Rating: 
Summary: A Great Baseball Read
Review: This is a fantatstic book, interweaving chapters about Koufax's career development with chapters on his perfect game in 1965. As I was reading the chapters on the game, during which the author succesfully intersperses quotes from an amateur tape of the radio broacast, I felt the tension of the night - and I even knew the result of the game.The book also does a fine job of explaining Koufax as a cultural phenonemon and as a baseball marvel. The comments about Koufax by other players give fans who never saw Koufax play (like me) a sense for his level of greatness.
Rating:
Summary: Great biography of my boyhood favorite
Review: When I was a teenager, Sandy Koufax was my favorite athlete (and what a thrill I had when I met him in 1966 when I was 15). This book makes me realize just how great Koufax was. Leavy describes his elbow arthritis as an injury caused by the tendon being stretched out thus not giving the elbow support. Today, this would be cured with the "Tommy John" surgery. In other words, Koufax pitched at least two seasons while in need of this surgery!! These were two of the greatest seasons ever by any pitcher in history. Koufax was famous for being a Jewish role model, particuualrly, for not pitching in the first game of the 1965 world series on Yom Kippur. Sandy was not religious, and despite alleged sightings in synagogues in Minneapolis, in fact, he did not even attend services. However, he realized how important Yom Kippur is and he showed the world that the holiest day on the Jewish calendar takes precedence over everything. What a great message to send!! Koufax is a very reserved individual and he is not seen in public very much. He is not full of himself; quite the opposite, he is reserved, humble and somewhat shy. Even though he is not a public personality, according to Leavy, he is currently, very happy and he is always there for his friends. Unlike so many ex players who get old and paunchy, the silver haired Koufax weighs thirty pounds less than he did in his prime. He kept in shape by training for and running marathons. This book shows Koufax to be a man of great character, such as his strong friendship with Black teamates at a time when they were not allowed in the same restaurants and hotels as the white players were. He has always identified with the underdog and his best friends on the team were not the superstars but, rather, the utility players. I recommend this book for anyone who wishes to gain an appreciation of what an extraordinary man Sandy Koufax is.
Rating: 
Summary: Recommended
Review: This could have been one of the best sports biographies I have ever read and, who knows, maybe it still is. Though there were things I did not like, the positives far outweigh the negatives. Levey has a clean, concise writing style that carries substance and impact in every sentence. The structure of the book works great with the inning by inning chapters of SFs most famous game interspersed with a chronlogical unfolding of his life events. The book's flaws are lapses into laudatory praise that is excessive ( which seems especially odd when at the very end of the book 'the sycophantic elevation of one human being over another' by others is roundly mocked) and the author's constant and ongoing obsession with her subject's religion- an obsession clearly not shared by SF himself as most of his quotes throughout the book seem to suggest. ( Proud of it and important to him? Clearly, yes. Obsessed? At least from here, no.) This, unintentionally but ultimately, diminishes the man as an individual while trying to ascribe a group think attitude to his every action, accomplishment and personality trait. Given the above minor problems, I still wholeheartedly recommend this book. As others have pointed out, it works great for the baseball fan or non fan alike. It captures the feel of a specific era, but still incorporates the modern game and its players for excellent perspective for readers of any generation. When Vin Sculley's broadcast quotes are used -combined with the book's narration- you feel you are smack dab at Chavez Ravine itself. Recommended
Rating:
Summary: Sandy--there was no one like him then,there has been no one
Review: I was a 12 year old kid. Sandy Koufax was,and remains, my favorite Baseball player. I saw him pitch, and it was evident to me then, just how much he loved what he did. There will always be those around that will remain nosy about his private life, but he has always asked what you or I would ask--no matter who or what a man is,or has become, one's private life is not for public consumption. Thanks for the memories,Sandy-Thanks.
Rating:
Summary: Good, not Great
Review: Koufax the pitcher was great, one of the best. Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy is quite good, but hardly a groundbreaking work, although those that read little baseball history and know less might be impressed. While a worthy read, it is not among the best baseball biographies ever written. Built around extensive interviews, it is nevertheless surprisingly brief and incomplete in some areas, and suffers from the lack of a similar rigorous approach to print resources, so at the end the book feels a bit out of proportion. If one has read the many other books on both Koufax and the Dodgers of his era, there is surprisingly little new information of substance, although the conversational tone of this book makes it accessible and quite easy reading. It serves the author well that Koufax himself remains aloof and somewhat mysterious, for it allows others to project their personal feelings on to him. In short, a solid seven innings: eight hits, four runs, three earned, three walks and five strikeouts.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant and insightful look at a very enigmatic man.
