Sandy Koufax : A Lefty's Legacy

Rating:
Summary: Perfect
Review: "Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy" is one of the best baseball player biographies I've read in years. Author Jane Leavy blends a brilliant mix of Koufaxian fastballs (interviews) and curveballs (unexpected historical finds) in following the course of the Dodger ace lefty's perfect game against the Chicago Cubs on September 9, 1965.

"Koufax" gets off on a shaky note, as Chapter 1 is devoted to a mind-numbing study of the mechanics of Koufax's overhand pitching delivery. Then again, in two of Koufax's most famous performances, both well-detailed in this book, Sandy had a rough first inning as well. The rest of the book takes off pretty quickly thereafter and becomes absolutely un-put-downable.

The straightforward biography tells the curve (all right, I'll stop with the puns now) of Koufax's career, from his childhood in Bensonhurst to his surprise retirement from the game shortly after his 27-win 1966 campaign. Leavy draws on background interviews with Koufax (but doesn't quote him directly), and on many other interviews with his friends and teammates, from Brooklyn to Los Angeles. Along the way she uncovers a surprising mixture of statistics and modern-bay baseball interpretation, quoting from two websites dear to the current baseball cognoscenti, Retrosheet and the Baseball Prospectus. There's also, as you'd expect for any book that spans the 1950s and '60s, a decent canned social history of the era. I don't think even Leavy believes that Koufax's retirement marked the defining point between the end of Eisenhower's and the beginning of Nixon's, but the parallels are there if you want to play with them.

Interspersed with the biographical chapters is an inning-by-inning account of Koufax's perfect game, pitched at night in Los Angeles in the twilight of his career. These chapters are mind-blowing. Spending a book describing a single ballgame is a risky proposition (all those endless asides turned "Nine Innings" into something nearly unreadable), but Leavy paints a compelling you-are-there freshness, thanks in part to the serendipitous discovery of the final 7 innings of that game on audiotape. Wisely, Leavy allows Vin Scully's play-by-play to describe most of the late action, and Vin makes for remarkable reading in the same way that he makes for remarkable listening. His extemporaneous game descriptions are brilliant and the quotes here make it easy to see why, like Koufax, he's regarded as being at the top of his league.

The book ends with a brief overview of Koufax's retirement (best line of the book: Koufax briefly handed out business cards describing himself as a "Peregrination Expert"). Leavy balances the prevailing view of Koufax (sullen, baseball-hating) against the reality she's uncovered, and Koufax comes away a healthy, well-rounded character. No hagiography, "Koufax" is instead an respectful portrait of a unique man.

No description of Sandy Koufax is complete with discussion of his Judaism, and his seminal decision to skip Game 1 of the 1965 World Series, which fell on Yom Kippur. Leavy indulges in some detective work to show that Koufax didn't even go to synagogue that afternoon, but she offers enough anecdotal evidence to almost make you believe that Koufax alone ended most of the anti-Semitic stereotypes that prevailed in America through 1965. Almost. I remember learning about Koufax in Hebrew day school as a child (in a pamphlet about Jewish sports legends only marginally bigger than the one in the movie "Airplane!"), but his significance to the religion makes a lot more sense as Leavy tells it. There's even an interview with Shawn Green, the latest Jewish All-Star to sit on Yom Kippur.

Leavy leaves no stone unturned, and now I'm as close as I'll ever be to actually becoming a Los Angeles Dodgers fan. Well, not even close... I'm genetically bred to loathe them, even as I reluctantly root for the team now mismanaged by Koufax's childhood pal Fred Wilpon. But I will be reading this book again, the sooner the better.

Rating:
Summary: Readable but not much more
Review: I found this book moderately interesting but it suffers from three significant shortcomings:
1)One, as stated in previous reviews, the author is overly fixated on Koufax's Jewishness. Although this is clearly an aspect of Koufax, his history and make-up, and impact on the Jewish community that should not be overlooked or downplayed, it did not need to be the overiding theme of the book, and as such it overshadowed his on-the-field accomplishments.
2)Koufax did not agree to personally contribute to the book, so many of the incidents are told from the viewpoint of other observers whose memories (reasonably) appear to be less than accurate 50 years after the fact. In several cases these third parties disagree on what actually occured and as a result you question everything in the book with the exception of the statistical reality of Koufax's career.
3)There is very little info regarding Koufax's life after baseball. Since he retired in 1966 nearly forty years have passed. Although readers may be much more interested in his baseball life, I would have liked more insight into how his post-baseball life has progressed.

