Sandy Koufax
I spent most of the day today reading Sandy Koufax by Jane Leavy, which my parents gave me for Hanukah. It’s the first baseball book I’ve read in a number of years, and it’s probably one of the best I’ve ever read.
The book isn’t really a biography of Koufax — he clearly treasures the distinction between his private life and his life between the lines, and Leavy respects that decision well enough to barely touch on details like his early childhood or his family. What it is, though, is two intertwined stories: One covering Koufax’s life with a heavy focus on the six years when he may have been the best pitcher the world will ever see, and a second about the night of September 9, 1965, when Koufax pitched a perfect game in what may have been the best exhibition of pitching on both sides that baseball has ever seen.
Leavy alternates chapters, one about Koufax’s life and another about an inning from the perfect game, one by one, with exquisite timing. I’ve never read such a terrific description of a single game — the feel of the crowd and the emotions of the players, the umpires, the broadcasters, and the fans as they realized they were seeing history being made. The transposition of that story with a beautiful description of Koufax as viewed by other players, his friends, and the rest of the world produces a book that’s far more enjoyable than a typical biography.