Scully Calls Koufax's Perfect Ninth
There couldn't have been a more perfect combination -- Sandy Koufax and Vin Scully. On Sept. 9, 1965, Koufax was on the mound at Chavez Ravine, throwing a perfect game against the Cubs. Scully was there, too -- up in the booth, narrating with incredible improvised poetry that had a magic all its own, a broadcast equivalent of Koufax's achievement on the mound.
"[Koufax] was just great," said Cubs first baseman Ernie Banks after the game. "It was beautiful. The first five innings he was getting the curve ball over real good. Then he got tremendous momentum. I thought he'd be a little less tough, but he just kept throwing the ball right on through. And throwing strikes."
Jeff Torborg, behind the plate for the Dodgers, said that Koufax "was throwing much faster at the end than at the beginning."
It was Koufax's fourth no-hitter, a record, and fourth in four years. His unfortunate opponent, fellow lefty Bob Hendley, suffered the loss despite throwing a one-hitter and allowing only one run -- unearned. At the time, it was only the third perfect game in NL history and the ninth in major league annals.
Torborg, one of the few major league backstops to catch three no-hitters (he caught Nolan Ryan's first on May 15, 1973), later said, "You really feel [the pressure], no doubt about it. Your heart's pounding. With Sandy's perfect game, Sandy was so special that I couldn't have put down the wrong sign. There wasn't too much I could've done wrong there. I just had to catch the ball."
And Scully just had to tell listeners what he was seeing. But he did so much more.
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