Sixty years ago, on Sept. 9, 1965, at “9:46 p.m. in the City of the Angels, Los Angeles, California,” as Vin Scully noted in his brilliant call, Sandy Koufax pitched a perfect game.
About 20 miles down the road at that same moment, 24-year-old Sammee Zeile was in a hospital delivery room giving birth to a future Major Leaguer.
Todd Zeile, who played for 11 teams during a 16-year career, turns 60 on Tuesday. The historic ballgame that took place that night has followed him around in many ways since then, including a memorable gift from Koufax himself.
It began that night when Sammee and her husband arrived at The LA Hospital in Van Nuys around six o’clock in the evening.
“In those days you couldn’t go in [the delivery room] with her, so I was sitting in the lounge,” said Frank Zeile, who goes by his middle name, Todd.
What did he do while he anxiously awaited?
“I had a little radio, and I was listening to Vin Scully call that ballgame,” he said.
The elder Zeile had played some college and semipro ball and was a loyal Dodgers fan. Three years earlier, he had attended the first two regular-season games at Dodger Stadium. Listening to Scully provided a tiny bit of comfort as the nervous dad waited for his second child to arrive.
“We were there for quite a long time, I’ll tell you that,” Mr. Zeile said. “He was not anxious to join the world.”
Sometime in that nine o’clock hour — the exact time has been lost to faded memories and equally faded scrapbooks — as Koufax etched his name into the record books, Todd Edward Zeile was born.
Sammee heard the doctor ask a nurse where big Todd was.
“He’s listening to the ballgame,” the nurse replied.
While that was true — how could a Dodgers fan not be listening with Koufax working on a perfect game? — he did have his mind focused on the more important matters.
“I was listening to the game, but I was worried about what was going on in her room, not my room,” the elder Zeile said.
A 9-pound, 14-ounce bundle of joy arrived, and a baseball life soon began. Todd and his older brother, Mike, were both standout players growing up. As fans, they would occasionally get to games at Chavez Ravine, were members of a Dodgers fan club and, of course, grew up listening to Scully’s play-by-play.
After Todd starred at L.A.’s Hart High School and UCLA, he made his Major League debut with the St. Louis Cardinals in August 1989 and played his first game at Dodger Stadium the following April.
Scully noticed the significance of the date Todd was born and would often weave the Koufax connection into game broadcasts when the Cardinals played the Dodgers.
“I knew he had made it when Scully first said his name,” the elder Zeile said proudly. “That’s when I knew, this is it boy, we’ve done it.”
Zeile became a Dodger in 1997. That led to finally meeting Koufax in person during Spring Training in Vero Beach, Fla.
“I told him that my dad was listening to it the night I was born,” Zeile said.
Zeile remained connected to the Hall of Famer after signing with the Mets in 2000. Koufax often hung around the club because he was childhood buddies with then-Mets owner Fred Wilpon.
That year on Todd’s birthday — the 35th anniversary of Koufax’s perfect game — Zeile noticed a small package on the chair in front of his locker before the game. Inside was a signed baseball:
“I thought that was pretty cool,” Zeile said. “And in typical form of Sandy, no hoopla, didn’t want any credit for it. He left it there while I was out taking batting practice.”
There are two other coincidences from Zeile’s life that relate back to that night in 1965.
One of Zeile’s coaches at UCLA in the 1980s was Chris Krug, who was catching and batting seventh for the Cubs in Koufax’s perfect game.
One of the 29,139 fans at Dodger Stadium was 17-year-old Tom Gamboa, who later spent five decades coaching and managing in baseball — and became Todd’s father-in-law in 2020, when Zeile married his daughter Kristin.
Zeile is now a commentator on Mets TV broadcasts. He is someone who appreciates the history of the game. He rarely speaks of his place in it, but as he turns 60, he knows the Koufax connection is special.
“I’m not that guy who thinks a lot about all those different things, but I do think it’s a pretty cool connection,” Zeile said.
