The 1965 Cubs were not a very good team despite the presence of three future Hall of Famers — Ernie Banks, Ron Santo and Billy Williams. It was the 19th of a 20-season span in which they would finish over .500 just once (1963). The ’65 crew managed to get to five games under the break-even mark at 56-61 on Aug, 11, then lost five straight, including being no-hit by Jim Maloney on Aug. 19 at Wrigley Field.
By the time they got to Los Angeles for a game against the Dodgers Sept. 9, they were 65-76 and
15 games out of first place. It was part of an odd little road trip — a single game in Houston Sept. 6, two off days, a single game in L.A., then on to San Francisco for a three-game set beginning Sept. 10. Yes, sometimes they scheduled that way back in the day.
The Cubs had lost three in a row before they were to face Sandy Koufax Sept. 9 at Dodger Stadium and had scored just six runs in those three defeats.
Koufax was in the middle of his great six-season run from 1961-66 at this time. He would win his second Cy Young Award that year. His two starts just before this one against the Cubs hadn’t been that great, though. He threw 10.2 innings Sept. 1 in a loss to the Pirates, allowing three runs, then gave up two in seven innings Sept. 5 to the Astros.
The Sept. 9 game started with no offense at all. Neither Koufax nor Cubs left-hander Bob Hendley allowed a baserunner through four innings, and Koufax also retired the Cubs in order in the fifth.
In the bottom of the fifth, the Dodgers would score what turned out to be the only run of the game. Hendley walked Lou Johnson to lead off the inning and Ron Fairly sacrificed Johnson to second. Johnson then stole third and scored on a throwing error by Cubs catcher Chris Krug. So the Dodgers led 1-0, but neither team had a hit.
Koufax continued mowing down Cubs, and had retired 21 in a row to complete seven perfect innings.
Hendley, meanwhile, took his no-hitter into the bottom of the seventh when Johnson — who started his career with the Cubs in 1960 and who would play for them again in 1968 — doubled with two out. Hendley would not allow another baserunner.
The Cubs went down 1-2-3 again in the eighth and so in the ninth, a perfect game was on the line.
For that final inning, we turn to the great Vin Scully for the radio call:
Koufax finished his perfect game with three swinging strikeouts — he had 14 for the game — and the Dodgers won 1-0. There was only one hit in the game. That remains the MLB record for the fewest combined hits in a game by both teams.
Two Cubs players made their MLB debuts in that game, Byron Browne and Don Young. Three other rookies played for the Cubs that night at Dodger Stadium: Krug and two others who would become perennial All-Stars for the Cubs, Glenn Beckert and Don Kessinger.
Here’s an interesting 2002 note from Jane Leavy, who wrote a book about Koufax, telling why that radio call was preserved on audio tape (the game was not televised anywhere, so no video was available):
On the evening of Sept. 9, 1965, Dave Smith had a dilemma. His high school girlfriend was leaving for college in the morning. Sandy Koufax, his favorite player on his favorite team, was pitching at Dodger Stadium. Koufax was the best pitcher in baseball, perhaps the greatest lefty of all time; 37 years later, his hold on a new generation of baseball fans would prompt me to chronicle his career.
That night, Dave’s teenage hormones momentarily vied with boyhood loyalties — the girl won out. But before he left the house, Smith put a new reel of tape in the tape recorder by his bed and set the dial on his clock radio to KFI, radio home of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Unfortunately, in his hormonal zeal he forgot to turn the tape recorder on.
It was the bottom of the second inning — Jimmy Lefebvre was at the plate — when Dave’s father, Hugh, wandered past his son’s bedroom in Escondido, Calif., and noticed the reels weren’t turning. The count was 2-2 on Lefebvre when Hugh turned the tape on, muttering under his breath, ”If you don’t like it, David, you can drop dead.” Dave wouldn’t be happy about missing the first inning and a half of a Koufax game.
At midnight, Dave’s father was waiting for him at the front door. Hugh ushered his son into his bedroom and made him listen to the seven and a half innings he had recorded of Koufax’s perfect game. ”I kept asking, ‘Did he do it?’ But my father just grinned. It was pretty obvious that the answer was yes or we wouldn’t have been sitting there until a quarter to two.”
Incidentally, Dave Smith has an even stronger connection to baseball — he was the founder and long-time head of Retrosheet, the project that has catalogued thousands of baseball scoresheets (including about 90 games that Mike Bojanowski and I sent him when they were looking for games they didn’t have). Much of the historical play-by-play data you now see at baseball-reference.com comes from Retrosheet.
Back to 1965: Two of the three players Koufax retired in the ninth to complete his perfect game were future MLB managers: Joey Amalfitano, later a Cubs manager in 1980 and 1981, and Harvey Kuenn, who managed the Brewers in the early 1980s.
Some facts about this game from BCB’s JohnW53:
Koufax became the eighth pitcher in MLB history to throw a perfect game, the sixth in the Modern Era and the fifth in the era’s regular season. He was the second National Leaguer to do it since 1901, following Jim Bunning of the Phillies in 1964.
The count of perfect games now stands at 24 overall and 22 in the Modern Era, seven by National Leaguers.
The most recent was by Domingo German of the Yankees, against the Athletics on June 28, 2023. The last by an NL pitcher was by Matt Cain of the Giants, against the Astros, on June 13, 2012.
As you know, the Cubs set the record for the longest-ever streak of not being no-hit following the Koufax perfect game. From John:
In their Friday, Sept. 10 game at San Francisco, the Cubs were hitless until Billy Williams singled with two outs in the third inning. That started a streak of 7,920 games, longest in MLB history, before the Cubs were no-hit again, by Cole Hamels of the Phillies at Wrigley Field on July 25, 2015.
Through Monday’s game at Atlanta, the Cubs have not been no-hit in 1,567 more consecutive games. Their total of 9,488 games while being no-hit just once is by far the most in MLB history. The previous record was 9,178 by the Pirates from 1971-2012.
Bob Hendley, incidentally, got a bit of revenge against Koufax and the Dodgers. The two pitchers had a rematch in Chicago the following Tuesday, Sept. 14. In front of just 6,220 at Wrigley Field, Hendley threw a four-hit complete game against the Dodgers and the Cubs won 2-1 on a two-run homer by Billy Williams off Koufax in the sixth inning.
Sandy Koufax’s perfect game against the Cubs happened 60 years ago today, Thursday, Sept. 9, 1965.
