Customer Reviews

Koufax

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The main thing that comes to mind when I think of this book is three words: boring, boring and BORING!

If this book were not about one of my childhood idols (as a 12-year-old girl I had a terrific crush on the 19-year-old Sandy Koufax), I would have stopped reading it after a few pages. The prose is flat and colorless, the pages of statistics numbing, the repetitions annoying (where are editors when you need them?), the constant shifting around between different times and places confusing, and the lack of anything but the most superficial information about Koufax the man is extremely disappointing.

Gruver offers an occasional vivid anecdote or quotation, such as Tom Seaver's wonderfully perceptive and generous observation that Koufax seemed to have "come down from another league, a higher league." A second one is borrowed, significantly enough, from the incomparable Roger Kahn--a REAL baseball writer of genius. Gruver reports that Dodger exec Al Campanis told Kahn that there had been only two occasions in his life when the hair on the back of his neck literally stood on end. One was when he first saw Michelangelo's paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and the other was the first time he saw Koufax throw a fastball. Now THAT's what I call a great comparison! Too bad it wasn't Gruver who made it or even first reported it.

As an ardent Brooklyn Dodger fan who is also female, I wish Gruver had included more details on Koufax's marriage. (OK, I can hear the guys groaning at this one!) All Gruver provided was the wedding date and the bride's name, then two paragraphs later he reports that the couple divorced. Why? After how long? If Koufax himself refuses to talk, surely somebody else must know SOMETHING! I wonder if Gruver even attempted to interview Koufax's ex-wife, Anne Widmark?

The last part of the final chapter is fairly good in demonstrating how Koufax has become a standard of excellence against which other players are measured. Overall, however, the book was a major league disappointment.

On a balmy, summer's evening in Southern California during the mid-60's, I tune my transistor radio to KFI, and loop the handstrap around my bicycle's handlebar. Peddling aimlessly through the darkening twilight, my thoughts are solely on the vision conjured up by the Voice of the Dodgers, Vin Scully. I remember as if it was only yesterday...

"On the mound tonight for the Los Angeles Dodgers ... number 32 ... the great left-hander... Sandy Koufax".

"Koufax", by Edward Gruver, brings it all back. It's more than just a straightforward biography. The backbone of the book is a narrative of Sandy's gutsy, phenomenal performance in the seventh game of the 1965 World Series with the Minnesota Twins, relived batter by batter and pitch by pitch, at roughly one inning per chapter. The author fleshes out each inning's action with the story of Koufax's life: parents, childhood, education, religion, early baseball career, peak baseball career, teammates, adversaries, pitching style, injuries, retirement, and post retirement. And enough pitching stats to satisfy even the most hardball of fans. My only criticism might be that the author's evident hero worship of his subject is almost slavish. However, who am I to criticize considering the knuckle-biting attention I paid to Sandy's every outing, every pitch and every decision? This is a must-have book about a truly great gentleman and ballplayer.

Thirty-four years after my hero's final walk to the mound, I'm no longer a baseball fan, much less a follower of the Dodgers. Nowadays, star baseball (and football, and basketball) players seem to get more media attention when they abuse drugs, commit felony assault or rape, or are just downright obnoxious. Yes, I suppose professional athletes have always had their darker side, but the paying fans rarely heard about it, and the reputation of The Game was the better for it. For me, there are no present-day heroes. But, if I surrender to memory on a balmy, Southern California, summer evening, I can still hear Vin Scully across the decades ...

"Sandy looks in to Roseboro for the sign ... He goes into his wind-up ... Now the pitch... FASTBALL! ... Swung on and missed! Strike three!... Oh, my!"

While thinking about what to say in this review I was reminded of some commentary written about Miles Davis where a jazz critic I have long since forgotten observed, "Miles plays for himself. The listener's appreciation is merely an irrelevant by-product." Under no circumstances do I consider myself to be the literary equivalent of the musician (and artist) that was Miles Davis however the spirit of the quote is a fair assessment of the following review.

If Ed Gruver had written a biography of commensurate quality about any other baseball player, at most I would have rated it four stars. Imposition of the name Koufax, establishes an entirely unique dynamic for me. Throughout my childhood, every member of my family and basically every adult I knew well were Dodger fans, nevermind the fact the team was initially 600, and eventually 3000 miles removed from where I lived. I must have been enveloped by a steel industry induced rust belt fog for my pre-teen, adolescent and young adult years because up to the point of Jackie Robinson's death the basis for our unwavering support never occurred to me. No one ever said a thing, it was just the way it was. My family would gather around and listen to Bob Prince's call of Pirates' games just so we could find out how the Dodgers were doing. If the Dodger's were on NBC's game of the week, it became an event comparable to today's Superbowl parties.

