A much needed biography on the lesser known half of the great Dodger pitching duo. Koufax may be more well known, but Drysdale was one of the elite pitchers of that era. An excellent read on what made Drysdale tick and a study of the man himself.

Baseball fans in the 1960’s saw some very good Los Angeles Dodgers teams and some of the best pitching in the history of the game, capped off by the “year of the pitcher” in 1968. A pair of Dodgers pitchers were among those pitchers who enjoyed much success and this by Mark Whicker tells the career of one of them, Don Drysdale.

Drysdale was the last player from the Brooklyn Dodgers to retire after the team relocated to Los Angeles. That move, along with a lengthy section on Walter Johnson’s scoreless streak for pitchers (why that’s included will be noted later) and many shorter passages about the many political and social issues of that time are interspersed in the book along with some excellent coverage of Drysdale’s baseball career. That is the bulk of the text Whicker includes in this book, so it doesn’t feel like a full biography but there’s still enough material on his life off the diamond to give a reader a good feel for the type of person he was.

While Drysdale was a California native and thrived after the team moved to his native state, he was gaining a reputation as being difficult as well as a pitcher who was more interested in hitting batters than throwing strikes. For the former, there are many examples of this in the book. This can range from mild, such as his frequent complaints about the dimensions of the baseball configuration of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum (the home stadium for the Dodgers before Dodger Stadium was built in 1962), to the dangerous, such as the accusation by his first wife Ginger that Don had beaten her “30 times.” This is the only time in the entire book that any hint of domestic violence is mentioned. It is a good example to show that much of the book was dedicated to Drysdale’s activities on the diamond (although there are nice stories about his second marriage to basketball Hall of Famer Ann Meyers).

The baseball sections are excellent. Whicker writes about Drysdale’s successful accomplishments in great detail, and even some of his less than stellar days. For the latter, the best example is when he became the starter in game 1 of the 1965 World Series after Sandy Koufax famously refused to pitch that day as it was Yom Kippur. After the Minnesota Twins roughed up Drysdale to win the game 8-2, Drysdale quipped to manager Walter Alston “I bet you wish I was Jewish.”

However, as one would expect from a Hall of Fame pitcher’s career, there was much more good than this type of bad. He won a Cy Young award in 1962, pitched and won games on three World Series championship Dodger teams (including 1965 where he won game 4) and setting a new scoreless inning streak for pitchers of 58 ⅔ innings in 1968. This is his most famous accomplishment, the one that likely ensured his place in the Hall of Fame and is the best section of this book. It is where Whicker starts off with the passage about Walter Johnson , takes the reader through Drysdale’s amazing streak, and later illustrates the similarities between him and the Dodger pitcher who broke Drysdale’s record, Orel Hershieser.
Lastly, while Drysdale mostly played second fiddle to Koufax during this stretch of Dodger greatness (and otherworldly pitching by Koufax) the two would always be linked as teammates and of course for their famous holdout for new contracts in the spring of 1966. This event is also covered in the book and with good detail, especially on Drydale’s role. This is a book that any Dodgers fan will want to read to learn more about “Double D” and the legacy he left on one baseball’s most storied franchises.

I wish to thank Triumph Books for providing a copy of the book. The opinions expressed in this review are strictly my own.

I read an advanced reader's electronic copy thanks to NetGalley.

Drysdale. It's hard to say the name without "Koufax" somewhere in the conversation, but in fact Don certainly earned a legacy all his own. Together, Koufax and Drysdale made a one-two punch quite unbeatable in baseball history. Don both preceded and outlasted Koufax and indeed had his biggest moment after Koufax ad stepped away.

The author presents us with a larger-than-life baseball hero (admittedly, with flaws, as we shall see). He establishes his persona like a pitcher establishes the space he thinks he owns. From the start we understand that "Up and In" isn't just a subtitle; it was how Drysdale operated. No batter, no matter how good, was going to lean out over the plate to jump on a Drysdale fastball. One pitcher in a thousand these days boldly takes such command. Drysdale pitched in that "man's man" category.

But to Drysdale, it was just business. He might knock a guy down during a game, but after the game would buy him dinner if he ran into him. He let it be known that to ply his trade, he was never going to pull punches. And yet, he was also someone who showed self-reflection. If he pitched poorly, he did not blame it on anyone else. He accepted his lumps. This introspective trait is endearing and makes the brushback pitches that much more acceptable. He wasn't headhunting. He was establishing territorial dominance, playing the game without giving an inch. He made lifelong friends in the sport, and even opponents never truly became enemies. It was a game of back-and-forth respect.

