The book on Sandy. (Here Below).

A SPLENDID WRITER named Jane Leavy after learning more than a little bit about a reclusive legend named Sandy Koufax decided to write a book about him.

She ferreted out his phone number and called him. Of course he rejected her offer to collaborate on a book. God forbid that anyone would discover something more about him than his name, rank, and cereal number (as a baby).

But, being Sandy Koufax, he had to be kind to a lady. He agreed to tell all his friends to cooperate with her.

We'd have thought it would be an impossible book to write. Jane Leavy astonished us. She wrote a terrific book. A sort of pitcher in the wry, thoroughly researched and beautifully written on an extremely complex person: how he evolved from a basketball player into a wild-throwing pitcher, then the greatest pitcher in baseball, and finally a legendary American hero.

The great games, the great incidents, the strange reclusiveness, all of that is splendidly articulated in the book.

The private part of his life is, as we expected, practically ignored. That obviously was promised to Sandy. His two divorced wives are dismissed with a few sentences apiece. The "lovely lady" he now lives with is unnamed and invisible.

The big personal thing on which Ms. Leavy does come on like Gangbusters is that empty six-year spell in which Sandy struggled with his "wildness." He obviously believed that he was mismanaged and it is just as obvious that he was.

And therein lies the reason why a congenitally shy and reserved person will start raging at the mention of a fancied wrong. Sandy had been an innocent kid with a golden arm and they had done him wrong. He cannot forgive or forget. It is his hang-up.

But he is not a professional sorehead. He is an enormously warm and generous person with far more wins than losses in his personal relationships.

A year before retiring from baseball, Koufax pitched the greatest game in his career, a perfect 1-0 game against a run-of-the-mill Cub pitcher, Bob Hendley, who had also pitched the greatest game in his career.

Over 30 years later, Hendley told Jane Leavy about it: how proud he has always felt about that momentous occasion and how sad it was that he had no memento of it.

Ms. Leavy, being the kind of person she is, had to phone Sandy. Shortly after the call, Bob Hendley received two pieces of mail: a warm, personal letter from Sandy and a 1955 official baseball with a special inscription on it by Sandy: "What a game!"

'Tis a wonderful thing: Sandy Koufax is unpredictable and enigmatic, yet almost everything he says and does has that unmistakable touch of class.