Once a Bum, Always a Dodger/My Life in Baseball from Brooklyn to Los Angeles

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful book for a true Drysdale fan.
Review: As a 1960s era Dodger and Drysdale fan, I found this book very interesting and entertaining. You follow Drysdale's career from a boy to becoming one of the most successful and aggressive pitchers of all time.

The 1960 era Dodgers were a very special team. They won by every player giving over 100 percent. Drysdale was no exception, throwing hard and doing everything to win. The Koufax / Drysdale pitching combo was death to batting averages.

Drysdale shares many of his experiences with Dodger management and players. I often found myself laughing as he related humorous events. It was a grand time in baseball. It was a time when players roomed together and socialized together. They lived baseball in way that is foreign to the players of today. It was also nice to find out the inside on many events that I had been curious about.

I with a book like this you hope to read about many of the Dodger players. However, Drysdale's stories involve only his closest friends on the club and management. Even with that limitation, it was wonderful to read the stories about Gill Hodges, Duke Snider and others.

He did waste a chapter on Howard Cosell at the end of the book. He and Howard were friends and I think he wanted to present the other side of Cosell. Although Howard may have been a cool guy, he was never a good sports announcer.

If you liked Don Drysdale you should enjoy this book. After reading it, I wish I could have met him. This was a perfect title. Once a Bum (Brooklyn Dodger) Always a Dodger - and that he was for his whole career.

Rating:
Summary: A GOOD LOOK AT THE TWIN D'S
Review: Despite its awkward title, Don Drysdale's autobiography is an enjoyable read, but even the first-person narrative doesn't save this memoir from blandness. Although Drysdale was both a fireballer and something of a fireball in personality (at least on the field), he comes across here pretty much as a generic athlete. Unlike Jim Bouton's "Ball Four," this book doesn't project a distinctive, personal voice. The memoir rambles along entertainingly enough, but there's not much that's particularly memorable about it.

An interesting aspect of the work is Drysdale's description of his close relationship with Sal Maglie, who came to the Dodgers in 1956. Drysdale, who seems to have been a very naive kid when he joined the Dodgers that same year (he was only 19), reports that he learned "a lot about pitching, a lot about baseball, a lot about life" from the "great and grizzled veteran" Maglie (who was all of 39 at that point!) His hero worship of Maglie when the latter was in the twilight of his career was touching, all the more so as it seems that Maglie didn't make many friends during his brief tenure with Brooklyn.

In the last chapter Drysdale sums up some relatively recent events in his personal life, including a nasty divorce, followed by a late remarriage to a much younger woman and the birth of two children when he was in his early 50s. He goes on about how happy he is, how great his health is, despite a "meat and potatoes" diet and a fair amount of drinking, and how he expects to live a good, long life, etc., but readers today know that this didn't happen. In 1990, when the book was published, Drysdale wasn't in the middle of his life--he was near the end of it. He died of a heart attack in 1993 at the age of 56.

For dyed-in-the-wool Dodger fans, the book is worth a trip to the library, but not to the used book store.

Rating:
Summary: Good Book, Terrible Title
Review: Despite its awkward title, Don Drysdale's autobiography is an enjoyable read, but even the first-person narrative doesn't save this memoir from blandness. Although Drysdale was both a fireballer and something of a fireball in personality (at least on the field), he comes across here pretty much as a generic athlete. Unlike Jim Bouton's "Ball Four," this book doesn't project a distinctive, personal voice. The memoir rambles along entertainingly enough, but there's not much that's particularly memorable about it.

An interesting aspect of the work is Drysdale's description of his close relationship with Sal Maglie, who came to the Dodgers in 1956. Drysdale, who seems to have been a very naive kid when he joined the Dodgers that same year (he was only 19), reports that he learned "a lot about pitching, a lot about baseball, a lot about life" from the "great and grizzled veteran" Maglie (who was all of 39 at that point!) His hero worship of Maglie when the latter was in the twilight of his career was touching, all the more so as it seems that Maglie didn't make many friends during his brief tenure with Brooklyn.

In the last chapter Drysdale sums up some relatively recent events in his personal life, including a nasty divorce, followed by a late remarriage to a much younger woman and the birth of two children when he was in his early 50s. He goes on about how happy he is, how great his health is, despite a "meat and potatoes" diet and a fair amount of drinking, and how he expects to live a good, long life, etc., but readers today know that this didn't happen. In 1990, when the book was published, Drysdale wasn't in the middle of his life--he was near the end of it. He died of a heart attack in 1993 at the age of 56.

For dyed-in-the-wool Dodger fans, the book is worth a trip to the library, but not to the used book store.

Rating:
Summary: Good Book, Terrible Title
Review: Despite its awkward title, Drysdale's autobiography is an enjoyable read, but even the first-person narrative doesn't save this memoir from blandness. Although Drysdale was both a fireballer and something of a fireball in personality (at least on the field), he comes across here pretty much as a generic athlete. Unlike Jim Bouton's "Ball Four," this book doesn't project a distinctive, personal voice. The memoir rambles along entertainingly enough, but there's not much that's particularly memorable about it.

An interesting aspect of the work is Drysdale's description of his close relationship with Sal Maglie, who came to the Dodgers in 1956. Drysdale, who seems to have been a very naive kid when he joined the Dodgers that same year (he was only 19), reports that he learned "a lot about pitching, a lot about baseball, a lot about life" from the "great and grizzled veteran" Maglie (who was all of 39 at that point!) His hero worship of Maglie when the latter was in the twilight of his career was touching, all the more so as it seems that Maglie didn't make many friends during his brief tenure with Brooklyn.

In the last chapter Drysdale sums up some relatively recent events in his personal life, including a nasty divorce, followed by a late remarriage to a much younger woman and the birth of two children when he was in his early 50s. He goes on about how happy he is, how great his health is, despite a "meat and potatoes" diet and a fair amount of drinking, and how he expects to live a good, long life, etc., but readers today know that this didn't happen. In 1990, when the book was published, Drysdale wasn't in the middle of his life--he was near the end of it. He died of a heart attack in 1993 at the age of 56.

For died-in-the-wool Dodger fans, the book is worth a trip to the library, but not to the used book store.

Rating:
Summary: A GOOD LOOK AT THE TWIN D'S
Review: DON DRYSDALE DOES A NICE JOB OF TELLING HIS LIFE AND CAREER. HE REALLY DOESN'T GO INTO GREAT DEAL ABOUT HIS PRIVATE LIFE BUT THAT IS HIS RIGHT OF PRIVACY. HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH SAL MAGLIE, SANDY KOUFAX, AND WALTER ALSTON ARE SOME OF THE HIGHLIGHTS OF THIS BOOK. I WISH HE WOULD HAVE GONE INTO MORE DETAIL ABOUT HIS CAREER AND GAME SITUATIONS HE WAS IN. BUT OVERALL A GOOD READ FOR DODGER AND FANS OF THE TWIN D'S.