October 14, 1965: The Gutsiest Game 7

October 14, 1965: Game 7 of the World Series, at Metropolitan Stadium in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington. So far, every game in this Series has been won by the home team.

The Minnesota Twins stunned Los Angeles Dodger pitchers Don Drysdale in Game 1 and Sandy Koufax in Game 2 in Minnesota. But the Dodgers came back in Los Angeles, winning Game 3 behind Claude Osteen, Game 4 behind Drysdale, and Game 5 behind Koufax. Back in Minnesota, the Twins took Game 6 thanks to a shutout and a home run by Jim "Mudcat" Grant.

Now, he was working on 2 days rest‚ and throwing only fastballs so that his great curveball doesn’t hurt his aching elbow as much as it hurts the Minnesota batters, fighting both the pain and the home-team trend. He was facing Jim Kaat, who beat him in Game 2, before Koufax beat him in Game 5.

With 2 outs in the bottom of the 1st inning, Koufax walked American League batting champion Tony Oliva and dangerous slugger Harmon Killebrew, but struck Earl Battey out to end the inning. In the top of the 3rd, Kaat gave up a lead off double to John Roseboro and a walk to Koufax himself, but worked out of the jam.

Kaat had a no-windup delivery, so he was less prone to fatigue than most pitchers. But he began the top of the 4th by allowing a home run to Lou Johnson, a double to Ron Fairly, and a single to Wes Parker, giving the Dodgers a 2-0 lead. That was enough for Twins manager Sam Mele, who relieved Kaat with Al Worthington, who ended the threat.

Ordinarily, for Koufax, a 2-0 lead meant "game over." But the pain. No curveballs. Just fastballs. The Twins knew what was coming, and still, they had trouble with it. With 1 out in the bottom of the 5th, Frank Quilici hit a double to left. Pinch-hitting for Worthington, Rich Rollins worked Koufax for a walk, and the tying runs were on. But he got 2 groundouts to get out of it.

Mele had to trust his bullpen, and brought Johnny Klippstein in to pitch. Dodger manager Walter Alston decided that Koufax, in his condition, was still better than anyone in his bullpen. He was right, as Koufax got through the 6th, 7th and 8th innings without allowing another baserunner. The Dodgers were 3 outs away from the World Championship.

But to get those last 3 outs, he would have to face Oliva, Killebrew and Battey. If any of them got on, hard-hitting Bob Allison would come up as no worse than the tying run. He got Oliva to ground to 3rd, but Killebrew singled to left. He caught Battey looking. Allison worked him for a 2-ball, 2-strike count. With his 123rd pitch of the game, all of them fastballs, Koufax struck him out swinging.

He had allowed 3 hits and 3 walks, striking out 10. With only a fastball. On the road. Against a team that had won 102 games and scored an average of 4.78 runs per game. In a game that meant everything. Sports Illustrated named him their Sportsman of the Year.

Koufax had refused to pitch in Game 1, because he was Jewish and the game fell on Yom Kippur. The Dodgers lost. And then he lost Game 2, forcing him to pitch on short rest in Game 5 and on shorter rest in Game 7. If the Dodgers had lost the World Series, Koufax would have essentially sacrificed a World Series win for the sake of his religious beliefs.

Maybe his place in the pantheon of sports actually be higher if that had happened -- higher, that is, outside of Los Angeles and Southern California. Would he still have been so admired in the L.A. market? There's no way to know if Dodger fans, already spoiled, would have forgiven him.

They were already spoiled, because this was the Dodgers’ 4th World Championship, their 3rd since moving to Los Angeles, and their 2nd in 3 years. In each of the last 2, Koufax was named the Series' Most Valuable Player. Certainly, this time, he was its most courageous.

Among the players of his generation, Koufax is one of a few that was not only an all-time great, but had a genuine mystique that raised him even higher in the memories of baseball fans, including those who, like me, were too young to ever see him pitch. Those few also include Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Bob Gibson, Brooks Robinson, Frank Robinson and Roberto Clemente. If you want to extend it by a few years, you can add Carl Yastrzemski and maybe Pete Rose.

