Roslyn native Jane Leavy returned to her hometown last Tuesday, traveling to the Bryant Library to give a talk on her latest book, a biography of former Los Angeles Dodger pitching great Sandy Koufax.

Described as part biography and part social history, Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy penetrates the mythology surrounding the often-misunderstood baseball icon, revealing a man whose enigmatic reputation has proved as deceptive as his once-mighty curveball. It is published by HarperCollins and is available at local bookstores.

An award-winning sportswriter with The Washington Post, Ms. Leavy mines insights on Koufax from more than 400 interviews with her subject's former teammates, coaches and opponents to present an arresting portrait of a man and the era he dominated. While evoking a far different time in professional sports and society, Ms. Leavy explores Koufax's enduring hold on a new generation of baseball fans.

Ms. Leavy's journey to even writing the biography is an interesting one. By the time an editor at HarperCollins approached her with the idea of writing a book on Sandy Koufax, she was a fan of his. But that wasn't always the case. In fact, Ms. Leavy joked that while growing up in Roslyn, she was "the only Jewish kid" in the village who didn't root for Koufax and his Dodgers. She explained that when she was young, her father took only her older sister to Ebbets Field to see the Dodgers play before they took their fateful move to the West Coast. And so, she became a New York Yankees fan. Those sentiments were also influenced by Ms. Leavy's grandmother, who lived in an apartment building close to Yankee Stadium.

Described as part biography and part social history, Sandy Koufax: A Lefty's Legacy penetrates the mythology surrounding the often-misunderstood baseball icon, revealing a man whose enigmatic reputation has proved as deceptive as his once-mighty curveball. It is published by HarperCollins and is available at local bookstores.

An award-winning sportswriter with The Washington Post, Ms. Leavy mines insights on Koufax from more than 400 interviews with her subject's former teammates, coaches and opponents to present an arresting portrait of a man and the era he dominated. While evoking a far different time in professional sports and society, Ms. Leavy explores Koufax's enduring hold on a new generation of baseball fans.

Ms. Leavy's journey to even writing the biography is an interesting one. By the time an editor at HarperCollins approached her with the idea of writing a book on Sandy Koufax, she was a fan of his. But that wasn't always the case. In fact, Ms. Leavy joked that while growing up in Roslyn, she was "the only Jewish kid" in the village who didn't root for Koufax and his Dodgers. She explained that when she was young, her father took only her older sister to Ebbets Field to see the Dodgers play before they took their fateful move to the West Coast. And so, she became a New York Yankees fan. Those sentiments were also influenced by Ms. Leavy's grandmother, who lived in an apartment building close to Yankee Stadium.

Many years later, while covering the US Open for The Washington Post, Ms. Leavy remembered working on a particularly hectic deadline during a Jewish holiday. Recalling that "Sandy didn't pitch on Yom Kippur," Ms. Leavy filed her story and then left the office to observe the same holiday. In 1965, Koufax made news by not pitching in game one of that year's World Series on account of the fact that it fell on Yom Kippur.

While doing research on the book, Ms. Leavy was struck by the strong hold Koufax still had on ex-teammates, rivals, sportswriters, and especially, regular baseball fans. "People want to tell their own story about Sandy Koufax," Ms. Leavy said. In fact, Ms. Leavy noted that through the book, she has become "some kind of weird medium for people to talk about Koufax" adding that people think if they tell her about the man, she in turn, will tell their story to Koufax himself.

"Sandy Koufax spans two distinct eras in baseball and in America," Ms. Leavy writes in the book. "He epitomizes a time when presidents were believed and pitchers went nine innings; when $4,000 was a bonus; when the words 'team' and 'mates' could be used separately or in conjunction but always without irony; when a member of the 1955 World Championship Brooklyn Dodgers would go straight from Yankee Stadium to Columbia University after the seventh game of the World Series...In virtually every way that matters, ethically and economically, medically and journalistically, he offers a way to measure where we've been, what we've been, what we've come to and what we've lost."

A native of Brooklyn and a graduate of Lafayette High School, Sandy Koufax signed with the Dodgers after an brief athletic career at the University of Cincinnati. He was a member of the 1955 Brooklyn Dodger world championship team, but saw little action that year. It wasn't until the early 1960s that he began to make his mark on the game.

From 1961 to 1966, Koufax was the most successful pitcher in baseball, winning 25 or more games on three separate occasions, and pitching the Dodgers to World Series titles in both 1963 and 1965. His retirement in 1966, due to wear and tear on his left arm, was noteworthy in that Koufax was only 30 years old, plus he had come off an incredible season that included a 27-9 won-loss record and a 1.73 earned run average.

Ms. Leavy has been on a busy schedule promoting the book. An excerpt recently appeared in an issue of Sports Illustrated. This past week, Ms. Leavy has been interviewed by Mike Francesa and Christopher Russo on their popular WFAN-AM sports talk show. In the coming weeks and months, Ms. Leavy will make stops all throughout the state of Florida, plus at book stores in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston, New Orleans and elsewhere. The publicity has already paid off. The biography has reached number five on the latest New York Times bestseller list.

As importantly, the book has received a complimentary blurb from the subject itself. "An unauthorized biography by a neat lady," is how Sandy Koufax has described the latest book on his life and career.

A graduate of both Roslyn High School and Columbia University, Ms. Leavy worked at The Washington Post from 1979 to 1988. She left the paper following the birth of her second child. Her work has appeared in, among other publications, Newsweek, Sports Illustrated and Women's Sports.

As with other Roslyn authors, Ms. Leavy has warm memories of the Bryant Library. Both of her parents remain active in the library's current activities. But while giving her talk at the library, one particularly memorable story about growing up in Roslyn came to mind.

Ms. Leavy recalled that one winter day, when she was about 10 years old, she had gone sledding with friends at the duck pond. It was, she further remembered, a "cold, horrible day" and soon, she and her friends had left their sleds by the water's edge and went into the library to read and stay warm. In time, her mother walked into the library in a disturbed state of mind.

"It never occurred to me that I was doing anything wrong," Ms. Leavy said. Her mother, however, had seen the sleds all by themselves next to the water's edge and had "drawn the wrong conclusion." As a child, Ms. Leavy had almost drowned in a water-related accident, an experience that had influenced her mother's anxiety.