Sandy Koufax was one of the most dominant pitchers in the history of baseball, a left-hander whose brief but dazzling peak earned him a place among the immortals of the game. Born Sanford Braun in Brooklyn, New York, he signed with the hometown Dodgers and reached the major leagues in 1955, the year the team won its only World Series in Brooklyn.
For his first several seasons Koufax was a wild, erratic thrower of enormous but unharnessed talent. Then, in the early 1960s, he suddenly mastered his control, and the results were astonishing. Combining a blazing fastball with a sharp-breaking curve, he became nearly unhittable, leading the National League in earned-run average for five straight years.
Between 1962 and 1966 Koufax put together one of the greatest stretches any pitcher has ever achieved: three Cy Young Awards, a Most Valuable Player award, four no-hitters including a perfect game, and a string of strikeout records, while leading the Dodgers to pennants and World Series titles.
He also won admiration off the field by famously declining to pitch a World Series game that fell on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement. Then, at the height of his powers and only thirty years old, Koufax abruptly retired in 1966 because of an arthritic pitching elbow that threatened his arm. He became the youngest player ever elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.