Review: Sandy Koufax was a shooting star. A brilliant, explosive wonder, he appeared on the baseball scene of the mid-60's virtually without warning, dominated the game as no lefty ever had and, after a short, extraordinary brilliance, was gone in an instant, leaving behind a grateful, awed and largely befuddled multitude. Koufax is an extremely private man. He had no role in the preparation of this book. However, Jane Leavy appears to have interviewed virtually everyone who ever knew or worked with Koufax to any significant degree and, through painstaking research has penned the definitive-though totally derivative-biography of Koufax we are likely to ever see. Unfortunately-and this is no criticism of Leavy, just a reflection of the enigma that is Sandy Koufax-in the end the only truly salient fact that emerges is that Koufax remains as much a mystery today as he was in his prime. Leavey may have conducted over 400 interviews and provided an avalanche of detail, background and speculation but the fact is that Koufax himself remains unavailable, unassailable and, in the final analysis, apparently unknowable. One of his former teammates once observed that "Sandy Koufax is the most misunderstood man in all of baseball". Leavy has, through this entertaining and valiant effort, established that fact to be as true today as it was 35 years ago.
Rating:
Summary: September 9, 1965. Where were you?
Review: "On the mound tonight for the Los Angeles Dodgers ... number 32 ... the great left-hander... Sandy Koufax". These were the energizing words coming over the airwaves that I lived for as a teenager in the mid-60s. I was a Dodger fan. More specifically, a Sandy Koufax fan. I never saw him pitch, but rather relied on the Voice of the Dodgers, Vin Scully, to paint in my mind's eye the picture of my hero at work. So, on September 9, 1965, it was after "lights out" at a private boarding school north of Los Angeles, and I was under the covers with my transistor radio surreptitiously glued to the final inning of Sandy's perfect game against the Chicago Cubs. Consciously or not, former sportswriter Jane Leavy has constructed SANDY KOUFAX: A LEFTY'S LEGACY much the same as Ed Gruver's year 2000 book, KOUFAX. In each, the author alternates multiple chapters about Sandy's upbringing, professional career, and post-retirement with chapters that are a batter by batter account of Sandy's greatest diamond triumphs - at one inning per chapter. In Gruver's story, it was the last game of the 1965 World Series against the Minnesota Twins when Koufax pitched with only two days rest, and clinched the Fall Classic with grit and a fastball. In Leavy's, it's the Perfect Game pitched against the Cubs at Dodger Stadium, when Sandy's performance touched the truly sublime. Based on a wealth of interviews with her subject's friends and former fellow players, Leavy's book provides much more information about Sandy's life and meteoric career than does Gruver's. His Jewishness, the affinity he had with Black players because of it, the racism other players felt towards him during his early years with the Brooklyn Dodgers, and his decision not to pitch the opening game of the '65 World Series because it fell on Yom Kippur. His perception of the pure science of pitching, and how he got the rules of physics to work to his advantage. The hard feelings Koufax still harbors against Walter Alston for mismanaging his early career. The disaster that was baseball's system of signing "bonus babies". The assault Koufax and Don Drysdale made on the Reserve Clause of the Uniform Players Contract with their famous salary hold-out before the 1966 season. Indeed, while Leavy's chapters on the Perfect Game are models of coherence, sometimes she gets into trouble in the intervening segments with non-sequiturs that left me thinking, "Uh, come again", and which imparted a certain choppiness to the narrative, as if she had failed to stitch all her information together properly. Examples: "Koufax, a bachelor, was Doggett's guest on the postgame show every time he pitched and a collector of countless new electrical appliances." OK. So? On Tommy Lasorda's recollections of his relationship with Koufax: "Once he got going on the subject, Lasorda didn't stop, failing to notice that one of the people to whom he was speaking had doubled over in acute pain with stomach cramps." Who was that and why is it relevant? The author doesn't say. "The day pitchers and catchers reported (to spring training) was still an occasion observed by tomboys who wore their Mary Janes to school in celebration." Huh? Must be an inside joke. Beyond these infrequent stumbles, Leavy has crafted a book that will surely delight and absorb anyone wishing to revel in the career of Dandy Sandy. A very nice touch in the chapter about the Perfect Game's 9th inning is a verbatim transcription of Vin Scully's radio play-by-play of the action. I can hear it as if it was only yesterday. It should be noted that if one is looking for dirt, there isn't any outside of a passing observation indicating Koufax is capable of telling off-color jokes, and evidence that Sandy would occasionally sneak into the players' dorm after curfew during spring training. The adulation is slavish. Perhaps purists will say that this prevents SANDY KOUFAX from being a balanced and great book. On the other hand, in this era of tell-all journalism, maybe it's better not to know the blemishes. Why sully the rare heroes left to us? As Cubs great Ernie Banks thought while watching number 32 walk out to the mound: "It's like being in the ballpark with Jesus." Yeah, but JC didn't have a 100 mph fastball and a curve that dropped as if off the edge of a table.
