50 years ago, Koufax proud: When America’s #1 southpaw sacrificed a World Series opener to honor Yom Kippur

Sanford Braun “Sandy” Koufax is perhaps the most dominating left-handed starting pitcher in baseball history. Some say he was the greatest lefty to ever take the mound. In a career spanning 12 years with the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers from 1955 to 1966, Koufax won 165 games and lost only 87. Three times he was voted as the Cy Young award winner (baseball’s most outstanding pitcher). Four times he led all pitchers in strikeouts. And in four immortal games, he held his opponents altogether hitless.

Yet to the Jewish community, it is a game Koufax did not pitch in that resonates as perhaps his most towering accomplishment.

It was 50 years ago on Yom Kippur: Oct. 6, 1965. Game one of the World Series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Minnesota Twins. Sandy Koufax was the obvious choice to start the series against the mighty Twins lineup. He had just completed one of the most spectacular pitching seasons in baseball history. His incomparable won/loss record of 26–8 was powered by a record 382 strikeouts of opposing batters. And yet, when his Dodgers teammates took the field that evening at Metropolitan Stadium in Minneapolis, Sandy Koufax was not in the ballpark. He was back in his room at the St. Paul hotel quietly observing the most solemn day on the Jewish calendar. 

Back in 1965, the World Series began just days after the regular baseball season ended. There were no playoff rounds. No wildcard teams. Just the first-place team from the American League vs. the top squad from the National League to crown a champion. When Dodger’s manager, Walter Alston went to set his rotation for the ’65 series, it was not an injury, or fatigue to his star, but a scheduling conflict of spiritual proportions that prevented him from using his ace hurler in game #1.

For the first ten years of his Major League career, Sandy Koufax never pitched in a game on either Rosh Hashanah, or Yom Kippur. “Taking off on Yom Kippur wasn’t a big deal, he said in a 2014 Jewish Week interview. “It was something I always did.”