Old Timey Baseball is Hilarious – Clip of Sandy Koufax Pitching in 1965 World Series Features The Most Absurd "Check Swing" Balls You'll Ever See

I apologize, but this is not a new video. I'm 60 years late on this. And I'm not totally sure I follow Jared Carrabis' point here.  I guess it's just that baseball was different back then. Very true. When it comes to offense, you could say umpires being WAY more lenient on check swings would make the game easier. But if this is a "look how shitty old timey baseball players were" post, I would say this just makes the old timey pitchers look all the more impressive. That clip is from 1965. It was Game 7 of the World Series. The pitcher, Sandy Koufax, had 26 wins that season. His ERA was 2.04. In that Game 7, he threw a complete game, three-hit shutout. Dodgers won 2-0. And he did all of it in an era where batters were apparently allowed to say "Never mind!" after fully whiffing on pitches. 

Compare those check swings to some of the "full swings" we count as strikes in baseball nowadays...

Nobody on the Dodgers seemed to bat an eye at those calls either. Which means it must have been happening all the time. Kinda makes me think these early era baseball pitchers might fair a little better today than people tend to think. Even if Sandy Koufax once let up an inside the park home run to a horse.

Shoutout Mostly Sports. 

It's always crazy to go back and look at how dominant pitchers were in that era. They had the MLB desperate for offense. Despite giving batter's re-do's every time they showed remorse over a swing, a few years after that World Series, Bob Gibson became so unhittable (1.12 ERA in 1968) that the MLB lowered the mound 5-inches. But these types of check swings continued being called balls until at least the mid-70's. There's a few wild screen shots in this Substack article. 

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But what might even be crazier than the 1960's check swing rules, is the fact that in that Sandy Koufax video, Vin Scully is calling the game. Vin Scully wasn't even a young announcer at that point. The man started calling games for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1950. In that Sandy Koufax video, Vin Scully was a 15-year vet. And he still had over 50 years of calling Dodgers baseball left in him. I remember his last season with the Dodgers. It was the one year of my life I lived in Los Angeles. I was driving Lyft, and would listen to him call games on the radio at night. Even in 2016, he was a delightful listen. I would actually look forward to their games, and plan to drive on the nights they played. It was probably the most I've ever enjoyed sports on the radio. 

It's almost hard to wrap your mind around the amount of baseball Vin Scully witnessed. He started working for the Dodgers just 3 years after Jackie Robinson made his debut. He had personal encounters with Babe Ruth.

I wonder how he thinks the Sandy Koufax's and Babe Ruth's would fair in today's strict-on-check-swings era of baseball…