Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy Book

Average Rating:

This wonderfully written and researched biography is one of ironies. A Yankees fan (the author) succeeded to write a book about the hated rival Brooklyn Dodger legend. A Brooklyn boy who grew up with a love of basketball, but later played baseball for the hometown Dodgers. And in the twilight of his career, he returned triumphantly to set a World Series strike out record at Yankee Stadium to a standing ovation. A Jewish athlete who overcame prejudice in a predominantly Anglo-Saxon sporting milieu of the 1960s. A man that was reluctant to cooperate at all for this book, but who would describe the biomechanics of pitching with incredible passion and detail. A man who hurled a perfect game, and a month later, became a cultural icon for refusing to pitch the opening game of the World Series due to religious beliefs. A pitcher with five mediocre years, but who then finished with five of the best years of modern times.

The author paints a very clear picture of the protagonist through countless interviews with former teammates and others who competed against him. Her knowledge of baseball is excellent, and she is an engaging writer. The theme is consistent: Sandy Koufax was well-respected by colleagues and competitors alike. He was the consummate team player and clubhouse leader, although the public rarely saw this side of him. The numerous comments from his contemporaries are illuminating. I can't recall one negative thing said about him, and as Willie Stargell so eloquently stated, "Hitting his fastball was like drinking coffee with a fork." Or from John Roseboro, "He was cool before anyone knew what it meant."

What impressed me was the work ethic of Mr. Koufax. For the last two years of his career, he pitched with intense pain to his arm. Pregame preparations consisted of hours of massage, painkillers, and gobs of hot linament applied with tongue depressors by his trainers. After the game, he soaked his arm in a tub of ice for the time it took to drink three beers. Yet he never missed a turn, or publicized his travails. During his last campaign in 1966, he won 27 games. The last five years of his career he lead the National League in earned run average (ERA). It is a record that still stands. "The definition of a competitor is the guy who keeps coming back. It's the difference between the grass and the oak tree. Cut the oak tree, and it dies. Cut the grass, and it grows back." "The art of pitching is instilling fear." Sandy Koufax

This book transcends the sport of baseball. It is about a private man who shunned the public limelight during and after his brief career, but whose contributions far exceeded the baseball diamond. In 1966, the first game of the World Series between the Dodgers and the Twins fell on the holiest Jewish festival, Yom Kippur. Mr. Koufax, by his own admission, was not a devout Jew. Yet he lived his faith with an intense pride, along with a sense of identity. When he refused to pitch the opening game, he became a symbol of character and integrity. Not only in the Jewish community, but throughout the rest of our country. Here was a man with the courage and conviction to recognize the difference between a ball game, along with more important things.

They said that Sandy Koufax only had two pitches: A fastball and a curve. But nobody threw those pitches with more masterful effectiveness before or since. Few athletes have ever demonstrated the spirit of unselfishness, character, and team spirit as Sanford Koufax. He was number 32 in your program, and number one in your heart.

Thank you for the opportunity to review this excellent biography.

"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.