A Great Opportunity....

[Scott Garner]

Originally Posted by jgmp123

Jim,

Will do! All great topics. To add to Koufax, wasn't his control an issue when he came up for a number of years and he didn't really hit his stride until they hit LA?

James,
What most people don't realize about Koufax, unless you read about his story in Ed Linn's great book from the mid 1960's entititled "Koufax", is that he actually played very little baseball before being recruited out of the University of Cincinnati as a Dodger "bonus baby". Sandy was a basketball player and if not for one of his sandlot baseball coaches from Brooklyn lobbying hard for the Dodgers to recruit Sandy, the world may have never seen one of the most dominant pitchers in baseball history develop.

Because of Koufax being signed as a bonus baby, he was never able to develop his undeveloped pitching technique in the minor leagues. Instead, because the Dodgers had a rather forminable pitching staff, Koufax mostly rode the pine in his early years with the Dodgers. It wasn't until the early 1960's that one of Koufax's catchers recommended that Koufax back off on throwing his hardest fastball that he was able to finally harness the control that had eluded him for so many years.

Jim Stinson is right, although Koufax's fastball was tremendous, it was his amazing curveball that made him mostly unhittable once he finally hit his stride. During the years 1962-1966 Koufax put together possibly one of the greatest runs in pitching history, making Koufax an icon. Because of the arthritis that Koufax developed in his throwing arm, he was forced to leave the game way to early at age 31.