I will always wonder, if he was in his prime today, his artthris could be treated so that he could pitch past age 30. If he was earing what star pitchers earn now, I would bet he would have found a way. Hard to beleive that in 1966, he and Don Drysdale had a joint holdout–SK for $125,000 and DD for $100,000.
It just shows how insane pay has jumped.
$125,000 in 1966 is equivalent to $1,200,000 now.
(For reference the MLB mimimim salary in 2024 is $740,000)
Remember when you could out foreign spies by quizzing them about baseball? Yeah, I would have been summarily executed in that situation. (I do know who Sandy Koufax is)
In the movie stalag 17 the the American pow’s outed Peter graves as the German spy by asking him who babe Ruth was. He also said he remembered he heard about Pearl Harbor at dinner time which placed him in Germany.
Being Jewish and growing. up in LA, I was a huge fan of Sandy Koufax. I remember going to a game when I saw him pitch at Dodger Stadium in 1966, his last year. He will always be my favorite Dodger. Somewhere in a box in storage, I have his 1965 Topps baseball card.