He lived in the present tense in the camera's lens. There was no frame he couldn't or wouldn't fill. He swung the heaviest bat, earned the most money, and incurred the biggest fines. Like all the new-fangled gadgets then flooding the marketplace radios, automatic clothes washers, Brownie cameras, microphones and loudspeakers Babe Ruth "made impossible events happen." Aided by his crucial partnership with Christy Walsh, business manager, spin doctor,...

"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...

Nobody ever threw a baseball better than Sandy Koufax. He dominated the game -- and the ball, making it rise, break, sing. Then, after his best season, in 1966, he was gone, retired at age thirty, leaving behind a reputation as the game's greatest lefty and most misunderstood man. The Brooklyn boy whom the Dodgers signed as "the Great Jewish Hope" will forever be known for his refusal to pitch the opening game of the 1965 World Series because it fell...