Sandy Koufax, a three-time Cy Young Award winner, was said to be a rather wild thrower when he pitched as a Bearcat. photo/courtesy UC Archives and Rare Books Department

Only a handful in the sold-out Shoemaker Center even knew he was there. Hall-of-Fame left-hander Sandy Koufax did not want any special attention.

He just wanted to be one of the guys. No interviews. Just one of the fellas who had the privilege of playing baseball under coach Ed Jucker, Ed '40, at UC. Those were the conditions in which Koufax, a three-time Cy Young award winner, agreed to return to UC, a campus he had not visited since leaving for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1954.

And so, when UC retired the jersey of coach Jucker during halftime ceremonies of the Feb. 13 men's basketball game, Koufax, 64, strolled onto the court with his teammates. His name was never mentioned.

Although it had been 47 years, this was not the first time Koufax and Jucker shared a UC basketball court. Oddly enough, Koufax came to UC to fulfill a basketball scholarship. It just so happened that Jucker coached freshman basketball, as well as varsity baseball.

"I didn't even know he could pitch," Jucker said. "At the end of the basketball season, he told me to come over to the gym to take a look at him.

"I was amazed. It was almost like the wonder man. It struck me in such a fashion. The way he could throw -- the speed and the curve -- you just didn't find that."

Koufax threw so hard that nobody except Danny Gilbert, a friend and fellow transplant from the freshman basketball team, would catch him. Everyone else refused.

"We realized early on that Sandy was not a pitcher," said Gilbert, who has remained close with Koufax. "He was just a thrower. He was a hard, wild thrower. We practiced inside the old Schmidlapp Hall.

"There was not much room in there, and it was poorly lighted. I would work with pitchers on the corners. With Sandy, I held my mitt in the center of the plate and prayed that he could get it over or close. I will say this though, when he got the ball over the plate, he was unhittable."

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