A Painful Goodbye That Stunned Baseball

To the shock and consternation of nearly everyone, one of baseball’s best said goodbye, 33 years ago today.

This was six weeks after the Baltimore Orioles had swept the Dodgers in a four-game World Series, which had followed arguably Sandy Koufax’s best season--he was 27-9 with a 1.73 earned-run average. He had struck out 317 hitters and walked only 77.

Yet he did it all in pain, and that was his explanation at a hastily called news conference in the Sans Souci Room at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel.

Koufax, only 30, stepped to a bank of 15 microphones and said:

“I don’t have much to say. I just have one short statement.

“A few minutes ago, I sent [Dodger general manager] Buzzie Bavasi a letter asking him to put me on the voluntarily retired list.”

And that was it. It caught everyone by surprise, including the Dodgers, who were on tour in Japan. A pitcher who’d won 97 games the previous four seasons had walked away.

His annual salary was $125,000, and speculation was it could reach $200,000 in 1967.

But, as he explained, he’d been pitching with injections and pills to kill the pain in recent seasons, and doctors had warned him encroaching arthritis could leave him with a disabled left elbow.

“The decision was based partly on medical advice and partly on my own feeling,” he said. “I had to take a shot every ballgame. That’s more than I wanted to do. I had stomachaches from the pain pills. I’d be high half the time in ballgames from the pills. I don’t want that.”

And what about the Dodgers? Koufax shrugged.

“Other people have retired . . . and it hasn’t hurt other organizations. I replaced somebody and somebody will replace me.”

Also on this date: In 1967, O.J. Simpson scored on one of college football’s best runs, a 64-yarder, to lead USC to a 21-20 victory in over UCLA in front of 90,772 at the Coliseum.