Editing Sandy Koufax (section)

===Relationship with fellow minorities===
Since early in his career, Koufax was seen as an ally to minority players by both teammates and opponents. [[Maury Wills]] recalled that, after games, the pair would go through each other's mail and sort out racist and antisemitic ones.<ref>{{cite magazine |last1=Leahy |first1=Michael |title=Book Excerpt: Sandy Koufax, Maury Wills and the Dodgers in 1960s America |url=https://www.si.com/mlb/2016/05/18/dodgers-sandy-koufax-maury-wills-excerpt |magazine=[[Sports Illustrated]] |date=May 18, 2016}}</ref> Pitcher [[Joe Black]], who mentored Koufax during his first spring training, said that "If he was in a restaurant, he would never shy away from sitting with the colored fellas." Cheesy Kawano, wife of clubhouse manager [[Nobe Kawano|Nobe]] who used to help her husband out at [[Dodger Stadium]], noted that Koufax was the only player on the team who knew her name and asked after her. His reputation for treating everyone with equal respect prompted catcher [[Earl Battey]], a former World Series opponent, to say of him: "I accused him of being black. I told him he was too cool to be white."<ref>[[#Leavy|Leavy]], p. 76.</ref>

Leavy stated that Koufax identified with minorities because he himself was one. One of the few [[Jews in baseball|Jewish players]] in baseball, he dealt with antisemitism from both within his team as well as from the outside: "More than one of his African-American peers attributed Koufax's rectitude and reticence to his being a minority... If Koufax had been a [[White Anglo-Saxon Protestant]] who played clean and kept his nose clean, he'd have been proclaimed the second coming of [[Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy|Jack Armstrong]]. But he was a Jew. So he was moody, aloof, curt, intellectual, different" and, as teammate [[Lou Johnson]] noted, held to a higher standard like any other minority. In other words, he "identified with [them] as much as they identified with him."<ref>[[#Leavy|Leavy]], pp. 76, 177, 186.</ref>