Sandy Koufax was a hard-throwing pitcher who lacked control during his high-school years in Brooklyn. He was an outstanding baseball and basketball player and was recruited by the University of Cincinnati. In 1955, after his freshman year, he dropped out of college to play professional baseball for the Brooklyn Dodgers. It was not until the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles that Koufax began to show promise as a major leaguer. He won eleven of twenty-two games in 1958 and tied a major league strikeout record of eighteen against the Giants in 1959.
By 1961 Koufax was a star, and he continued to improve throughout the decade. Between 1963 and his retirement in 1965, his highest season's earned run average (ERA) was 2.04, and he won a total of seventy-seven games, including twenty-five in 1963, twenty-six in 1965, and twenty-seven in 1966, all years in.....
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