As a lefthanded kid who fancied himself a future major league pitcher and a Dodger fan to boot, Sandy Koufax was the embodiment of perfection. I'm forced to smile in consideration of my now obvious hypocrisy when I think about the number of times I admonished my children regarding adulation of sports figures, chiding them to remember the athlete should be admired for accomplishments on the field but heroes should be sought from other disciplines. This coming from a man who a few years ago came across an old elementary school autograph book where some erstwhile friend had written, "to the boy who thinks he's Sandy Koufax but is not and never will be," thereby terminating our friendship on the spot. Not only did I consciously attempt to emulate the Koufax delivery, but while recently watching some tapes of my son, I realized when I taught him to pitch, his delivery became a right-handed version of the Koufax form.

My first job was hawking newspapers in the stands of Forbes Field during Pirates games. I found out that way I could get in for free. In 1965, I was fortunate enough to be at a doubleheader where the Dodgers starting pitchers were Koufax and Drysdale. Koufax gave up first inning homers to Bob Bailey and Donn Clendenon, then he shut down the Pirates, went all nine (naturally) and the Dodgers won 5-2. I don't have the slightest clue what happened with Drysdale in the second game. Without question, baseball is the american sport with the most time-tested adages and overwhelming conventional wisdom. The book says a fastball cannot rise and in the late innings, hitters will catch up with the pitcher who depends on the fastball. The book didn't factor in Sandy Koufax. He even affected my perceptions of historical significance. Two people I promised myself I would never forget were Michael Collins and Bob Hendley. The former did not get to walk on the moon, and the latter only gave up one hit, one walk and no earned runs, but found himself on the short end of the Koufax perfect game against the Cubs in 1965.

Mr. Gruver transported me back to an era of pleasant memories. It is hard to get younger fans in the present era to comprehend just how dominating a player was Sandy Koufax. Comparisons between eras are always difficult however rating Randy Johnson, Martinez, Clemons or Maddox against the man I consider to be the greatest seems so inadequate, particularly when you consider the physical challenges he had to overcome the last two seasons he played every time he picked up the ball. The guidelines have changed but this is a man who completed as many games in those two seasons as today's 5 man rotation pitchers start.

I only wish the authors' style and format had been as inspiring as his subject matter. The storyline of Koufax's life takes place around the backdrop of a pitch by pitch account of the 7th game of the 1965 World Series. Mr. Gruver seems to suffer from short term memory loss as time after time he repeats the same information, occasionally in successive paragraphs. Anyone who knows anything about Koufax knows his legendary reclusiveness would inhibit any author writing an unauthorized biography, so the absence of input from Mr. Koufax was not surprising. Mr. Gruver, however, fails to adequately compensate.

Nevertheless, KOUFAX is still a book any baseball fan will enjoy. It's been said there will never be another Ruth, Brown, Laver, Ali, Nicklaus, Jordan, only time will tell. But in the case of Sandy Koufax...

I love the way the book is written using the seventh game of the 1965 World Series and alternating between that and Koufax's life,which the author sees as the height of Koufax's career. And shows how painful it must have been to pitch with agonizing pain. Koufax is put together from past interviews and interviews from the players childhood friends teammates and others. I felt it gave a great overall story about the legendary pitcher.

Being a teenager, a Jewish kid who was a toal baseball freak, and rabid Dodger fan during Sandy's heyday, made him my number one sports idol of all-time. I read this book with relish as I still get shivers, and feel pride, joy, and sadness everytime I see his name in print or hear his name spoken. I feel extremely fortunate to have seen him pitch in his heyday, and would thank him profusely for giving me a Jewish role model in athletics.

Don't get me wrong. I enjoyed the book and learned things about my hero that I never knew. I, like most fans, was well aware of his physical woes, but could never really forgive him for his "early" retirement in "66. It was one of the saddest days in my life. So sad, that I completely lost interest in baseball until 1974 when the Dodgers started winning again.
Having read the book, I can now understand his decision, and agree that he did the right thing.

I liked the format of the book; using the setting of game 7 of the '65 series as the background for telling the story. It was exciting to relive the inning-by-inning account of the game, and descriptions of the other high and low points of Koufax's career. My main criticism was the constant repetition of the same facts over and over again. It appeared to me as though the author had to reach a certain word limit (like I did when I was assigned an essay in school), and needed to have a high enough word count to please his editor. He kept repeating the descriptions of Sandy on the mound in his sweat and Caposen soaked uniform, brushing away the sweat, shrugging the stiffness out of his massively muscled shoulders between each pitch. Constant repetitive descriptions of the mechanics of his pitching motion and the swelling and disfigurement of his left arm, as well as endless observations by interviewed individuals on how Sandy was shy, but always polite, had a good sense of humor, and was ethical because he refuse to pitch game 1 of the '65 series on Yom Kippur. I was ready to scream about a third of the way though the book.

...
Perhaps a little tighter editing would have alleviated some of the repetitiousness, but I guess sportswriters don't need to produce great literature when they have a subject as intriguing as my hero, Sandy Koufax.