Rating:
Summary: He Was the Greatest
Review: I have to admit that part of the reason that I gave this book a 5 star rating is that it is about Koufax. ...
This book, however, leaves no doubt in the reader's mind that from 1961 to 1966, (a very very short period of time) Sandy Koufax was better than anyone has ever been. The book also sheds more light on just how painful it was for Koufax to pitch, and why it made sense for him to quit after the 1966 season when he won 27 games for a team that was one of the poorest hitting teams in the league.
The book was also very interesting on the subject of Walter Alston, the manager of the Dodgers for all of Koufax's career in Brooklyn and Los Angeles. The book suggests that Alston must share some of the blame for it taking as long as it did (1955 to 1961) before Koufax became a great pitcher. There were times when Alston would pitch Koufax, he would win the game with a 3 or 4 hitter, but then not pitch again for 30 days. That was insanity. Later, in the 60s, Alston used Koufax so much that perhaps it hastened the end of his pitching career.
Koufax essentially disappeared from the public after 1966. ... The book shed some light on this as well. Koufax is not shy or rude. He is reserved. In addition, one gets the impression that he decided after 1966 that he did not want to spend the rest of his life being Sandy Koufax, the greatest pitcher ever. He just wanted to go on with his life, and not spend every day talking about the past. Koufax told the author, "tell everyone I'm having great fun with my life." ... Koufax feels that the average reader does not know what most people do every day, and what the average "Joe" has done for the last 36 years, and therefore, why should the reader know what he does now. However, he just wants a next to normal life. ... His Brooklyn Jewish upbringing taught him to be modest, both about himself, and in his life. As one of the Koufax friends mentioned in the book, Koufax does not need a Mercedes. Give him a golf club, and a sandwich after the round of golf, and he is happy. This is the sign of a very good man. ... "
Maybe Sandy Koufax is not another Albert Einstein or Mother Teresa in terms of having an impact on society for the better, but the reader certainly has to conclude that he is a lot more than the greatest pitcher in baseball ever, and one of the top athletes of the 20th century. He is a fine person. An excellent role model. It is just too bad he chose not to have children.
Rating:
Summary: A Legend in his Time
Review: The big wide world of sports has produced an elusive array of legends that have spanned generations. For the late 1950s and 1960s, there was Sandy Koufax and his golden arm at pitching. He may very well have been considered one of the last of this era in baseball history. Besides his looks and his demeanor, his fellow teammates often called him "the game's Cary Grant and Fred Astaire and compaired him to the Mona Lisa and David...He looked like Michaelangelo," Ernie Banks said. "Pitching, walking, whatever he did was kind of a rhythm with life, stylish" (2).
Jane Leavy takes a compassionate approach in delving into the life of Sandy Koufax in SANDY KOUFAX: A LEFTY'S LEGACY. This is not one of those "digging up the dish" biographies, but one that shows much respect to the player as well as the individual. Leavy's accounts are authentic and well documented with the many interviews she made with people that played with Koufax as well as the name dropping of fans that idolized him. There may still be unanswered questions pertaining to Koufax's personal life, but for the most part, Leavy concentrates on what made Koufax a legend, a man who was dedicated to the game of baseball.
A LEFTY'S LEGACY is definitive for its content. However, there is a little side stepping when Leavy attempts to write a social commentary of the 1960s in which Koufax worked and played in. It was helpful to reference, but it seemed out of place in particular chapters. One can say Koufax may have fell under the same category of the "Camelot Years."
Nontheless, SANDY KOUFAX: A LEFTY'S LEGACY is a must read biography about the life of Sandy Koufax. You do not necessarily have to be a baseball fan, but he is one of many personalities that made the 1960s for what it was. It also makes one wonder and ask, are there any legends anymore?
