Yankees! Yankees! Is That All You Know?

Got a call from my friend Marty the other day. "Mantle and the Yankees, is that all you know? How about some air time for my guy Sandy!"

October, 1965.

After the fall of our mighty Yankee dynasty, a once-perennial second-division team grabbed the American League pennant in 1965. The club formerly known as the Washington Senators had relocated to Minnesota in 1961, and they rebounded from a seventh place finish in 1964 with 102 wins in 1965.

With Killebrew leading the way, the Twins smacked 150 home runs that year and you might remember they had the league's leading hitter in Tony Oliva, and MVP Zoilo Versalles.

The Dodgers hit the league's worst 78 home runs in 1965, but they had speed and pitching.

Sandy Koufax had another monumental season: 26 wins, 2.04 era, 382 strikeouts. But this series will best be remembered for Sandy sitting out the opener because it fell on the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur.

Don Drysdale got the start in game one and got rocked for seven runs in less than three innings as LA fell in game one 8-2.

Marty's boy Koufax was on the mound for game two but Jim Kaat gave up just one run to win it for the Twins.

Claude Osteen was brilliant in a 4-0 win in game three, giving LA it's first win of the series.

The following day when Drysdale came out with a five hit 11 strikeout performance the series was tied at two games each.

Koufax also rebounded from his previous loss with a 10 strikeout performance, holding Minnesota to just four singles in a game five shutout.

Mudcat Grant got his second complete game victory of the series in game six, always a good hitter, I remember his own three run homer was all the support he would need to even the series at three games each and force a game seven.

LA manager Walt Alston now had a decision to make. who to start in game seven, Drysdale on the than customary three days rest or Sandy Koufax on just two... Walt opted for Sandy.

With crazy pain from an arthritic left arm, a condition that would end his career after the next season, Sandy went out on just two days rest and with a three-hit 10 strike-out performance led Los Angeles to the World Series victory and earned Koufax his second Series MVP in three years.

The following season, 1966, Koufax had arguably the best year of his career, with a 27-9 record and a 1.73 ERA, but at the young age of 31, faced with losing the use of his left arm forever, Sandy Koufax was forced to retire from the game he loved.

I don't know about you, but I remember feeling cheated as we never got to see the further greatness that surely would have been.

In years when they gave out just one Cy Young award, Sandy won it twice, in 1963 and 1965, and in the first year they awarded two Cy Young's, 1966, he won it again for a total of three.

In 1972, his first year of eligibility, Koufax, at age 36, became the youngest player ever elected to baseball's Hall Of Fame.

Even as a die-hard Yankee fanatic, and as much as he hurt my team over the years, I would have to admit that to this day Sandy Koufax was the most dominant pitcher I ever saw.

Happy birthday, Marty.