This book is an excellent, exciting read and is well worth the time. Gruver uses the pivotal 7th game of the 65 World Series as a backdrop for Sandy's career. However, it is painfully obvious that Koufax himself did not contribute any interviews or personal observations, which is missed. Because of this, little new information is revealed to fans familiar with Koufax and his illustrious life and career. Nonetheless, I do highly recommend this book to Dodger fans and Baseball fans alike.

I learned a great deal about Sandy Koufax by reading this book. But unfortunately, author Edward Gruver intersperses details from many time periods, without making making it clear what time he is talking about at any given point. There are many editorial conventions ( dashes or stars between paragraphs, two spaces between paragraphs instead of one ) that would have made it clear that we are moving to another thought, or here, another time period. Gruver, or his editor ( was there one? ) does not use any of these conventions, so details get lost in a mishmosh.How can you write about a perfectionist athlete, and not pay attention to details in a book about that athlete? Nontheless, the book had some interest to me, as I learned many facts about this great athlete. Gruver is not a bad writer in spots, but this book clearly looks like it was " mailed in ", with minimal if any editing done on it.

Sandy Koufax is frequently described as a shy, introverted, and very private man. Perhaps because of this truth, it's hard to really get to know the real man... and even a biographer has trouble shedding any light on Sandy.

Gruver's book doesn't offer any new insight into Sandy's personality or private life. And the book frequently repeats several phrases over and over again! His pitching motion is described at least five times using the same description, and everyone interviewed for the book chimes in with the same description of his private side. Very repetitive! Lacking any real depth or anything new to say about Sandy Koufax, I guess the author decided to pad the book with repeated phrases. Sandy threw a great curve because of his "long fingers and overhead delivery." Sandy's lack of a good curve in the World Series forced him to "rely almost entirely on his fastfall." I can't tell you how many times I read this same information within the space of this short book.

Taking up the rest of the book is a pitch-by-pitch retelling of Game 7 of the 1965 World Series. Koufax was amazing to see pitch, and his dominance over other players was exciting to watch. But retold by Gruver in minute detail doesn't recreate the drama, it only puts us to sleep. Football fans have long said that "baseball is boring," and Gruver helps prove them right.

The author attempts to frame Koufax's story on the aforementioned 1965 World Series game 7, and jumps forward and backward between that game and the rest of Koufax's life and career. It's a literary device that doesn't work; I found myself confused about what year it was and what important game was being played. Also, Gruver's segue phrases between the 1965 World Series and moments earlier in Koufax's career are forced... moving from the eighth inning of Game 7 to an earlier Koufax pitching start, Gruver might say, "It was just like that time in San Francisco in 1962," and - BOOM - now he's recounting the details of a game played three years earlier. And then back to the 1965 World Series for the bottom of the eighth. And so on.

Hopefully, that newer Koufax biography ("Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy") is better and more exciting than this one. I don't think I've ever read a more boring baseball book, and certainly never one as monotonous as this one.

As a child in the sixties, I watched the game of baseball change dramatically. Due to expansion, it started with an offensive explosion. Home run numbers and batting averages soared in the first few years, with Roger Maris hitting 61 home runs in a season and the Yankees setting an all-time record for home runs by a team. That changed quickly, so by 1968, the pitchers were so dominant that it was practically a fluke that the American league batting champion had an average over .300. However, by then the most dominant pitcher of the decade was gone, removed by an arthritic left arm that could have failed at any time. His name was Koufax, one that still leaves many in awe.
It was common knowledge that he had serious problems with his arm, but it was so hard to believe when you saw him pitch. Until I read this book, I had no idea how many problems he battled through. At one point in his last years, it was thought that he would have to have the index finger of his throwing hand amputated due to lack of circulation. It is to his eternal credit that he has never lamented his misfortune.
The other point that is so significant is the number of innings he pitched in his last few seasons. There appears to be no doubt that his determination to pitch so much shortened his career. Such things are unheard of in the modern era, where starting pitchers are routinely removed after seven innings. Once again, you hear nothing from him about how different things might have been.
Sandy Koufax is also an intensely private man, with little interest in commercial endorsements. Therefore, the only way that you can learn about him is through books like this. Gruver shows us many things about Koufax, but without doubt the two most significant points are how dominant a pitcher he was and how courageous he was to continue that dominance while his left arm deteriorated to the point where his suits needed to be specially tailored. After reading this book, I came away even more impressed with Sandy Koufax, who could have been the best pitcher of all time.

Koufax was the greatest, he deserves a better book. I suspect that some of the more positive reviews posted are more a reflection of the reviewers' feelings about Koufax, rather than the book. This book is poorly written and incredibly boring. How any writer could make the subject of Sandy's brilliant career boring is beyond me. But Gruver finds a way. The writing is dry and disorganized, there is little flow to the material, too many meaningless quotes from others are included without sufficent editing, and a plethora of unimportant details not only overwhelm the narative but are frequently repeated, sometimes three or four times. I've just ordered Jane Leavy's book, it's got to be better.