Sandy Koufax by Jane Leavy

Author:Jane Leavy
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780061753503
Publisher: HarperCollins

Chapter 14

THE SIXTH INNING

CLAUDE OSTEEN WAS LYING in his shorts on a training table in the clubhouse listening to Jerry Doggett tout the virtues of Royal “76” Premium gasoline. It was getting late in the game and late in the season when arms tire and bodies need assuaging. Drysdale, who was scheduled to start against Houston the next evening, lay on the table beside him. It was Osteen’s first year with the Dodgers, having escaped last place in the American League in an off-season trade with the ignominious Washington Senators. At twenty-six, Osteen was no rookie but he felt like one in Drysdale’s presence. Everyone felt small in Drysdale’s presence. He was the team enforcer; whether standing on the dugout steps, bat ominously in hand, the day-game sun glinting off his California-white teeth, or getting treatment in the training room. His entire being commanded authority. “Get up,” Drysdale said suddenly. “Get your uniform on. You gotta watch this.”

When Drysdale said “Get up,” you got up—even if you were lying on the training table half naked and it was the sixth inning and a violation of baseball etiquette to do so. No one in the dugout or the press box could say how many times before Koufax had carried a no-hitter into the sixth inning. His teammates generally accepted the fact that he’d have one through four or five because it seemed like he always did. Later, they would count them up and be astonished all over again: nine times, not including the no-hitters, he had held the other team hitless through six innings.

The sixth inning of a no-hitter will either be remembered as the necessary pause before a classic denouement or it won’t be remembered at all. The dramatic tension derives from not knowing which. The line between the mundane and the heroic is drawn with every pitch, every potential passed ball, every errant bounce. In this instance, the tension was compounded by the improbable symmetry of the line score. On the field, in the stands, on the respective benches there was a coming to consciousness of what lay ahead. Hendley was hanging on. Koufax was getting stronger. “You could smell that something big was about to happen,” Osteen said.

It figures that Drysdale would smell it before anyone else. Their lives and fates were inextricably linked. After all, they virtually grew up together. They had been teammates for eleven years. The Dodgers were nothing without them. And without each other, neither would have been what each became. Righty, lefty, gentile, Jew. Everything about them was opposite except their purpose. Drysdale came sidearm; Koufax came over the top. Drysdale’s ball beat you up, Koufax’s rose to greet you. “Drysdale was like going to the dentist without Novocain,” Joey A. liked to say. “Sandy had the Novocain.” Facing him was painful only in retrospect.

If Koufax was a shooting star, Drysdale was a full moon. Both were essential but one was sublime. The closest Drysdale had ever come to throwing a no-hitter was a one-hitter against the Cardinals in May.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.