Sunday, March 28, 2010

Dave's Reading for the Week

This week thus far, I finished up "Ball Four" by Jim Bouton, "I'm Glad You Didn't Take it Personally" by Jim Bouton, "Baseball Wives" by Bobbie Bouton and Nancy Marshall, and I'm currently working on "Sandy Koufax, a Lefty's Legacy" by Jane Leavy.

Ball Four is perhaps the best baseball book I've ever read and his follow up "I'm Glad You Didn't Take it Personally" was a bit of a letdown.  It told the story of what happened after Ball Four was released and was pretty good.  "Baseball Wives" was a bore from beginning to end and told the story of the ex-wives of both Jim Bouton and Mike Marshall.  I truly thought that Bobbie Bouton got a raw deal in every way from Jim Bouton, but really didn't feel the same sort of sympathy for Nancy Marshall. It seems to me that she and Mike were both bottom of the barrel and deserved each other.

The book on Sandy Koufax is the best book I've read yet.  I'm about halfway through it and am really enjoying it.  It's a damn shame that the Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers misused Koufax for the first part of his career, otherwise he would have been even more stellar than he already was in the majors.  When I was a kid, even though I was a Cubs fan, I had two heroes for pitchers: Sandy Koufax and Steve Carlton.  Both were lefties like myself and I grew up idolizing Carlton, especially after seeing him pitch against the Atlanta Braves when I was in little league.  I'm looking for some good books on Carlton as well.  If anyone knows of any, let me know.

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