NEWTON ­— Every morning when Bob Gaynor, 78, wakes up and drinks his morning coffee in Newton, he says hello to Sandy Koufax. An 8½-foot bronze sculpture of the legendary Dodgers pitcher sits in Gaynor’s front yard. It took the retired Boston immigration lawyer two years to complete it at Skylight Studios in Woburn, using only his hands and a few wooden tools.

Gaynor never imagined that four years after he completed the sculpture, he’d see a World Series played between two of his favorite teams: the Red Sox and the Los Angeles Dodgers.

He’s a Red Sox fan through and through, but he’s admired Koufax since he was a young man. Gaynor had no training before he began sculpting more than a decade ago. A chance meeting on a case he won years ago for the sculptor Robert Shure, owner of Skylight Studios, resulted in an opportunity to learn the craft later in life during retirement. Gaynor has sculpted small and large horses, busts of his sons and friends, and two of his dogs, but he knows the sculpture of Koufax in action, winding up to throw a pitch, is special.

He has offered it to the Los Angeles Dodgers for free. On Tuesday before he left to watch Game 1 of the World Series at Fenway, Gaynor talked about why he sculpted the Hall of Famer.

“I’m not so sure, even though he’s such a quiet reclusive guy, I don’t think [Koufax would] like it,’’ Gaynor said. “He’d probably make me bring it in the house, but it’s up here. I’m not selling it. I can’t sell it. It makes me happy.’’

Q. How long did the sculpture of Sandy Koufax take you?

A. Two years.

Q. And how often would you work on it?

A. Four days a week from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Every day. Maybe I’d take off a Friday or something like that.

Q. Why were you so dedicated to this piece?

A. In high school, the captain of the high school football team happened to be Jewish and they had a football game scheduled on Yom Kippur, which is the holiest Jewish day of the year. The football player went to the athletic director and asked him if they would possibly reschedule the game like some of the other schools in the private school league. He said no, we can’t do it, and the football player played and they lost. . . . The football captain happened to be me.

Q. You said that the moment that inspired this work came six years later when Sandy Koufax sat out the first game of the 1965 World Series against the Minnesota Twins because the day fell on Yom Kippur. How did that moment make you feel?

A. He’s true to himself. Me, I wasn’t true to myself. I didn’t have the courage of my convictions to sit out. He became my hero. I never met him. I don’t collect any baseball cards of him. I don’t have any signed baseballs. I do have about 15 books of him on my desk there, all about Koufax that I read. He’s considered one of the best — if not the best — left-handed pitchers of all time. You got a guy who’s really accomplished something in a really short time, but he’s known for the game he didn’t pitch. I’m proud of the guy.

The guy has guts, he has courage.

Cristela Guerra can be reached at cristela.guerra@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @CristelaGuerra.