But because of the Los Angeles media, and the religious factor, Koufax occupies a truly rare place in the sports fan mind.

It had been a big year for the State of Minnesota, the "Twin Cities" metropolitan area of Minneapolis and St. Paul, and Metropolitan Stadium in particular. On July 13, it hosted baseball's All-Star Game, and a very entertaining one at that. On August 21, it hosted The Beatles. All Spring and Summer long, it hosted a Pennant-winning team for the 1st time. And on October 6, 7, 13 and 14, it hosted the World Series, one that was full of drama and glory on both sides. A nice year. But, for Minnesotans, it fell one win short.

One more note: The basketball team at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) had won the NCAA Tournament earlier in this year. This Dodger World Series win allowed Los Angeles to follow New York (in 1950, CCNY and the Yankees) and Chicago (in 1963, Loyola and the Bears) as the 3rd city to win the NCAA Tournament and a major league sports championship in the same year.

In 1972, the Los Angeles Lakers would win the NBA Championship, with UCLA winning yet another National Championship. L.A. remains the only city to do it twice, let alone in 2 different sports. New York in 1950 and Los Angeles in 1965 remain the only cities to win both the NCAA Tournament and the World Series in the same calendar year.

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October 14, 1965 was a Thursday. Football was in midweek. The NBA season started the next day. And the NHL season started 9 days later. So there were no other scores on this historic day.

October 6, 1965: The Moors Murders

October 6, 1965: Ian Brady is arrested in Hyde, outside Manchester, England, for murder. Five days later, his girlfriend, Myra Hindley, is arrested for her role in what became known as "The Moors Murders."

Ian Brady was born in 1938 in Glasgow, Scotland. Like many killers, he got his start by torturing and killing animals. He became a thief and a smuggler, and began to study and admire Nazi Germany. Myra Hindley was born in 1942 in Gorton, on the south side of Manchester. She grew up in poverty with an alcoholic, abusive father. That meanness was passed down to her. She took judo lessons, and her grip was so strong that classmates didn't want to train with her.

Both of them got jobs at Millwards Merchandising in Gorton, and they started dating in 1961. Brady got Hindley interested in the Nazi books he liked, and also books by the Marquis de Sade and Friedrich Nietzsche. She took on the appearance of an Aryan ideal, bleaching her hair blonde. Of him, she said, "Within months he had convinced me that there was no God at all: he could have told me that the earth was flat, the moon was made of green cheese and the sun rose in the west, I would have believed him, such was his power of persuasion."

Another book Brady persuaded Hindley to read was Compulsion, Meyer Levin's novel bases on the Leopold and Loeb murder of 1924, and he began to speak of what Leopold and Loeb intended, committing a "perfect murder." They moved in together, with Hindley's grandmother in Hyde, east of Manchester. On July 12, 1963, in Gorton, they killed 16-year-old Pauline Reade, a former classmate of Hindley's sister. On November 23, they kidnapped 12-year-old John Kilbride in Ashton-under-Lyne, northeast of Manchester, and killed and buried him on Saddleworth Moor, further northeast, where they'd previously buried Reade.

Keith Bennett, 12, was last seen on June 16, 1964, in Longsight, also on the south side of Manchester. On December 26, 1964, they kidnapped 10-year-old Lesley Ann Downey (not to be confused with actress Lesley-Anne Down, who was the same age but living in London at the time) at Ancoats, in Central Manchester, took her back to the Hyde house, and recorded the sick things they did to her. Hindley later claimed to have started to run a bath for the victim, and returned to find that Brady had strangled her. She, too, was buried in Saddleworth Moor.

On October 6, 1965, Brady picked 17-year-old Edward Evans at Manchester Central rail station, and drove him to the Hyde house. He fought back, causing Brady to sprain his ankle, rendering him unable to dispose of the body after the killing. They had enlisted Dave Smith, Hindley's brother-in-law, for help, but upon seeing the aftermath, he left, and called the police. Brady was immediately arrested. Over the next 5 days, the evidence that the police uncovered proved that Hindley was also involved, and she was arrested, too.