His story is also the tale of the transition from Brooklyn to Los Angeles, from the "Bums" of the 1950s to the 1960s powerhouse Dodgers. When he retired, he was the last Brooklyn Dodger standing. His retirement ended a chapter in the franchise's history.

Before it was over, though, Drysdale provided one last blast of greatness, his scoreless inning streak of 1968. The author places it in its context. 1968 was the Year of the Pitcher, when Bob Gibson held an untouchable 1.12 earned run average, Denny McLain won 31 games and Drysdale went 58 2/3 innings without giving up a run. Still, it was a remarkable achievement that was only broken two decades later, by, ironically, another Dodger. Drysdale, by then an announcer, got to live the streak all over again.

The book balances baseball life with real life. We're given the statistical rundown at the end of the story that establishes Drysdale's Hall of Fame credentials. We're also given the divorce filing by his wife that alleges domestic violence. We see what Dodgers fans saw on the field, and get a glimpse into the everyday life of the man himself.

As a nearly lifetime baseball fan, Don Drysdale is a name I've known for years without really knowing anything about. I remember when he died in 1993, largely because I was still a budding baseball fan and I remember he and Roy Campanella dying within about a week of each other. Other than being a name that came up with Duke Snider and Sandy Koufax in mentions of the first iterations of the Los Angeles Dodgers, though, I knew little about the man.

Enter Mark Whicker and his upcoming book Don Drysdale: Up and In, releasing Feb. 16 on Triumph Books.

Whicker, a Los Angeles-area sportswriter, uses his own interviews as well as archival interviews to present Drysdale not only as a player, but also a human. Drysdale (who was known for being very tall and very intimidating) comes off a little bit larger than life, while Whicker examines his temperament (not always great) and his life in Sandy Koufax's shadow.

The book, especially as a season by season blow, provides a pretty straightforward explanation as to how Drysdale, despite perhaps not quite statistically lining up with others, put together a Hall of Fame career. At the same time, there are no apologies made. While it's clear this is a person the author knew and respected, he also leaves a lot of the warts in the story.

What Whicker does extremely well, however, is lay out the world around where Drysdale is coming up. He discusses how the Dodgers arrival in Los Angeles may not have been as popular as people are led to believe, for instance.

At the same time, there are some parts where I wish Whicker had dug a little deeper. He mentions at one point that Drysdale's first wife had filed for divorce citing domestic violence, but we never get any more information there. He was also apparently good friends with Frank Sinatra, but I feel like there were some dots that didn't quite connect to where you could quite see how that would happen.

Regardless, as a person who knew nothing about Drysdale except for the fact that he was a pitcher in the 1960s, I found this book to be fascinating.

I received an ARC of this soon-to-be-released biography through NetGalley.

How can you not enjoy a biography of this great baseball legend? Drysdale was an iconic pitcher and personality, a guy who grew up in southern California and became one of the prime faces of the Los Angeles Dodgers. The author is a veteran and now retired sportswriter, based in SoCal. Drysdale's career as a pitcher was from 1956 to 1969, so the author relied on written archives and several interviews to put this together. Drysdale died at age 56, but maintained a high public profile as a sports announcer (not just baseball) and TV personality until his death in 1993.

Drysdale's life was always quite interesting, full of highs and lows, and the author did a good job of presenting both, though there was an obvious bias to present his life favorably. Not a whole lot of original information here, except notably that gained through interviews with Drysdale's second wife, Ann Meyers, the former basketball star.

Thank you, IPG /Triumph Books, for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

I just finished Don Drysdale: Up And In: The Life of a Dodgers Legend, by Mark Whicker.

Among the many topics covered by the book were Drysdale's intimidation of batters, his extreme competitiveness, his experience throwing the spitter (which he admitted to throwing 5-20 times a game), the three World Series championships the Dodgers won with Drysdale (1959, 1963, 1965), the 1962 pennant race with the Giants, his joint holdout with Koufax, the controversy over playing after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated and Drysdale’s scoreless streak.

I give this book a B+.

Goodreads and NetGalley require grades on a 1-5 star system. In my personal conversion system, a B+ equates to 4 stars. (A or A+: 5 stars, B+: 4 stars, B: 3 stars, C: 2 stars, D or F: 1 star).

This review has been posted at NetGalley, Goodreads and my blog, Mr. Book’s Book Reviews

I finished reading this on November 1, 2024.