Rating:
Summary: Koufax: A Symbol of Greatness on and off The Diamond
Review: Despite Sandy Koufax's athletic prowess as a youngster growing up in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn he never anticipated becoming what he seemed naturally destined to do - pitch a baseball with phenomenal results in the major leagues. During Koufax's early years he was drawn to basketball and was playing the hoop sport at Cincinnati University when major league franchises became aware of his natural skills in throwing a baseball.
Koufax ultimately signed to play for the home team, the Brooklyn Dodgers, but before he could find his stride the team had moved three thousand miles west to Los Angeles. Sandy was a victim of his time in signing a bonus contract. Rules obligated clubs to make room on their rosters for youngsters, creating resentment from established players and lacking the opportunity to develop provided to others in the minor leagues.
The young lefty would have preferred beginning in the minors. Instead he had a long, hard climb before breaking into the Dodger rotation. Years later he would ask former Dodger general manager Buzzie Bavasi why he was not used sooner on a regular basis. He never could get over those early years of feeling management did not want him.
As typical of a southpaw with blazing speed, Koufax was plagued by wildness. When he was able to overcome it he carried pitching to new heights. Former Yankee manager Casey Stengel, a veteran judge of talent and by then skipper of the New York Mets, said, "The Jewish kid is better than Walter Johnson."
Washington Post sportswriter Jane Leavy captures Koufax and his times by interviewing scores of those who knew him from his Bensonhurst days to the present. She keeps two interesting narratives flowing in her text, alternating between the Koufax biography and an exceptionally detailed, fascinating account of the September 9, 1965 perfect game Koufax pitched at Dodger Stadium against opposing hurler Bob Hendley and the Chicago Cubs. The game was doubly fascinating in that it came close to being a double no hitter in that Hendley gave up only a scratch blooper single to Dodger outfielder Lou Johnson, who had earlier scored the game's only run. The run occurred after Johnson had walked, been bunted to second, stolen third and run home following a throwing error by Cubs' rookie catcher Chris Krug.
To Koufax and those who followed him, the breaks he received to enable him to win his perfect game in a regulation nine innings were payback. In his initial World Series start in game five in Los Angeles of the 1959 match up with another Chicago team, the White Sox, Koufax performed brilliantly in a pitcher's duel with Bob Shaw in which the game's only run was scored by Nellie Fox while the Dodgers executed a double play.
As someone who had a rare gift of throwing a baseball at tremendous speeds and velocity a Catch-22 resulted. The act of repeatedly engaging in such a physically unnatural feat resulted in debilitating injury.
At the peak of his career teammates could barely stand to look at Koufax's grotesquely swollen left arm following a game. He quit at the end of the 1966 season, realizing he would never be able to use his left arm eventually and would be in acute pain regularly if he did not hang up his cleats. He racked up Hall of Fame statistics and was able to retire at the youthful age of 30. When most players quit it is after their peak skills have sharply eroded. Despite enduring increasing pain Koufax's final year was his best as he chalked up a career high of 27 wins against 9 losses wth a sparkling 1.73 earned run average.
Author Leavy provides sharp insight into a joint act engaged in with the Dodgers' top right-handed starter Don Drysdale that changed Major League Baseball permanently. Up until 1966 team owners held a commanding advantage over players. After Roger Maris, broke Babe Ruth's home run record with 61 round trippers in 1961, he sought to bring his businessman brother to Yankee Stadium to help negotiate the following year's contract. The Yankees declined to allow him to sit in on the meeting.
In the cases of Koufax and Drysdale, General Manager Bavasi and the top Dodger brass previously used psychology to play the star pitchers off against each other. If Koufax walked into a negotiating session and a contract was mentioned with opposition, Bavasi would respond, "That's funny because Drysdale said he would accept that amount." He would do the same when Drysdale appeared for a contract discussion.
Drysdale's wife Ginger posed the suggestion that the players jointly negotiate their 1966 contracts. They decided to negotiate as a team, and as holdouts had to convince management that they were willing if necessary to abandon their careers. At one point they both signed to appear as actors in the suspense film "Warning Shot" starring David Janssen. Before shooting started, however, management saw the light. After all, it was a proven fact that more fans materialized when they pitched. It was said that Koufax drew an extra 10,000 customers when he took the mound as a starter.
The daring Koufax-Drysdale negotiating ploy was the first major step in what would result in the creation of a Players Association headed by lawyer Marvin Miller. Koufax and Drysdale would accordingly be classified as labor heroes whose efforts assisted those players who followed them into the major leagues.
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