Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy

Leavy, Jane

ISBN 10: 0060569441 ISBN 13: 9780060569440

Publisher: HarperAudio, 2003

Synopsis

“The incomparable and mysterious Sandy Koufax is revealed.... This is an absorbing book, beautifully written.” —Wall Street Journal

“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 instant 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 reveals, for the first time, what drove the three-time Cy Young award winner to the pinnacle of baseball and then—just as quickly—into self-imposed exile.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

Sandy Koufax was the consummate pitcher: elegant, dominant, unsurpassed. He defined and distinguished himself by what he did on the baseball field and what he refused to do. He challenged batters and stereotypes. On the evening of September 9, 1965, he pitched a perfect game against the Chicago Cubs. Less than a month later, he achieved another kind of perfection by refusing to pitch the opening game of the World Series because it fell on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar. Until then, he was a ballplayer, perhaps the greatest lefthander of all time. Forever after, he would be a symbol, the one thing he never wanted to be.

A year later, he was gone -- done with baseball at age thirty. No other sports hero retired so young, so well, or so completely. Opting out of celebrity, refusing to cannibalize himself for profit, he is described by one former Dodger "as the most misunderstood man in baseball." Part biography and part cultural history, Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy gets as close to the legend as he will allow.

About the Author:

Jane Leavy, award-winning former sportswriter and feature writer for the Washington Post, is author of the New York Times bestsellers Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy, The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood, and the comic novel Squeeze Play. She lives in Washington, D.C. and Truro, Massachusetts.

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperAudio
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0060569441
• ISBN 13: 9780060569440
• Binding: Audio Cassette