The bodies of Kilbride and Downey were quickly found. Reade's body was found in 1987. Brady eventually confessed to Bennett's murder, but his body has never been found. As a result, Brady was indicted for the murders of Downey, Kilbride and Evans; while Hindley was indicted for those of Downey and Evans, and harboring Brady in the knowledge that he had murdered Kilbride. They were convicted on May 6, 1966.

Hindley was taken to HM Prison Holloway, in North London. She continued to write letters to Brady until 1971. Despite claims to have found religion and reformed, she was continually denied parole, and, a chain-smoker, died in 2002, at the age of 60.

Brady was taken to HM Prison Durham, in the city of the same name, in the North-East of England. In 1985, he was diagnosed as a psychopath, and moved to the high-security Ashworth Hospital in Merseyside. He died in 2017, at 79, as the longest-serving prisoner in England and Wales, 51 years.

He had outlived not just Hindley, but most of the other major British criminals of the 1960s: Reginald and Ronald Kray, all of the Cambridge Five, and all of the participants in the 1963 "Great Train Robbery" except Robert Welch. He also outlived his betrayer, David Smith, who died in 2012.

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October 6, 1965 was a Wednesday. Football was in midweek. The NBA season wouldn't start for another 9 days, and the NHL season for another 17. The only score on this historic day was Game 1 of the World Series. I have a separate entry for that event, because it was the Yom Kippur on which Sandy Koufax refused to pitch, and the Los Angeles Dodgers lost to the Minnesota Twins, 8-2 at Metropolitan Stadium in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota.

October 6, 1965: Sandy Koufax Does Not Pitch On Yom Kippur

October 6, 1965: Game 1 of the World Series at Metropolitan Stadium in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota, the 1st World Series game ever played in that State. The Minnesota Twins are hosting the Los Angeles Dodgers, whose ace is Sandy Koufax.

That season, Koufax had gone 26-8, with a 2.08 ERA, 27 complete games, 8 shutouts, a perfect game against the Chicago Cubs, a WHIP of 0.855, and 382 strikeouts, a new single-season record. (That record still stands for National League pitchers, and for lefthanded pitchers in either League.)

But Koufax, being Jewish, does not pitch today, because it is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar. So he is pushed back to Game 2, and Don Drysdale is started today. No problem, right? Big D is also a future Hall-of-Famer, right?

Not today: Don Mincher and Zoilo Versalles -- who hit only 2 homers in the regular season, but was named the American League's Most Valuable Player for his contact hitting, speed and defense -- hit home runs off Drysdale. When manager Walter Alston comes to take him out in the 3rd inning, Drysdale says to him, "I bet you wish I was Jewish, too!"

Jim "Mudcat" Grant allows only 1 hit, a home run by Ron Fairly, and the Twins, in the 1st World Series game in their history (unless you count their Washington Senators days, in which case it's their 1st in 32 years), win 8-2.

To make matters worse for the Dodgers, Koufax loses Game 2 as well. The Dodgers will come back, though, and win the Series in 7 games. The Twins will not get this close to a World Championship again for another 22 years.

I wonder: If the Dodgers had lost the World Series, Koufax would have essentially sacrificed a World Series win for the sake of his religious beliefs. Would his place in the pantheon of sports actually be higher if that had happened?

In 1934, baseball's 1st Jewish star, Hank Greenberg, refused to play a regular-season game because it fell on Yom Kippur, and his team, the Detroit Tigers, were in a very tough AL Pennant race. They won the game and the Pennant, anyway, so he was hailed as a hero. So was Koufax.

On September 26, 2001, following the example of Greenberg and Koufax, Dodger right fielder Shawn Green sat out a game that fell on Yom Kippur – and also donated his day's pay of $75,000 to a charity for 9/11 survivors. The Dodgers lost the game to their arch-rivals, the San Francisco Giants, 6-4 at Dodger Stadium. It had little effect on the Playoff race: Neither team made it.

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October 6, 1965 was a Wednesday. This was also the day that Ian Brady and Myra Hindley were arrested for "The Moors Murders." I have a separate entry for that event.

Football was in midweek. The NBA season wouldn't start for another 9 days, and the NHL season for another 17. So there were no other scores on this historic day.