but wouldnât take any crap.â Jobe never treated Koufax during his Hall of Fame career, probably because it ended almost as quickly as it began. When the pain in his elbow first materialized in April 1964, Koufax was twenty-eight years old. He couldnât straighten his arm. Injuries shelved him for one-third of his scheduled starts. Kerlan diagnosed him with traumatic arthritis, declared there was no cure, and suggested he pitch once a week. During spring training in 1965, Koufax woke up one morning to find the majority of his left arm black and blue. Undeterred, he pitched every fourth day, twirled a perfect game, and won the National League Cy Young Award. In the offseason, Kerlan suggested he quit. Koufax wanted one more year, needles and drugs and fear of permanent disability be damned.
His arm held up until the middle of the summer in 1966. On July 23, against the New York Mets, Koufax threw a 168-pitch complete game, which followed a ten-day stretch during which he had pitched in four games and tossed twenty-four innings. His manager, Walter Alston, thought he left Koufax in for 200 pitches. âI worried that maybe I should get him out of there,âAlston told reporters. âI know heâs not right, and Iâm half-afraid of hurting him. But with a doubleheader coming up, I didnât particularly want to use the bullpen.â
Koufax saw its effects instantaneously. Fluid gathered in his elbow, more than usual. Kerlan drained it and injected it with cortisone, the top-shelf numbing agent of the time. Four days after he threw 168 pitches, Koufax struck out sixteen in an eleven-inning complete game. He didnât miss a start the rest of that season and finished with more than three hundred innings pitched for the third time in four years.
Sandy Koufax retired after the 1966 season, done in by baseballâs ignorance and sports medicineâs primitiveness. He was thirty years old, at the peak of his greatness. Koufax was worried that his ravaged elbow would keep him from golfing or washing his face or shaving, and he refused to trade another year of throwing a baseball for a lifetime of disability. No doctor saved him, because no doctor knew how. âIn those days, they believed if you opened an arthritic joint it got worse,â Koufax said. âMedicine changed.â
Koufax was never diagnosed with a damaged UCL. He doesnât think he tore it, either, though with all the trickery used to enliven his arm, he canât say for certain. He just believes its expiration date was thirty, and whether it was the spurs or the bursa sac or the ligament, his arm was too far gone for medicine at the time to remedy it.
âI was hoping I would live longer after baseball than before,â he told me. âAnd Iâve made it. In those days there was the question of are you going to have full use of your arm, are you going to do this or that. . . . Because the draining, the eating Butazolidin, everything you can to get throughâI thought when the doctor tells me itâs time to stop, itâs time to stop.â
The arm in baseball has had two eras: Before Tommy John and After Tommy John. Koufax was perhaps the closest to that bridge. When Koufax joined the Dodgers organization, more than six hundred players came to spring training, an exercise inDarwinism. Dozens developed arm injuriesâeither arm fatigue or tendinitis or dead arm or some other vague complaintâand never returned. The survivors were major leaguers.
In the final week of the 1954 season, the Dodgers summoned from Triple-A a twenty-three-year-old left-hander named Karl Spooner to start two games. In his first, against the New York Giants, the eventual World Series champions, Spooner threw a three-hit shutout and struck out fifteen. He followed with a four-hit shutout and twelve more strikeouts against the Pittsburgh Pirates. âHe was as good as anybody youâve ever seen,â Koufax said.
His arm held up until the middle of the summer in 1966. On July 23, against the New York Mets, Koufax threw a 168-pitch complete game, which followed a ten-day stretch during which he had pitched in four games and tossed twenty-four innings. His manager, Walter Alston, thought he left Koufax in for 200 pitches. âI worried that maybe I should get him out of there,âAlston told reporters. âI know heâs not right, and Iâm half-afraid of hurting him. But with a doubleheader coming up, I didnât particularly want to use the bullpen.â
Koufax saw its effects instantaneously. Fluid gathered in his elbow, more than usual. Kerlan drained it and injected it with cortisone, the top-shelf numbing agent of the time. Four days after he threw 168 pitches, Koufax struck out sixteen in an eleven-inning complete game. He didnât miss a start the rest of that season and finished with more than three hundred innings pitched for the third time in four years.
Sandy Koufax retired after the 1966 season, done in by baseballâs ignorance and sports medicineâs primitiveness. He was thirty years old, at the peak of his greatness. Koufax was worried that his ravaged elbow would keep him from golfing or washing his face or shaving, and he refused to trade another year of throwing a baseball for a lifetime of disability. No doctor saved him, because no doctor knew how. âIn those days, they believed if you opened an arthritic joint it got worse,â Koufax said. âMedicine changed.â
Koufax was never diagnosed with a damaged UCL. He doesnât think he tore it, either, though with all the trickery used to enliven his arm, he canât say for certain. He just believes its expiration date was thirty, and whether it was the spurs or the bursa sac or the ligament, his arm was too far gone for medicine at the time to remedy it.
âI was hoping I would live longer after baseball than before,â he told me. âAnd Iâve made it. In those days there was the question of are you going to have full use of your arm, are you going to do this or that. . . . Because the draining, the eating Butazolidin, everything you can to get throughâI thought when the doctor tells me itâs time to stop, itâs time to stop.â
The arm in baseball has had two eras: Before Tommy John and After Tommy John. Koufax was perhaps the closest to that bridge. When Koufax joined the Dodgers organization, more than six hundred players came to spring training, an exercise inDarwinism. Dozens developed arm injuriesâeither arm fatigue or tendinitis or dead arm or some other vague complaintâand never returned. The survivors were major leaguers.
In the final week of the 1954 season, the Dodgers summoned from Triple-A a twenty-three-year-old left-hander named Karl Spooner to start two games. In his first, against the New York Giants, the eventual World Series champions, Spooner threw a three-hit shutout and struck out fifteen. He followed with a four-hit shutout and twelve more strikeouts against the Pittsburgh Pirates. âHe was as good as anybody youâve ever seen,â Koufax said.
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