Friday, June 1, 2012

the last book I ever read (Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy, excerpt four)


from Jane Leavy's Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy:

People didn't come to see whether he won or lost but to be able to say they saw him. Every game was an event accompanied by hoopla and subtext. An arm has only so many pitches to give, and with any one of those not yet delivered, Koufax's could come unhinged. That was the irony. The more unassailable he appeared, the more vulnerable he became. As the pitch counts and the innings and the strikeouts and the victories and the accolades mounted, so did his awareness of how tenuous it all was. His elbow reminded him with every pitch. Chapter 1 of his autobiography, published that spring, ended with an intimation: "An athletic existence is a self-liquidating life."

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