JUST THE KOUFAX: An all-time baseball great is angry at the New York Post for running a blind gossip item alleging that he is gay. Mike Piazza? No, this time it's Sandy Koufax. The Hall of Fame pitcher is so upset about the Page Six item that he has cut ties with the Los Angeles Dodgers, the only team for which he ever pitched (the Dodgers are owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., which also owns the Post).
The Post's Page Six gossip page ran a brief piece on December 19 which stated that "a Hall of Fame baseball hero cooperated with a best-selling biography only because the author promised to keep it secret that he is gay." I remember reading the item at the time and realizing that the book (Jane Leavy's "A Lefty's Legacy") was the only best-selling biography of a baseball Hall of Famer released in recent memory, and therefore it must be a reference to Koufax. Just as last year, when since-deceased Post gossip Neal Travis reported that an unnamed Mets star "known for cavorting with models" was actually a closeted homosexual, I knew it had to be Piazza, simply because there are no other Mets who cavort with models. Had he said "strippers," I would've known it was Mo Vaughn.
The 68-year-old Koufax has neither confirmed nor denied the gay rumor (which, to the best of my knowledge, had never been brought up until now), though biographer Leavy calls the Post item "thoroughly erroneous on all counts, blatantly unfair, scandalous and contemptible." Koufax is known above all as a man of principle, as he is after all the player who sat out Game 1 of the 1965 World Series because it fell on Yom Kippur. It's sad that he must cut ties with the organization with which he's been associated for nearly a half-century, although Murdoch is said to be looking to sell the Dodgers, and Koufax would presumably return to the team in that event.
As for the Post, it's about time they started being a little bit more careful about their "blind" items- breaking a story about an unnamed person whose identity is easily guessed by a 10-second process of elimination is really not so "blind" at all.