Rating:
Summary: Great Writing, great legacy
Review: I have read a great many baseball books over the years and usually don't have a particularly high hope for the writing of most biographies, especially when the subject is still alive. Either the writing comes off as trying to impress too hard or the writer is trying to make his or her reputation off the subject. That is not true in this case. Ms. Leavy is a wonderful writer and she works hard to create an honest portrait of one of the all time great pitchers, Sandy Koufax. The style of the book, intersecting his perfect game with his life will delight baseball and non-baseball fans alike. Her discussion of Koufax and his faith is thought provoking and well developed. She also provides a glimpse into the 1950's in Brooklyn that is terrific. This book certainly ranks as one of the finest baseball related books to be published in some time, and unlike the Cubs who were silenced by Koufax on that great night in 1965, this book contains plenty of hits. Read it- give it as a gift. This is a winner.

Rating:
Summary: Superb story of a unique athlete and man
Review: I was a fan of Koufax when he played, but more of a fan of him as a unique human being. Ms. Leavy tells the story of a great pitcher by using the perfect game he pitched in 1965 as the illustration of a great pitcher's skills. However alternating chapters told the story of his rise to greatness both on pitching skill level and on a human scale.

Koufax was a great pitcher but more important a great person. The most revealing fact is that Sandy was not aloof, distant and enigmatic as portrayed by other wrriters. He just eschewed publicly airing his life. He was a great friend, a fair and decent person, and not one to make baseball his whole life.

Ms. Leavy's book is a great read, in fact I could not put it down. I resisted reading it, seeing it as another baseball book, but it was captivating. Sandy Koufax was unique among pitchers but also unique among famous athletes; humble, caring, considerate of fans. I read Gruber's earlier work and this one is much better.

Rating:
Summary: Thorough, but respectfully keeps his privacy intact
Review: It's never easy to write a thorough biography when your subject is an uncooperative recluse, but Jane Leavy does an excellent job nonetheless. Speaking with hundreds of friends and former teammates, she is able to weave a beautiful tapestry of one man's unforgettable career.

Each chapter, cleverly alternating with a play-by-play account of his perfect game, paints a wonderfully realistic portrait of Koufax's ascent from a wild southpaw to one of baseball's greatest pitchers. The tale of this reluctant hero is set against the times in which he played, and this book is as much a history of baseball during the 50s and the tumultuous 60s as it is about Koufax's accomplishments.

More so, Leavy succeeds at explaining this personality, this cult icon who has been a mystery to sportswriters and fans (and even his friends and teammates!) for over 50 years. While she respects his privacy and doesn't venture anywhere near his personal life (practically nothing is written about his marriages or family, and the longtime rumors surrounding his sexual orientation is respectfully never brought up), after reading this book, you get the strong sense that you understand him better. Or at least, you can appreciate better the pain he went through-both emotionally as an outsider in a very public arena who longed for normalcy when expected to be a legend, and physically as he forced his body to the uttermost limits.

I would be lying if I said I didn't hope for more juicy tidbits. Maybe it's our tabloid/Hollywood Access culture, or our inexplicable sense of entitlement, but deep down we want to learn every little personal detail of our celebrities. Leavy, in a rare act of decency and self-restraint largely unknown to journalists, doesn't bow to our greedy desires and offers up only a classy, professional tribute to one of our classiest, most professional figures. For that reason, her book will feel incomplete to many, but for real fans of Sandy, a biography that preserves his mystery is the most honorable biography that he deserves.

Rating:
Summary: Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy
Review: Taut biography of the Dodger great's playing years: baseball savvy and as far from tall-tale-telling as former Washington Post sportswriter Leavy (Squeeze Play, not reviewed) can get. Koufax lent himself only incidentally to this work-to verify stories and allow the author access to his friends and family-but Leavy has produced what appears to be a very convincing portrait. She concentrates on the player's six last, mind-blowing years, when his fastball and curve ruled. His plays on the mound are adeptly recorded-including, as interspersed chapters, his perfect game, told with consummate skill and containing the only hint of hyperbole here: "the ball headed toward home like an eighteen wheeler appearing down the highway out of a mirage." But it's a sense of Koufax's character that Leavy most wishes to convey. Never one for promiscuous self-promotion, Koufax has been shoehorned into the recluse category; because he is reserved and Jewish, he was typecast as "moody, aloof, curt, intellectual, different." Yes, he wouldn't pitch the opening game of the World Series because it fell on Yom Kippur, an act with profound cultural impact, and yes, he liked to read, a positive egghead by sporting standards, though he also says: "I may have read Huxley once in my life, but if I did, frankly, I don't remember." His 1963 self-profile is true to form: "a normal twenty-seven-year-old bachelor who happens to be of the Jewish faith. . . . I like to read a book and listen to music and I'd like to meet the girl I'd want to marry." But Leavy reveals also a man of dignity, honesty, and courtesy, not to mention his having that shaman's touch with a baseball. He is, simply, a standard: "In virtually every way that matters, ethically and economically, medically and journalistically, he offers a way to measure where we've been, what we've come to, what we've lost." Well-conceived and sharply drawn, a thinking fan's biography.