Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy by Leavy

[zzazazz]

I just finished this book up last week and really enjoyed. I found that I knew almost nothing about Koufax the man. I didn't know he was so oppressed by his fame.

Did anyone else read this book and did you have a good or bad impression of it?

[The Commissioner]

I just received a copy of this book. Does anyone else have any opinions on it? I want to know how high upon my reading list to place this.

[dasher troy]

Terrific book

Jane Leavy really devotes a lot of attention to Sandy's pitching dominance and uniqueness as a human being. The stuff anout Koufax and Drysdale's holdout was awesome. I have read it twice and read over it often. I never knew about "bonus babies" and I am glad the practice has been retired. Awesome read.

[Captain Cold Nose]

I really enjoyed it. As zzazazz said, you really get an excellent glimpse at Koufax the man.

[The Commissioner]

Thanks for the opinions. I'll have to move it ahead to the front of my reading list now.

[The Commissioner]

I just finished the book. I thought it had some great insights into Koufax the man that I never would have known otherwise. However, I wasn't a big fan of the author's writing style. I thought that she tended to spend way too much time attempting to set up the scenes. As a result, the book didn't flow as well as it could have. For example she adopted the Ken Burns style that has become so popular nowadays of randomly listing other parallel events that were transpiring outside of baseball at that time. Ken Burns does it fairly seemlessly. She seemed to be just awkwardly throwing in litanies of events for the sake of doing so. I found it distracting. I know what was going on in 1962 without her telling me.

The every other chapter being devoted the perfect game was an interesting literary device, but came across as just that, a literary device. She could have done a better job of pulling that off.

Also, I didn't like the seemingly random flow of the book at times. It was like she had random anecdotes that she was trying to stuff together, but that never quite fit the way they should. I realize that most non-fiction histories are composed that way, but most of them manage to pull it off without you ever being aware of what the author is attempting to do.

Overall, I'd give it a thumbs up for the invaluable information it contains, the interesting insights offered, and the research that the author did, I just believe a better book on the whole could have been produced with the same available data.

[digglahhh]

That's an interesting review Commish.

My reaction to the writing was weird. I had several complaints similar to yours, yet somehow, I also thought she was a better writer than those who write most sports books that I read. The best way of describing it, I guess, is that I think that she has the tools of a good writer, but I didn't like a lot of the decisions she made about how she presented the book. Were a book written like that by a truly bad writer, it wouldn't have worked - at all.

I read The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty by Buster Olney, and in that book too, every other chapter flashes back to Game 7 of the 2001 WS, I'm not a fan of that style in general.