Sometime in the mid-sixties, the world was shifting in ways I couldn't yet understand. Most in the United States were focused on Vietnam—the images of war flickered across the black-and-white television screens in living rooms across the country. But for a seven-year-old boy in Los Angeles, the battlefields of Southeast Asia were distant and abstract. My world was much smaller, yet no less consuming.
Baseball became my life.There was no questioning where my loyalty lay. In my mind, there was only one name that mattered—Sandy Koufax. He wasn’t just a pitcher; he was a magician, an artist with a baseball in his hand. The way he wound up, that high leg kick, the snap of his wrist as the ball spun toward the plate—it was poetry in motion. I watched him whenever I could, trying to memorize his every move, every pitch, every perfect moment on the mound.
And so, in the backyard of my childhood, I became Sandy.
The garage door was my catcher, its panels bearing the scuff marks of countless fastballs, curves, and sliders—at least in my mind, they were sliders. With each pitch, I imagined the cheers of a packed Dodger Stadium, the roar of the crowd swelling as I struck out batter after batter. I worked tirelessly on my windup, pausing at the peak just like Koufax, then exploding toward home plate. Sometimes, I'd shake off an imaginary catcher’s sign, just like I imagined Sandy did, before hurling the ball with all the strength my seven-year-old arm could muster.
Each time the ball smacked against the garage, it was as if I had just thrown the winning strikeout in the World Series. I could almost hear Vin Scully's voice echoing my triumph, announcing to the world that this little boy from Los Angeles had just done the improbable.
The game was never just a game. It was a dream
— a dream to be like Koufax, to stand on that mound in Dodger blue, to hear the crowd chanting my name. And so, I kept throwing.
"But tonight ... September the ninth, 1965" ~~ "To see the only pitcher in baseball history to hurl four no-hit ~ no run games. He has done it four straight years. And ~ now he capped it, on his fourth no-hitter, he made it a perfect game! And Sandy Koufax ... whose name will always remind you of strike-outs ... did it with a flourish. He struck out the last six consecutive batters. So when he wrote his name in capital letters in the record books ... that 'K' stands out even more than the O U F A X ..." Vin Scully 1927 ~ 2022
