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A Beard & a Fastball. Maybe it was too easy, too fast. By last week Koufax could not even get excited over the double challenge of pitching the deciding game of the World Series with only two days of rest. "I'll volunteer," he said, "if I get asked." Naturally , he got asked. It was supposed to be Don Drysdale's turn to pitch. Drysdale was a 23-game winner during the season; he had won a Series game, and he was rested. But when the game started, there was Koufax out on the mound. At the start, his curve was hanging, his fastball was erratic. He walked two men in the first inning, and Freon horns tooted triumphantly in Minnesota's Metropolitan Stadium as Drysdale began warming up in the bullpen.
Koufax struck out Earl Battey to end the threat—and that was as close as the Minnesota Twins got to scoring a run. The Dodgers picked up two runs in the fourth on Lou Johnson's homer, a double by Ron Fairly and a single by Wes Parker. Koufax needed only one. Relying almost exclusively on his fastball ("It got so I just told Johnny Roseboro 'no' every time he called for the curve"), he burned pitch after pitch over the corners of the plate.
Cutting the Corners. Finally, it was the last of the ninth. With one out, Killebrew slapped a single to left. It was the third hit off Sandy all day and the last. Earl Battey looked at a called third strike, and up came Bob Allison, a dangerous hitter. "He was the tying run," Koufax said later, "so no pitch I threw him got any more than an inch of the plate." The count went to two and two. Rearing back, Koufax threw. Allison swung. Pop! The ball slammed into Catcher Roseboro's mitt. In the locker room, world champions for the third time in seven years, richer by $10,000 per man, the Dodgers showered in champagne and gawked like schoolboys at Sandy Koufax, standing off to one side talking to reporters. "That Koufax," sighed Pitcher Johnny Podres, once a World Series hero himself, "he's something else."
He sure is. "Was this your biggest victory?" somebody wanted to know. "No," said Sandy, "my first victory in the big leagues was." Well, surely he was just the teeniest bit excited? "No," said Koufax. "I'm just glad I don't have to do this again for four whole months."