Sandy Koufax's 1965 is hard to describe without a list. He went 26–8 with a 2.04 earned run average, struck out 382 batters, a modern record, and on September 9 threw a perfect game against the Cubs, his fourth no-hitter. He won the Cy Young Award and was named the Most Valuable Player of the World Series, after declining to pitch the opener because it fell on Yom Kippur.
Topps gave him number 100 for 1966, a round number in the first series. The 1966 set has 598 cards, and each front carries a diagonal strip of color across the upper left corner with the team name in it, the color shared by a pair of teams; the Dodgers and the Yankees share an orange-red. Koufax's is a large head shot, and his expression is serious. It is hard to look at now without knowing what the year held.
The year began with a holdout. Koufax and Don Drysdale held out together for thirty-two days, and Koufax's eventual salary, $130,000, was the highest in the game. Then he went 27–9 with a 1.73 earned run average and 317 strikeouts, won his third pitching Triple Crown and his third Cy Young Award, and lost Game 2 of the World Series as Baltimore swept.
On November 18, 1966, at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, he announced his retirement because of arthritis in his elbow. He was thirty. Number 100 is his last regular Topps card; he also appears in the same set on three National League leaders cards.
Issued at the start of his last season. He was thirty when it ended.
Centering is the common problem in the 1966 set, where diamond cuts and tilted framing make a square card rare, though the Koufax is less troubled by it than the Mays at number 1.
