Hiatus history lesson: Koufax forgoes World Series opener for Yom Kippur
With baseball on hiatus, it's a good time to look back at great moments from the game's past. Today, we're remembering Sandy Koufax's decision to not pitch on Yom Kippur in 1965, which happened to fall on the same day as Game 1 of the World Series.
Don Drysdale didn't make it out of the third inning in Game 1 of the 1965 World Series, surrendering seven runs - eclipsing his regular-season high - in 2 2/3 innings against the Minnesota Twins before Los Angeles Dodgers manager Walter Alston went to his bullpen.
"I bet right now you wish I was Jewish, too," Drysdale famously quipped to his skipper following the worst postseason start of his Hall of Fame career, an 8-2 loss.
Drysdale, of course, wasn't supposed to start Game 1. That assignment unequivocally belonged to Sandy Koufax, the incomparable left-hander, then at the height of his powers, who led the majors in ERA, WHIP, and strikeouts that year, earning his second of three Cy Young Awards. Koufax, however, was indisposed.
As it happened, the series opener fell on the same day as Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar - a day of atonement and solemn reflection - and Koufax, the world's most visible Jewish athlete, would not reject the traditions of his faith by taking the mound. So resolute was Koufax - who earlier in his career refused to start on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year and first night of Passover - that he made it clear before the Dodgers clinched the National League pennant that he wouldn't pitch in Game 1 of the World Series. Instead, he prayed for rain as his club jockeyed with the San Francisco Giants for first place during the final week of the regular season. (Dodgers owner Walter O'Malley wholeheartedly supported Koufax's decision, but he too was keen for a postponement, joking that he'd "ask the Pope what he can do about rain on that day.")
"(A) man is entitled to his belief, and I believe I should not work on Yom Kippur," Koufax told Milton Richman of United Press International. "It's as simple as all that, and I have never had any trouble on that account since I've been in baseball."
The rain never came, and Drysdale ultimately started the opener in Minnesota in lieu of Koufax, who transformed that day into the singular Jewish sports icon, and whose resultant legacy of on-field dominance and moral conviction endures in the broader collective consciousness more than a half-century later.
Koufax still ended up being the Dodgers' most outsized contributor that series, turning in a Herculean October that almost singlehandedly nudged his club to another championship, their third since leaving Brooklyn eight years earlier. Though the Dodgers squandered his brilliant six-inning, one-earned-run effort in Game 2, falling down 2-0 as the best-of-seven series shifted back to Los Angeles, Koufax was practically perfect from there on.
He fanned 10 in a Game 5 shutout that brought the Dodgers to the precipice of a title, then struck out 10 more in another complete-game shutout - on two-day's rest - in their decisive Game 7 victory. For the second time in three years, Koufax, who authored a 0.38 ERA across three starts while recording 29 strikeouts and holding the Twins to a .161 average, was named World Series MVP. To date, the only pitcher with more strikeouts in a single World Series is Bob Gibson.
Jonah Birenbaum is theScore's senior MLB writer. He steams a good ham. You can find him on Twitter @birenball.