Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy

by Jane Leavy

Book Overview

"Leavy has hit it out of the park...A lot more than a biography. It's a consideration of how we create our heroes, and how this hero's self perception distinguishes him from nearly every other great athlete in living memory... a remarkably rich portrait." -- Time The New York Times bestseller about the baseball legend and famously reclusive Dodgers' pitcher Sandy Koufax, from award-winning former Washington Post sportswriter Jane Leavy. Sandy Koufax...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060933291
• ISBN13: 9780060933296
• Release Date: September 2003
• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

A Time When The Owners Held All The Cards

I saw Sandy Koufax pitch once during his career. It was on August 8, 1964, in Milwaukee against the Braves. My memory of that game is Sandy Koufax diving back into second base on a pickoff attempt. When he reached third base, he was twirling his left arm around. Shortly thereafter he received the diagnosis of arthritis in his left elbow. Koufax was built with huge muscles in his back and arms and this very build made it possible for him to throw as well as he did, but it also meant he was due to break down earlier. Sports medicine was still in the future and pitchers pitched until they were worn out and then the owners got somebody else. Pitchers were disposable and since players weren't paid very much no attempt was made to protect them. Sandy had a contentious relationship with manager Walter Alston who, for whatever reason, wouldn't pitch Koufax early in his career even in years the Dodgers weren't involved in any pennant race. Pitchers weren't placed on pitch counts during the 1960's and there were seasons when Koufax logged over 300 innings and pitchers pitched every fourth day. Can you imagine pitching a complete game during spring training? Where was the common sense of managers during this time? Think about this for a minute. The total Dodger payroll for the fifteen years Buzzie Bavasi was general manager equals Kevin Brown's $15 million annual salary. When Koufax pitched his perfect game against the Cubs, Dodger Owner Walter O'Malley let the moths fly out of his wallet and gave Sandy a $500 raise. Prior to the start of the 7th game of the 1965 World Series against the Twins the Dodgers had a meeting in which Manager Walter Alston announced to the team who would start the game on the mound. Dick Tracewski remembers Alston saying, "We're going to start the left-hander. After that we have Drysdale and Perranoski in the bullpen." Tracewski noted that Sandy felt he should have called him by name instead of simply referring to him as "the left-hander." I agree. It appears that Alston wanted to maintain that distant relationship he had with Sandy. Many people consider Koufax somewhat of a recluse, but he shows up at Dodger fantasy camps, Hall of Fame induction ceremonies, and funerals of former teammates such as Joe Black and Pee Wee Reese. A prize possession of Cubs' pitcher Bob Hendley, who was Sandy's pitching opponent in the perfect game and who gave up only one hit himself and lost 1-0, is a baseball signed by Koufax with the simple inscription, "What a game." The book is really two stories alternating between the innings of the perfect game and Sandy's career. If you're a sports fan, this book should have a permanent place in your bookcase.

Superb story of a unique athlete and man

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.

Great biography of my boyhood favorite

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.

September 9, 1965. Where were you?

"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 r

Brilliant and insightful look at a very enigmatic man.

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.