“Three thousand years of beautiful tradition, from Moses to Sandy Koufax, you’re goddamn right I’m living in the f—-ing past!”—Walter Sobchak in the Coen brothers’ The Big Lebowski

This is the 50th anniversary of pitcher Sandy Koufax’s final season in baseball, in which he walked away at age 30 after his 27–9 won-loss record carried the Los Angeles Dodgers to their third World Series in four years.

With a half century of perspective, I think I can finally make sense of some of the facets of the Koufax conundrum.

Was he really that good? How did he become so overpowering? And why was he so famous?

He certainly was famous, especially to a 7-year-old in Los Angeles. My 1966 Sandy Koufax Topps card was the pride of my baseball-card collection. The rumor among the other kids on my block was that Koufax lived in the mysterious house on the corner. (He didn’t.) The Bill James Handboo... Bill James Best Price: $4.46 Buy New $5.10 (as of 04:20 UTC - Details)

To this day, Koufax remains the most legendary Jewish athlete since Samson.

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The Coen brothers likely were fans of the Minnesota Twins, who were Koufax’s opponents in the 1965 World Series. Koufax had been scheduled to pitch the first, fourth, and (if needed) seventh games against the Twins, allowing him the then-usual three days’ rest between starts. But he asked fellow Hall of Fame pitcher Don Drysdale to take his place in game 1 because it fell on Yom Kippur.

Koufax was a worldly man (he owned the Tropicana Motel in West Hollywood, the center of the rock & roll business, where Jim Morrison of the Doors lived for three years), but honoring his religion struck him as the right thing to do. Koufax, never an articulate speaker, didn’t much explain his decision, but his taciturnity was appealing in its cowboy-movie “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do” fatalism.

Drysdale, unfortunately, was shelled. He joked to manager Walt Alston, who came to take him out in the third inning, “I bet right now you wish I was Jewish, too.” Then Koufax lost the second game, putting the Dodgers in a deep hole.

Los Angeles rallied, however, with Claude Osteen, Drysdale, and Koufax winning the next three. When Osteen lost the sixth game, however, Alston had to choose between Drysdale on three days’ rest and Koufax on two.

He called on Koufax. Sandy found his arm too tired to throw his ferocious curveball, but managed to rely on his famous sailing fastball for a three-hitter to win 2–0. It was the ultimate display of Koufax’s strength-against-strength style, with his disdain for guile.

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