true ’60s-Cubs fashion, it did not take long for the dream to die. Schofield slashed a solid stroke up the middle, past Holtzman and past Beckert, who said he “ticked it” with his glove.13 It slithered free to center field for Los Angeles’ first hit of the game and the magical hitless happening ended.

Holtzman walked the next batter, Al Ferrara, to put runners on first and second base with nobody out. All of a sudden, the Cubs were just trying to salvage the upset victory.  

This prompted Leo Durocher, the 61-year-old grizzled veteran and first-year Cubs manager, to take a visit to the mound to settle Holtzman down. As shrewd as such visits seem, the exchange is sometimes far from strategic. According to Jerome Holtzman of the Chicago Sun-Times, “Durocher had no intention of taking Holtzman out and told him, said, ‘I’m sticking with you.’”14                               

So the 20-year-old college sophomore-to-be with MBA aspirations15 had some baseball business of his own to take care of before driving to Champaign for the first day of classes on Monday. He had to quell a rally against a powerhouse team looking to claim the 1966 NL pennant.

Koufax was up next with runners on first and second and nobody out. Dodgers skipper Walt Alston opted to pinch-hit for his ace and sent 37-year-old Jim Gilliam, one of the best bunters in the game, to the plate. Speedy Willie Crawford came on to run for Ferrara.

The strategy was to move the runners along for the top of the Dodger order, but Gilliam fouled off his first two bunt attempts. Holtzman caught him looking at strike three for the first out of the inning. It turned out to be the next to last regular-season big-league game for Gilliam, a Dodger since 1953.16

Maury Wills stepped to the plate and worked the count to 2-and-2, then singled to center field. Schofield scored and Crawford moved to third base. The tying run was 90 feet away and the potential go-ahead run was at first.

Next up was Willie Davis, who led the Dodgers with 177 hits in 1966. Durocher pulled the Cubs infield in, hoping to cut off the tying run at home. When Wills took off for second on an 0-and-2 count, Willie Davis lined a pitch toward second baseman Beckert, who caught it.

Wills had no chance to retract his steps. Beckert ran to first base himself to complete the game-ending double play. It secured the win for Holtzman and the Cubs in just an hour and 50 minutes.

The Dodgers went on to win the pennant but were swept in the World Series by the Baltimore Orioles. The Cubs finished in 10th place with 103 losses.

It turned out to be the only time Holtzman and Koufax faced each other as major leaguers. Koufax won his final two decisions of 1966 to finish with a 27-9 record. He received his third NL Cy Young Award in four seasons. He surprised the baseball world in November 1966 by retiring at the age of 30. In 1972, the 36-year-old Koufax became the youngest player elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, joining Hank Greenberg as the only Jewish baseball players in Cooperstown.

Author’s Note

Ken Holtzman died on April 14, 2024. This game article is dedicated to his memory. He finished the 1966 season with an 11-15 record, but he was the only pitcher with more than eight wins for the 59-103 Cubs. He was in the major leagues through the 1979 season, making two All-Star teams and pitching for three World Series champions. He threw no-hitters against the Atlanta Braves in 1969 and the Cincinnati Reds in 1971. As a member of the Oakland Athletics, he was the winning pitcher in Game Seven of the 1973 World Series, which gave him another distinction in common with Koufax, the winning pitcher when the Dodgers wrapped up both the 1963 and 1965 World Series.

As of 2024, Holtzman’s 174 career victories in 15 major-league seasons were the most ever by a Jewish pitcher. Koufax is second with 165.

You won’t find Holtzman in Cooperstown. However, the St. Louis area native is a member of the Jewish American Hall of Fame and the St. Louis Hall of Fame.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Bruce Slutsky and copy-edited by Len Levin. John Fredland and Kurt Blumenau reviewed an earlier draft of the article and provided helpful comments.

Photo credit: Ken Holtzman, Trading Card Database.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for pertinent information, including the box score and play-by-play.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/CHN/CHN196609250.shtml  

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1966/B09250CHN1966.htm

My lifelong friend, Terrence Padgett, attended this game and we spoke at length about our remembrances of the game, the times, and the Cubs.

Notes

1 Reference to a 1966 Chicago Cubs scorecard from my personal collection: A grandstand ticket was $1.25. A dog and beer cost 50 cents; .20 for the hot dog, .30 for the beer. Soft drinks were 10 cents. Popcorn and peanuts likewise cost a dime each. And for a late-inning dessert treat, a “Big Wedge of Pie” was 15 cents while ice cream cost a dime.

2 When Leo Durocher took over the reins of the Chicago Cubs before the 1966 season, he confidently declared, “This is NOT an eighth-place team.” Durocher was right. The 1966 Cubs were on the fast lane for a 10th-place finish with just five games left in their season.

3 John Rosenberg, “Myth and Fact Part of legacy from Sandy Koufax’s Yom Kippur Choice.” Sports Illustrated, September 15, 2015, https://www.si.com/mlb/2015/09/23/sandy-koufax-yom-kippur-1965-world-series. Interesting anecdote from Game One of the 1965 World Series: Drysdale started in Koufax’s stead and struggled. Walt Alston visited the mound to remove him. “Drysdale quipped, “I bet you wish I was Jewish too.” “Jewish MLB Players,” BaseballAlmanac.com, https://www.baseball-almanac.com/legendary/Jewish_baseball_players.shtml. Accessed July 5, 2024. 

4 Richard Dozer. “Cubs Rookie Triumphs, 4-0.” Chicago Tribune. September 25, 1966: B1; Jerome Holtzman. “Hats Off, N.L. Player of the Week,” The Sporting News. October 8, 1966: 45. That much anticipated meeting depended on the rotation. While Koufax and Holtzman had each drawn three previous starts against their respective teams, the two were matched in none. “Both, incidentally, were undefeated against each other’s clubs. Koufax was 3-0 vs. the Cubs. Holtzman 2-0 vs. the Dodgers.”      

5 Richard Dozer, “Holtzman’s 2-Hitter Beats Dodgers,” Chicago Tribune, September 26, 1966: C1.

6 Phil Collier, “Cubs Rookie Beats Dodgers, Sandy 2-1,” San Diego Union. September 26, 1966.

7 Dozer, “Holtzman’s 2-Hitter beats Dodgers.”

8 Schofield was a recent addition to the Dodgers. He started the 1966 season in San Francisco, went to the New York Yankees on May 11, and was traded to the Dodgers on September 10, which made him ineligible for postseason play.

9 Jerome Holtzman, “Holtzman Allows Dodgers 2 Hits in 9th; Cubs Win 2-1.” Chicago Sun-Times, September 26, 1966: 96.

10 There are baseball superstitions. Among them is dugout etiquette during a potential no-hit game. While everybody knows what’s happening, nobody talks about it. The pitcher is a pariah. Nobody sits by him. Nobody talks to him. I’ve never been in an MLB dugout during such an event, but whenever magic seemed imminent, my group of viewing friends too would never mention that a no-hitter was happening. Instead, we would say our pitcher had “one of those things” going.

11 Andy Frain Services was founded in 1924 and provides ushers and security for many Chicago sports events, Cubs games included. “History,” Andy Frain Services, http://www.andyfrain.com/history.cfm. Accessed June 17, 2024.

12 Terrence Padgett interview. My lifelong friend was an Andy Frain usher for the Cubs as a teenager and attended this game. After the passing of Ken Holtzman on April 14, 2024, he shared his recollections of the event, one of which was that all ushers were sent to the playing walls as the ninth inning began to deter an anticipated rush of fans to the playing field in the event of “one of those things.”

13 Dozer, “Holtzman’s 2-Hitter Beats Dodgers.”

14 The Jim Brosnan Chicago Daily News version of the trip to the hill said that Durocher “went out there to quiet him down … stating simply, ‘Don’t worry about the bullpen. You’re going to win or lost this yourself.’” David Condon of the Chicago Tribune confirmed in his column, “Don’t pay any attention to those pitchers working in the bullpen. … I’m not taking you out.” Team captain Santo, who joined in the conference on the hill added, “Get this guy and the next guy. You’ve got to get ’em.”

15 Joseph Durso. “Dodgers Lost to Cubs, 2-1,” New York Times. September 26, 1966. 51

16 Gilliam’s career in recognized major leagues dated to 1946, when he debuted with the Negro National League’s Baltimore Elite Giants at age 17. He appeared in 2,094 games with the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers from 1953 through 1966.