Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy

Athletes come across often as pampered, overpaid babies. They get paid that much to, what?, play a game.

Yet, those of us who aren't on the fi... (show more)

Athletes come across often as pampered, overpaid babies. They get paid that much to, what?, play a game.

Yet, those of us who aren't on the field don't have much of a sense of the physical toll that competing requires. Jane Leavey's "Sandy Koufax" details an extreme case --- but also one with extraordinary results. Her descriptions of the way Koufax's arm would balloon up and turn nasty colors, the hot-pepper concoction that he'd lave onto his skin to prepare to pitch, the painkillers he'd take, the cortisone shots, are instructive, indeed, for us couch potatoes.

And Koufax wasn't a whiner. He went out and did his work so well that such an august baseball presence as Roberto Clemente could carp that Sandy couldn't be all that injured if he could pitch that well.

Leavy's book is a reminder for those of us who watched and a lesson for those too young to have seen Koufax pitch of just how great he was. During his prime, he won three of every four decisions, pitched complete games routinely and was, I suspect, the most dominant pitcher over a five-year period as there's ever been.

What's an amazing measure of his greatness is that he was voted into the Hall of Fame as a first-ballot inductee, even though he'd only won 165 games and only had five years of pitching dominance.

But Koufax was more than just a pitcher, as this biography makes clear. His decision not to pitch on Yom Kippur was an indication that baseball was part of his life....but not his life. (show less)