Sandy Koufax
The exploding fastball and big breaking overhand curve. The fastball seemed to jump as it got to the plate (I know, I know, it's an optical illusion) and the curve broke directly down from the batters shoulder to the knees. He was unhittable when both pitches were working. A short career (12 years) with a staggering 5 year peak (1962-66) and finished when he was thirty. The ultimate Bill James peak v. career argument.
About a decade ago, Jane Leavy wrote one of the best baseball biographies about Koufax. While I had known about his elbow problems as a kid, it was still startling to read about how excruciatingly painful it was for Sandy during those last two years when he won 53 games. He completed 54 of 82 starts in those years! This was a time when starting pitchers could occasionally throw more than 200 pitches in a game if it went into extra innings and routinely threw 130-140 pitches in complete nine inning games.
Before the 1965 season, Koufax asked the Dodger team physician to tell him when he had gotten to the point where pitching further risked losing the use of his arm and then he'd quit. During those years, his elbow would swell up to twice its size and turn black after every outing. He managed by taking empirin with codeine on days he pitched along with butazolidin (a non-steroid anti-inflammatory drug now banned for humans), coating his body with an undiluted Capsolin salve (derived from red hot chili peppers) and lasted for two more seasons.
Won the seventh game of the 1965 World Series against the Twins. Pitching on two days rest, with his curveball not working he had to rely only on his fastball, throwing a three-hit shutout and striking out ten. I guess he could be unhittable even with only one pitch.
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Bob Gibson
Hank Aaron's advice to the rookie Dusty Baker:
"Don't dig in against Bob Gibson; he'll knock you down. He'd knock down his own grandmother if she dared to challenge him. Don't stare at him, don't smile at him, don't talk to him. He doesn't like it. If you happen to hit a home run, don't run too slow, don't run too fast. If you happen to want to celebrate, get in the tunnel first. And if he hits you, don't charge the mound, because he's a Gold Glove boxer."
Aaron hit .215 against Gibson. He also dominated Willie Mays and Roberto Clemente. Baker, who had a 17-year major league career, later said Gibson was the only pitcher who ever intimidated him.
When I went looking for Gibson pictures they were all just like I always remember him. It was all about the stare he gave the batter and then the follow through. He looked like he was flinging himself at the batter and then he'd stagger off towards the first base line as he finished. On TV I watched him strike out 17 Tigers in the first game of the 1968 World Series. It looked like he could strike out the world that day.
Nine World Series starts, eight complete games, seven wins and 92 strikeouts in 81 innings. And, of course, we have the 1968 season and the 1.12 ERA. Embedded within that year was an 11 game streak of complete game victories in which Gibson gave up 3(!!) runs and threw eight shutouts allowing more than five hits only twice.
Juan MarichalHow'd he get his leg up that high, keep his balance and still have phenomenal control and velocity? Well, eventually his back gave out and he was done as an effective pitcher at age 33. But during the 1960s he won more games than either Gibson or Koufax.
Juan had a wider assortment of pitches than Gibson and Koufax and could throw them overhand, three-quarters and sidearm. Because Willie Mays was my favorite player I used to see the Giants frequently when they came into New York to play the Mets and it seemed like Marichal was always the pitcher (I suspect my memory is not accurate, but who cares) and it was so much fun watching him throw. Of all the pitchers I've seen in person, only Luis Tiant surpassed him for entertainment value.
Won twenty or more games six times in seven years, completing 57 of 75 starts in the last two of these years before his back problems began (hey, do you think maybe throwing 57 complete games in two years might be why his back problems began?). In the first of those 20-win seasons, 1963, he beat Warren Spahn in the famous 16 inning, 1-0 game with both of them going the distance. Marichal threw an estimated 250 pitches and only gave up two hits in the last eight innings. Mays won it with a homer off Spahn. Willie also threw out Norm Larker at the plate in the 4th to keep the game scoreless. Then, after four days rest, Juan started again, holding the Cardinals to five hits over seven innings.
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The Incident
While Gibson was the most feared of the three aces, it was Marichal (directly) and Koufax (indirectly), both noted for their mild personalities, who were involved in the most violent on-field incident of the 1960s.
The Dodgers and the Giants didn't like each other when they were in Brooklyn and Manhattan and things didn't change when they relocated to Los Angeles and San Francisco in 1958. Throughout most of the 1960s both teams contended for the league championship. In August 1965, the Dodgers came to Candlestick Park for a 4 game series with the Giants whom they led by 1 1/2 games. The Dodgers took two out of the first three games (both in extra innings) despite homers in each game by Willie Mays. There were plenty of brushbacks and scuffles and tension was building.
On August 22, Marichal and Koufax faced off. Marichal knocked down Maury Wills in the second inning and John Roseboro, the Dodgers catcher, demanded Sandy retaliate. Koufax refused to do so - as Roseboro later said "Koufax was constitutionally incapable of throwing at anyone's head, so I decided to take matters into my own hands". When Marichal came to the plate in the bottom of the third, Roseboro returned a pitch from Koufax by buzzing it very close and very fast past Juan's head. The two exchanged harsh words and then Marichal did what no one had ever done before - he hit another player with his bat on the head (three times). While Roseboro escaped serious injury, at that very moment it looked horrific - Roseboro was bleeding profusely and several of his teammates thought he'd lost an eye. Despite the injury, he continued fighting while multiple struggles between other Dodger and Giant players erupted. The crowd was going nuts and it looked like some might join the fighting on the field. Things only started to calm down when Mays grabbed Roseboro and walked him to the Dodgers dugout where he sat with him and cradled his injured head. In baseball terms that was probably the oddest aspect of the day. To have a player sitting in the opposing dugout comforting an injured player from the other team in the middle of a brawl (Mays left the dugout briefly to break up one of the many fights and disarmed one of his teammates who had picked up a bat) is something I don't remember ever happening before or since. Walter Alston, the Dodgers manager, said "Mays was the only player on either club who showed any sense".
When play resumed a shaken Koufax walked two batters and then gave up a 450 foot home run to Mays and the Giants went on to win the game. The full story (and there's a lot more to it) is told well in James Hirschs' Willie Mays: The Life, the Legend (2010).
The incident badly damaged Marichal's reputation and probably led to a several year delay in his election to the Baseball Hall of Fame. He and Roseboro eventually made their peace.
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