Jane Leavy > Quotes

“In the immortal words of Willie Stargell, trying to hit Koufax was like “trying to drink coffee with a fork.”
― Jane Leavy, Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy

“Asked once what he was doing to keep busy in retirement, Hank Aaron replied, “I’m being Hank Aaron.”
― Jane Leavy, Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy

“It’s like being in the ballpark with Jesus.”
― Jane Leavy, Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy

“Ruth had three more games to outdo himself. Number fifty-seven was a grand slam off Lefty Grove in Philadelphia. Numbers fifty-eight and fifty-nine came at home against the Washington Senators. The record-tying home run—a grand slam!—came off a rookie pitcher, Paul Hopkins, making his major-league debut. His catcher told him to throw only curves, so that’s what he did. The one Ruth hit, Hopkins told Sports Illustrated in 1998, was “so slow Ruth started to swing and then hesitated, hitched on it and brought the bat back. And then he swung, breaking his wrists as he came through it. What a great eye he had! He hit it at the right second. Put everything behind it.”
― Jane Leavy, The Big Fella: Babe Ruth and the World He Created

“When Mantle faced the cameras for the last time a month before his death, he was a husk of a man, shrunken by cancer. The stiff brim of his 1995 All-Star Game cap dwarfed his brow. There was no Mantle Roll. He looked straight into the cameras and told us all, 'Don't be like me.'

The transformation of The Mick parallels the transformation of American culture from willful innocence to knowing cynicism. To tell his story is to tell ours.”
― Jane Leavy, The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America's Childhood

“You pitch outside, you throw inside,” he liked to say.”
― Jane Leavy, Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy

“He was a meteor streaking across the heavens,”
― Jane Leavy, Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy

“He remembers when you didn’t need FBI clearance to talk to a ballplayer and baseball was what you did until you grew up.”
― Jane Leavy, Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy