A Half Century Ago

Baseball is generational; the old refrain of fathers playing catch with sons is now understood to include mothers and daughters, while “catch” refers to more than just the ball. One can view a baseball game on television in the late watches of a lonely night or, better, amid thousands at the ballpark. But for me, the strongest associations and the sweetest memories belong to games shared with family, games that glitter like heirlooms in recollection. In my cache of baseball memories, that luster accompanies the seventh game of the 1965 World Series.

By then our small family had scattered. Mom and Dad remained in their apartment in Flushing, brother Jerry and his wife, Myra, had moved to Rego Park, while I lived in New Jersey, where I was a young chemistry professor at Rutgers University. We had all arranged to meet at Jerry and Myra’s apartment on a Sunday afternoon. By coincidence, it was the day of the seventh game of the World Series between the LA Dodgers and the Minnesota Twins. Dad, Jerry, and I were lapsed Brooklyn Dodgers fans. Eight years had already passed since archvillain Walter O’Malley uprooted the Bums from Brooklyn and transplanted them in Los Angeles, three thousand miles from their ancestral home. Once, the Dodgers had been family—table talk at dinner was likely to recount their triumphs or trials—but by 1965, the Boys of Summer were many summers past, a hallowed yet distant memory. In general, I did not follow the exploits of the California imposters; but when there was a connection to their Brooklyn heritage, I permitted nostalgia to outweigh considerations of morality. And Sandy Koufax, a Brooklyn boy, had been a Brooklyn Dodger.

The 1965 World Series between the Dodgers and the Twins began with national attention focused on Koufax, not because of his pitching, but because of his religion. October 6, 1965, the first day of the Series, was Yom Kippur; and Koufax, who is Jewish, announced that he would not pitch that day. Thirty-one years previously, in 1934, Hank Greenberg had similarly not performed on Yom Kippur. Greenberg, the Hall of Fame first baseman of the Detroit Tigers, played at a time when antisemitism was rife, both within baseball and in the broader precincts of American culture. Greenberg was a son of immigrants; Koufax was a grandson and a generation younger. By 1965, times had changed; after World War II and the Holocaust, Jews were more accepted, more assimilated, and less exceptional in American society. Koufax’s decision was widely seen as an expression of integrity and character accompanying his matchless talent, while simultaneously a source of quiet pride to American Jews.

The first game of the Series featured Don Drysdale for the Dodgers versus the Twins’ Mudcat Grant. It was no contest, with the Twins plating 6 runs in the third inning and winning 8–2. In the postgame news conference, a reporter jokingly suggested to Dodger manager Walter Alston, “I bet you wish Drysdale was Jewish too.”

Koufax made his belated start in Game Two, sans evidence of heavenly approbation for his Yom Kippur observance: the Dodgers lost 5–1 to Jim Kaat and the Twins, with Koufax on the losing side of the ledger. Sandy gave up only 1 earned run in six innings; with better defense and some timely hitting, the Dodgers might have won the game.

Having defeated the Dodgers’ two premier pitchers, Minnesota appeared to have the Series well in hand as the teams headed for Los Angeles. And yet, in The Summer Game, Roger Angell noted that upon hearing Koufax’s “precise, unapologetic, and totally unruffled analysis of the game, I came away with the curious impression that the Twins, after two straight victories, were only slightly behind in the World Series.”

The road back for the Dodgers began with Claude Osteen, a career .500 pitcher, who fashioned a gem in Game Three, besting Camilo Pascual and the Twins 4–0, while holding them to 5 hits. The stage was now set for the redemption of Drysdale and Koufax, starting with a 7–2, 5-hit, complete...