Ode to a Private Man : What becomes a legend most? When it comes to Sandy Koufax--hero, role model, enigma--it’s being left alone.

In the warm darkness of a summer night, my father and I are sprawled on opposite ends of our living room carpet. For an hour, we have communicated only with nervous hand gestures and grimaces, afraid to shatter the spell.

The only sound comes from a small radio on a coffee table and it tells us all we need to know: Sandy Koufax is three outs away from a perfect game.

“Three times in his sensational career has Sandy Koufax walked out to the mound to pitch a fateful ninth when he turned in a no-hitter,” says Vin Scully. “But tonight, September 9th, 1965, he made the toughest walk of his career, I’m sure, because through eight innings he has pitched a perfect game. He has struck out 11, has retired 24 consecutive batters.”

In the background, 29,139 fans at Dodger Stadium are cheering, then lapsing into edgy silence. The tension is painful, but in baseball you keep these things to yourself. If you talk about a no-hitter, you could jinx the pitcher.

“Koufax ready and delivers: Curve ball for a strike!”

Suddenly, the phone rings. It’s my best friend, Danny.

“Are you listening to the game?” he asks. “Sandy Koufax is . . . “ “Shut up!” I explode.

“No!” answers Danny, quickly recovering. “ You shut up!”

I slam the phone down and settle back into my lucky fetal position, trying to help Koufax any way I can. The first batter, Chicago Cubs catcher Chris Krug, strikes out swinging, so the jinx is off. There are still two outs to go.

*

When it comes to baseball heroics, the less said the better. And that goes not just for historic moments--like a perfect game--but for players as well. If you put someone on a pedestal, don’t ask them too many questions.

From 1962-’66 Sandy Koufax was the most overpowering pitcher in major league baseball, and Los Angeles Dodger fans watched him set one astonishing record after another. When he abruptly retired in 1966 because of an injured left arm, he was a legend. He was also hard to find.

Throughout his career, Koufax politely refused to talk about his personal life. He built a wall of privacy between himself and the public, brushing aside questions about his love life, his hobbies or his family.

Once he left the game, Koufax became even more remote. He was the J.D. Salinger of baseball, a hermit in the Age of Celebrity. Was he living on a farm in New Zealand, or raising horses in Maine? Few knew, and as the mystery deepened, his aura grew.

He pitched his perfect game 30 years ago, and as the 1995 season begins, it’s hard to ignore the contrasts between then and now.

Back then, baseball actually mattered, and a player like Koufax inspired more than salary envy.

Today, we know far too much about the grand old game. After an eight-month strike, millions of fans wonder if they still care about major league baseball. Greedy players and arrogant owners wiped out the 1994 season and the two sides still haven’t settled their acrimonious labor dispute.

I can’t get too worked up about the present mess, however, because my own disenchantment with baseball began long ago.

When Sandy Koufax retired in November, 1966, at the height of his powers, something in me died. I was much too young to know it, and the game still held my interest for seasons to come.

Yet the image of Koufax outlasted them all.

Where had he gone?

*

We know where he came from.

Sanford Braun was born on Dec. 30, 1935, and spent a happy childhood playing stickball on the streets of Brooklyn. He adopted Koufax as his last name when his mother remarried during his youth.

A bright student, he won a basketball scholarship to the University of Cincinnati. But his life changed when baseball scouts watched him pitch for New York neighborhood teams.

The boy could throw. He was wild and frequently sent fastballs screaming into the backstop, six feet over the catcher’s head. People joked about his utter lack of control, but nobody laughed at his 100 m.p.h. fastball.

Despite some doubts, the Brooklyn Dodgers signed him in 1955. Yet it wasn’t until 1959 that the world got a glimpse of what he would become. On Aug. 31, 1959, he struck out 18 San Francisco Giants at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, equaling what was then the major league record. It put Sandy Koufax on the map big time.

Starting in 1962, he pitched no-hitters in four consecutive seasons; he led the league in earned run averages for five straight seasons; he won the Cy Young Award three times; he set the major league record for most strikeouts in a season. He almost single-handedly helped the team win the World Series in 1963 and 1965, pitching the deciding game in both fall classics.

In any other town, Koufax would have been an athletic hero, but in Southern California he became a media sensation. Movie starlets flocked to his side, even though he was painfully shy. Warring fan clubs hounded him after ballgames, showering him with requests for autographs and personal dates.

At one point, several members of Los Angeles City Council wanted to rename Fairfax Avenue after Koufax. Songs were written about him and free color portraits were given away at gas stations throughout the Southland.

