The Riverside Press-Enterprise
LEGENDARY IMPACT
Statue of Koufax a permanent reminder of influence on Dodgers
LOS ANGELES » Sandy Koufax officially took his exalted place in Dodger Stadium’s center field plaza Saturday, and the biggest surprise of the ceremony to unveil the statue honoring him might have been that the famously private Hall of Famer gave a 10-minute speech.
“Conventional wisdom has always said, ‘Don’t give an old man a microphone. You got too many years to talk about,’ ” the 86-year-old Koufax quipped. “Well, I try not to, but I’m going to start way back at the beginning.”
The origin story, retold Saturday, began at Lafayette High School and on the sandlots of Brooklyn, detoured to the University of Cincinnati — where Koufax was an invited walk-on for basketball and decided to go out for baseball as well because, as he said, “The baseball team was going to New Orleans ... and I decided, I want to go to New Orleans” — and then veered back to Brooklyn and Ebbets Field, came to Los Angeles with the Dodgers in 1958 and ultimately reached Cooperstown. It is by now a familiar tale. Koufax signed a bonus contract and joined the Dodgers in 1955, at age 19, when the rules were that any player signing for a $4,000 bonus or more had to spend two seasons on the major league roster. He never spent a day in the minors, and while there were flashes of brilliance there was greater frustration over the infrequency with which he pitched and the inconsistency when he did. It wasn’t until spring training in 1961, when catcher Norm Sherry suggested he not always try to throw his hardest, that the secret was unlocked.
The years from 1962 through 1966 in Los Angeles put Koufax in the Hall of Fame, helped win two World Series and put the Dodgers at the top of the L.A. sports mountain, where they would remain for decades and where they share space with the Lakers to this day.
How has Koufax continued to influence this franchise? He has remained connected, as Exhibit A of the franchise’s rich pitching tradition, and the relationship he’s forged with Clayton Kershaw is only one example.
Kershaw talked Saturday of how, “whether you ask for it or not,” joining the Dodger organization means becoming acquainted with the heritage and the expectations.
“But Sandy stood out,” Kershaw said, recalling a flight to L.A. he shared with Koufax and Joe Torre for a charity event as a young player. “I was sitting there and I thought, you know, Sandy and Joe, some old ballplayers, I’m just going to have to sit through, ‘Well, back when we played,’ or, ‘You know, this is how I used to do it.’ And I thought I was going to sit through that for the whole flight.
“But it was a far cry from that. I got to know Sandy on that flight, and after that night I remember thinking, ‘Wow. Sandy genuinely cares about how I’m going to do in this game.’ And from then on, I was able to talk to Sandy. He would call me when good things happened to congratulate me. He would call me when bad things would happen to encourage me. And he’d even call me during the offseason just to check in on Ellen and I and see how the chaos of our life has gone with our four kids.”
That connection continues to this day.
“Clayton showed ... a lot of emotion, for him,” manager Dave Roberts said. “And it just shows the impact that Sandy has had on him and his family.”
It is appropriate that the statue of Koufax in mid-delivery will be right across from that of Jackie Robinson sliding into a base. They are arguably the most iconic figures of a franchise that has had plenty of them, and as club vice president Janet Marie Smith noted, “It was important to (team president) Stan Kasten when we created this new front door to Dodger Stadium that these two icons would be greeting fans as they came in.”
They were heroes beyond baseball as well, Robinson as the man who broke baseball’s color barrier and Koufax as an example for Jewish kids and adults alike after sitting out Game 1 of the 1965 World Series to observe Yom Kippur. (One of those taking note was Shawn Green, who was born seven years after that act but would emulate it as a Dodger in 2001 and cite Koufax’s example.)
And there’s this: Robinson was a supportive teammate during Koufax’s first two seasons in Brooklyn.
“My presence on the roster (as a bonus baby) wasn’t a happy experience for a lot of people,” Koufax recalled Saturday. “Maybe it took somebody else’s job. But Jackie went out of his way to make me feel welcome, and I’ll never forget his kindness on that.”
He has paid it forward. The inscription at the base of the Koufax statue represented the ethos of those early 1960s championship teams, and pretty much applies to the current group as well: “As teammates we were bound together by a single interest and common goal: To win. Nothing else mattered and nothing else would do.”
The statue was supposed to be installed and unveiled in 2020, the original date for completion of the center field plaza in anticipation of the All-star Game that was originally to be in L.A. that year. The COVID-19 caused delay meant that it appeared 50 years after Koufax became the youngest Hall of Fame inductee ever at age 36. That in itself is a reminder that he retired at age 30 because of an arthritic elbow that, as Vin Scully once noted, caused his arm to involuntarily bend inward.
The standing ovation Koufax received before the bottom of the first during Saturday’s game against Cleveland is evidence that the Dodgers and their fans will always remember. The statue is the proof, and Kershaw expressed this hope:
“In the years and generations to come. I hope the kid sees the statue and asks his mom or dad about Sandy Koufax, and I hope that they tell him he was a great pitcher. But more than that, he was a great man who represented the Dodgers with humility, kindness, passion and class.
“And for every rookie who sees the statue for the first time and asked, ‘Was he any good?’ I hope the veterans tell him simply that he was the best ever to do it.”