I don’t know if the motel was glorious, but Sandy looked like absolute MONEY in front of it in the 1960s picture that accompanies Michael Beschloss’ story about it at the New York Times. Click through to see it and then ask yourself if you’d ever in your life want to stay someplace else:
In 1962, the star Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Sandy Koufax invested in a West Hollywood motor inn, which was renamed “Sandy Koufax’s Tropicana Motel.” Down Santa Monica Boulevard from the famed Troubadour club, these “74 luxurious air-conditioned rooms” — rented at “popular prices” — came to lodge some of the biggest musical acts of the period: Alice Cooper, Bob Marley, the Mamas and the Papas, Led Zeppelin, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and the Doors.
Beschloss goes from that onto the story of Koufax and Don Drysdale and their infamous holdout before the 1966 season. That story is pretty well known, but man, I can’t get over the idea of chilling at the pool at Koufax’s Tropicana Motel with Michelle Phillips or someone like her.
