Koufax Speaks!

 

Hall of Fame pitcher Sandy Koufax, left, was the star attraction during a televised interview Saturday night with Dodgers Manager Joe Torre, center, and T.J. Simers, The Times' Page 2 columnist and event moderator. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times / February 27, 2010)

We talk so much about the Yankees here but, when you get right down to it, I'm a baseball man first.  So I was fascinated when I heard that Joe Torre had convinced Sandy Koufax to join him on stage in Los Angeles for a night of conversation.  Proceeds would go to Torre's Safe at Home Foundation, and the event would be shown live on TV in LA.

The night would be reminiscent of an apparently brilliant evening in the same theater that featured John Wooden and Vin Scully (courtesy John Weisman's Dodger Thoughts Blog).

Weisman has since moved his blog to ESPN, and he wrote about the evening with Koufax and Torre.

Apparently, the only downside to the night (if you believe the criticism) was the moderator, TJ Simers of the LA Times.  Simers wrote his take on the evening.

It sounds like Koufax enjoyed himself, and baseball would be well-served to get this (and the Scully/Wooden show) onto the MLB Network at once.  No sport has better history than baseball, and few players are more fascinating to listen to than Sandy Koufax, simply because of his disdain for talking to the media.