On October 6, 1965, Sandy Koufax, the overpowering lefty for the Los Angeles Dodgers, did not pitch in the first game of the World Series against the Minnesota Twins because it fell on Yom Kippur.

My father was not a baseball fan. We had emigrated to the US only six years before. He was 55 and still struggling to learn English and other new skills, like driving a car. Baseball was not his priority. He didn't know a home run from a rerun, a base hit from a facelift, and couldn't care less.

"It's a stupid game," he announced in his thick accent after watching a few minutes on TV. "Not like football. That's a game!" My father was referring to soccer, calling it as it is known throughout the world, not American football, which he also thought idiotic.

But then, Sandy Koufax refused to pitch the first game of the World Series. Sandy Koufax went to shul that day. He fasted. To my father, baseball was still stupid, but all of a sudden, not all the players were stupid. Sandy Koufax didn’t hide his Judaism, and my father, among many Jews, was proud of him. "He's a good Jewish boy," my father said. His highest praise.

My twin brother and I weren’t good Jewish boys. We liked baseball, admired Koufax for his diamond feats and now grudgingly respected him for his courageous stand, but we were only seventeen and in full teenage rebellion against our father's values. We chafed under his constraints, which didn’t allow us to play sports on Saturdays. My brother, a fine sprinter, had had to miss every Saturday track meet the previous spring. I'd have to miss every Friday night or Saturday swim meet that winter. It didn’t seem fair. Especially when the other Jewish kids competed on Shabbos and holidays.

Our coaches were puzzled too. "But Arnie Steinberg (not his real name) is Jewish and he can run on Saturdays. How come you can't?" No answer seemed right. It would have felt dishonest to say, "Because we're more religious." I didn't feel very religious. Besides, it would have put down Arnie and the other Jewish kids. I also sure didn't want to quote my father's, "Because you're the Cantor's sons." It might have made sense to the coaches, but made little sense to me.

A week after sitting out the first game, Sandy Koufax came back to beat the Twins in the seventh game, considered one of the best pitched games in baseball history. Any lingering doubts about the rightness of his decision to miss the first game were gone.

Today, my brother and I play music for children and families - our variation on our father’s Cantorial legacy. We include Jewish songs in our concerts - our way of not hiding our heritage. Sometimes, during the question and answer part of our shows, a child will ask, "Are you Jewish?" Often, after we say yes, the child will respond, "I am too." I sense those children's loneliness in being Jewish - and remember my own - and see their pride in someone who publicly shares this aspect of their lives.

Now, 35 years later, I've come to understand my father better than I did then. He had more powerful reasons than many Jews in this country for appreciating Sandy Koufax's public stand - and for taking his own. He’d lived in Hungary, where it was dangerous and even lethal just to be a Jew - much less be public about it. During WWII he had survived in forced labor camps and lost, among others, both his parents and his first wife and three children in Auschwitz. To him, a Jew who declared his Judaism openly as Sandy Koufax, was heroic beyond words.

I called my parents recently and asked them if they remembered Sandy Koufax. My father is nearly ninety now, my mother almost eighty two, but they both did. My mother, who knows even less about baseball than my father, immediately said, "He didn't play on Yom Kippur."

My father added, "He was a good man."

I noticed his words. Now Sandy Koufax was a good man, not just a good Jewish boy. He had grown up since 1965.

I like to think that I have too. My father and I have made our peace. We don't see eye to eye on Jewish observance, but we’ve gradually agreed to focus on what we share rather than argue about our differences.

But old hurts still surface. Hearing him praise Koufax, I couldn't hold myself back. "But didn’t Sandy Koufax play baseball on Shabbos?" My father responded: "The paper said that yesterday in Miami Joe Lieberman walked two miles to shul with his wife because it was Shabbos? He is a good man."