Fantastic biography of arguably the most iconic baseball player of the 1950s and early 60s. Leavy's story structure seems unconventional at first, introducing different sections of the book with excerpts from a 1983 article she wrote on Mantle in her early days as a sports reporter. She focuses o...
The main qualms that led me to three stars instead of higher is the organization of the book. It jumped around way too much. Am I too traditional that I like a simple beginning-to-end-of-life biography? From chapter-to-chapter I had to double-check what year or even decade I was in. Not a huge de...
A friend insisted that I read Jane Leavy's biography of Sandy Koufax. I agreed to, vaguely hoping, because I have my own long list of books waiting to be read, that he would forget about it. He didn't and even bought a copy and mailed it to me. So, had no choice. I remembered Koufax as part of th...
6 through the central mountains. The plane was so low that it cast a gigantic shadow across the pine-covered landscape, and made people stop what they were doing and stare. The plane went right up to where that asphalt ended and 12,000 feet of rock stretched to the sky. That was the plane that ch...
In the bottom of the sixth inning of his 1,352nd major league game—the second game of a Sunday doubleheader against the Washington Senators—Mantle bounced a ball down the third base line. The score was 1–1. Hector Lopez was on first base. The Stadium was half full. They witnessed the unthinkable:...