He was larger than life, but the appeal was also personal: If you were a left-handed Jewish kid like me, there weren’t many athletic role models. When Sandy Koufax came along, my whole world changed. Did he refuse to pitch the opening game of the 1965 World Series because it happened to fall on Yom Kippur? Mazel tov! Did he still win the final game? Break out the seltzer!

His photo hung like a shrine in my room, and I stayed up late listening to him on postgame shows. When I threw hardballs against a playground wall, I dreamed of a big blue 32 on my back and 55,000 fans cheering like crazy. My friends and I spent hours trying to imitate his fluid windup and delivery.

Yet what did we know of the man himself?

Although Koufax was on the covers of Life, Time, Newsweek and Sports Illustrated, mass publicity never penetrated his core. There were tributes from other players and comments from Koufax himself, but it was nothing like the celebrity journalism of our time. Try as she might, Barbara Walters could never have made Sandy Koufax cry.

What America saw was a paragon of perfection, a pitcher who was capable of twirling a no-hitter every time he took the mound. It was only after he retired--following a somber and shocking news conference--that the bubble finally burst. Sandy Koufax was human after all.

His magical left arm, we learned, had been damaged beyond repair by arthritis. For two seasons he had been able to pitch only with cortisone shots, codeine pills and other drugs that made him high between games. Doctors had urged him to quit in 1964, but he played in pain as long as he could.

At the age of 30, Koufax was the nation’s top sports personality--and he was unemployed. Unlike other athletes, who hang on for big bucks long after they burn out, he walked away from it all. There would be no dramatic comebacks, a la Michael Jordan. Koufax just disappeared, like the Mighty Casey in an old “Twilight Zone” episode, and he left no forwarding address.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of his baseball debut, and Koufax’s media isolation continues. For most people, it’s a dead issue. But now, prompted by an editor’s humorous challenge, I’ve decided that it’s time for me to try to encounter the man. After 30 years, my search for Sandy has begun.

*

“What do you want to reach Sandy Koufax for?”

The voice on the telephone line is cautious and skeptical. A Los Angeles businessman, he’s a longtime friend of the Dodger pitcher, and clearly wants to protect him from prying eyes. Koufax recently flew into town to attend a friend’s wedding, the man says, and people mobbed him, just like old times.

Over the years, Sandy sightings have made good copy. Headlines heralded his “return” in 1979, when he became a Dodger pitching instructor. Eyebrows were raised when he left the team several years later.

Koufax, who lives in Florida, makes sporadic appearances at spring training sites, and TV cameras recently caught him in the stands at the NCAA basketball finals in Seattle.

Does he have a new line of work? His Los Angeles friend doesn’t want to discuss these things, in deference to his boyhood pal.

The Dodgers front office can’t help either, saying Koufax does not keep in regular touch. Can we believe stories in the New York Post that yarmulkes autographed by the hall of famer are selling for $75 a pop? It’s hard to separate fact from fiction.

As my deadline nears, I realize Koufax is right. Better we should remember the athlete and let the private man be. For now, I’m back in the living room with my dad. We’re spellbound, as Koufax bears down for the second out:

“Sandy, fussing, looks in to get his sign. 0 and 2 to Amalfitano--the strike-two pitch to Joe: Fastball, swung on and missed, strike three! He is one out away from the promised land.”

*

That’s how this story originally ended. Then, one morning, the phone rings.

“Hello?”

“Is this Josh Getlin?”

“Yes.”

“Well, this is Sandy Koufax. I understand you’re trying to reach me.”

The newspaper business makes you cynical and my first instinct is to suspect a practical joke. But, no, the voice is unmistakable. It’s him.

“Thanks for calling,” I say, “and, yes, I wanted to do a story about you and your career. To get your thoughts on life after baseball.”

There’s a deadly pause.

“I appreciate this, but I have nothing to say,” Koufax says. “And if it was up to me, you wouldn’t even be doing this story. I know I can’t stop you, but I’ve never wanted to comment on these things. I hope you understand.”

We go around in circles two or three times before the conversation concludes on a friendly note. And, of course, I do understand. I finally know what happens when you encounter a hero, the drama and anticlimax of it all.

You’re torn between the adult who maintains nicely and the kid who can hardly believe what’s happening. For three long minutes, I sit numbly at my desk. Then I call up my wife and begin shouting.

“Did he say anything interesting?” she asks. “Did you at least ask him what he ate for breakfast this morning? Did you get anything at all?”

I’m stumped. “Hard Copy” would fire me on the spot. But Jim Murray, The Times’ sports columnist, said it best. When Sandy Koufax retired at the peak of his game, he wasn’t interested in bad second acts. Neither am I.

“I wouldn’t want to see Rembrandt doing billboards,” Murray wrote. “So go, Sandy. And thanks for the memory. This way, it remains the one I want.”