The Trolley Dodger

The Sports Illustrated Vault has a gallery feature up right now: Aces High: Best Pitching Seasons with some cool pictures. As you might imagine, the Dodgers have a couple of guys in the spotlighted 15 pitchers.

Sandy Koufax, 1965:

Perhaps no pitcher has been better over a four-year stretch than Sandy Koufax from 1963 until his premature retirement due to arm trouble at age 30 in 1966. Over that span, Koufax won three Cy Young awards, but his best season came in 1965, when he went 26-8 with a 2.04 ERA, pitched a perfect game and struck out an NL-record 382 batters.

Orel Hershiser, 1988:

For most of the 1988 season, Orel Hershiser was merely very good. When he took the mound on Aug. 30, he was 17-8 with a 2.88 ERA. But beginning with a shutout of the Expos that day, Hershiser’s season went from very good to historic. By the time it was over, he had pitched a record 59 consecutive scoreless innings, including five straight shutouts. He finished 23-8 and steamrolled through the playoffs by winning all five of his starts and even notching a key save, leading the Dodgers to the World Series title.

Oh, and there’s this guy who shall remain nameless, for this post anyhow. ;)

Yeah, this guy was a little intimidating:

SI.com has a cool feature that allows you to browse Sports Illustrated covers of days gone by, and even to search by team. Like this for the Dodgers, showing 41 covers with Dodgers on them, from Don Drysdale on August 20, 1962, to Sandy Koufax on July 12, 1999, and lots in between. You can even buy covers at sicovers.com.

Happy 80th birthday to the best friend of every Dodgers fan, born on this date in 1927.

It seems appropriate to honor Vinny with a listen to one of his classic calls, like this from September 9th, 1965 (mp3) of Koufax’s perfect game. Even reading the transcript, you can hear his voice:

Three times in his sensational career has Sandy Koufax walked out to the mound to pitch a fateful ninth where he turned in a no-hitter. But tonight, September the 9th, nineteen hundred and 65, he made the toughest walk of his career, I’m sure, because through eight innings he has pitched a perfect game. He has struck out 11, he has retired 24 consecutive batters, and the first man he will look at is catcher Chris Krug, big right-hand hitter, flied to second, grounded to short. Dick Tracewski is now at second base and Koufax ready and delivers: curveball for a strike….

And ever the poet:

The Dodgers defensively in this spine-tingling moment: Sandy Koufax and Jeff Torborg. The boys who will try and stop anything hit their way: Wes Parker, Dick Tracewski, Maury Wills and John Kennedy; the outfield of Lou Johnson, Willie Davis and Ron Fairly. And there’s 29,000 people in the ballpark and a million butterflies. Twenty nine thousand, one hundred and thirty-nine paid.

Thanks for the millions of memories, Mr. Scully, and Happy Birthday!

Tim Dierkes over at MLB Trade Rumors cracked me up with a bullet point in his post earlier today, “Rosenthal On Teixeira, Dunn”:

Rosenthal believes the Royals could not even acquire a Tony Abreu from the Dodgers for Octavio Dotel. Previously it had been said that the Dayton Moore was asking for Matt Kemp or James Loney. And Duke Snider plus Sandy Koufax.

Repeat after me: Octavio Dotel is a reliever who is on a one-year contract.

Maybe if they add what’s left of the corpse of Zack Greinke on the table, plus eat the remainder of the Odalis Perez salary we’d still be paying, then we’ll start talking guys like Tony Abreu.

A new baseball blog has hit the Net, written by Jesse Michel — Playing4Shekels. The tagline:

Want to know what it’s like to be a local celebrity in Ra’anana, Israel? Don’t ask me…I’m just playing baseball there. But I am going to chronicle my journey through this blog, so enjoy.

As a boy, Jesse dreamed of being a major leaguer; like many of us with a similar dream, he had to adjust his expectations:

Growing up, I envisioned myself being the starting catcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers or New York Yankees. As I got older though, I came to the realization that most major league clubs aren’t looking to invest millions of dollars in a 5’8″ catcher with an average arm, speed like a Santa Cruz banana slug, and less power than it takes to light up Jerusalem on Shabbat.

However, he is doing something about his dream: going halfway around the world to play for the Ra’anana Express of the Israel Baseball League. (You can read more about it at this Wikipedia article.)

There will be six teams playing beginning this summer, and MLB.com is reported to be carrying games.

Dodger fans might remember hearing earlier this year about the IBL from the lovely moment of Sandy Koufax honored by being drafted by the Modi’in Miracle.

“His selection is a tribute to the esteem with which he is held by everyone associated with this league,” said former big leaguer Aret Shamsky, who will manage the Miracle. “It’s been 41 years between starts for him. If he’s rested and ready to take the mound again, we want him on our team.”

I’m always fascinated by baseball’s reach across the world, particularly in places that aren’t already famous for it (e.g. Japan, Latin America), like Israel, Ireland, or Lithuania. That in mind, I’ve decided to assemble a page of international baseball links, which I’ll post later.