Fine concluded that absent confirmation from the famously private Koufax himself, his whereabouts remain a \u201cmodern midrash,\u201d or a Jewish story that has been passed down through the generations.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s amazing that no one else \u2014 the most famous person in the world at that time, at that moment \u2014 no one else actually physically saw him,\u201d Fine told JTA. \u201cUnless Sandy says he was there, to me, it\u2019s midrash. Midrash becomes folklore that\u2019s a part of our story.\u201d<\/p>\n
To Schloff, there\u2019s no doubt. He said he\u2019s been \u201caccosted on the internet\u201d for retelling the story. But he insists he saw what he saw.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was there 100% and I sat behind him 100%,\u201d said Schloff, who is now 76 and lives in Tucson, Arizona.<\/p>\n
Schloff remembers Koufax, like the other adult men at services that morning, wearing a white kippah and a prayer shawl. Schloff said his fellow congregants observed the custom of being \u201cMinnesota nice\u201d and did not disturb Koufax.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone\u2019s there for services, and the whole time I\u2019m staring at the back of his bald head, davening, and thinking, huh, here\u2019s Sandy Koufax,\u201d said Schloff. \u201cMy God, here\u2019s Sandy Koufax.\u201d<\/p>\n
That recollection \u2014 as well as Schloff\u2019s description of Koufax as \u201ca medium-sized, middle-aged Jewish guy, balding and dark hair\u201d \u2014 casts a bit of doubt on whether the man he remembers was in fact Koufax. On one hand, Koufax was more than six feet tall, not yet 30, and did not appear to be bald. On the other hand, Schloff was a teenager at the time and was the same height as Koufax, so to him the pitcher may have in fact seemed to be older and not especially tall.<\/p>\n
In any case, Schloff said he does not remember Koufax\u2019s voice being \u201cparticularly on-key or off-key.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI was busy doing my Yom Kippur thing, and he was too. Nobody bothered him, which I thought was quite nice,\u201d Schloff added.<\/p>\n
When services ended, Schloff said he got a head-on view of the future Hall of Famer. They wished each other a \u201cShana Tova,\u201d Hebrew for a happy new year, and other congregants approached for a handshake.<\/p>\n
Schloff\u2019s account contradicts something else Fine wrote: that only two people in the synagogue ever testified that they had interacted with Koufax directly. But in addition to Schloff\u2019s eyewitness account, there are other snippets of evidence that the famed pitcher did in fact attend services at Temple of Aaron that morning.<\/p>\n
As Leavy writes in the book, the St. Paul Pioneer Press published a dispatch, headlined \u201cSandy Notes Holy Day,\u201d on the morning of Game 1, that says the southpaw \u201cplanned to spend the night with friends in suburban Minneapolis, will attend services today and rejoin the team tonight for his starting assignment in Thursday\u2019s second game of the world series [sic].\u201d<\/p>\n
But perhaps the most direct form of written evidence can be found in a Shemini Atzeret sermon that Temple of Aaron Rabbi Bernard Raskas delivered that year, which the synagogue shared with JTA.<\/p>\n
\u201cLast Thursday everybody in the Twin Cities watched the final World Series game,\u201d Raskas said, according to the printed text. \u201cMany of us had personal conflicts. The fact is that over and again people told me they wanted the Twins to win but they didn\u2019t want Sandy Koufax to lose. No one had these mixed emotions except Jews.\u201d<\/p>\n
He continued, \u201cBut who among us would deny the fact that there was a secret pride in knowing that Koufax was a Jew who refused to pitch on Yom Kippur, who was in this very synagogue on Yom Kippur Day, and is now being proclaimed the greatest pitcher of our generation!\u201d<\/p>\n
Ken Agranoff, the longtime executive director at the synagogue, was also at services that morning. He was 12 years old at the time and said neither he nor anyone in his family laid eyes on Koufax. Still, he has reason to believe the tale may be true.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf indeed he knew he could come here in a semi-secretive way and have a few hours of spirituality and\/or prayer, great,\u201d Agranoff, who\u2019s now 71, told JTA. \u201cThat\u2019s how I always have made the story make sense.\u201d<\/p>\n
Agranoff added: \u201cI\u2019ve worked in the Jewish world for now 37 years, and it\u2019s amazing how we all adopt famous Jewish people and then we believe what we want to believe, and that\u2019s my understanding of the story.\u201d<\/p>\n
Agranoff, who worked with Raskas and was a longtime friend of his, said the story has lived on at Temple of Aaron, where congregants sometimes speak of the tale around the High Holidays and the MLB playoffs, even as the ranks of those who may have been in attendance on Oct. 6, 1965, have dwindled.<\/p>\n
Agranoff himself has attempted to confirm details of the story through his own investigation. Raskas, who died in 2010, once told Agranoff that the day before Yom Kippur, he had received a phone call asking if he could arrange a driver to pick up Koufax at his hotel and bring him to synagogue. Raskas never revealed any further details about the logistics.<\/p>\n
Temple of Aaron in St. Paul. (Screenshot from Google Maps)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
If Koufax was indeed at Temple of Aaron, he was not necessarily in friendly territory. The Twins had not made it to the World Series since 1933, and the Dodger ace would have been surrounded by local fans who wore pins that said \u201cWin Twins\u201d in Hebrew. Years later, when the Twins did win the Fall Classic in 1987, Agranoff said the synagogue revived the slogan on a banner it displayed outside the building.<\/p>\n
As Jews around the world gather for Yom Kippur services this weekend, Schloff emphasized that no doubt many will be reminded of Koufax and his defining act.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought that it was excellent that someone with such an important task professionally to perform chose his Judaism versus that task that everybody, the whole world, was counting on,\u201d Schloff said. \u201cLiterally, the whole world was counting on him pitching that game, and he didn\u2019t. He chose to be a mensch.\u201d<\/p>\n
Agranoff said he once chased a lead on who he thought the pitcher\u2019s driver was \u2014 but it was a dead end. Still, he said, he has no reason to believe that Raskas would fabricate the story \u2014 even if the rabbi was known as a bit of a \u201cshowman.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201c[Raskas] started hearing these stories also, and some people said, \u2018Oh no, he never came. He never left his room. He never did this, never did that,\u2019\u201d Agranoff recalled.<\/p>\n
\u201cRather than refuting or fighting about it, [Raskas] just had a bemused smile on his face,\u201d he added. \u201cHe had a secret he wanted to keep, the aspect with regard to the logistics, and he said, \u2018I have nothing that\u2019s going to prove it, other than I arranged for the transportation. I know he was there.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
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