Willie Mays
The Life, The Legend
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- $27.99
Publisher Description
The New York Times bestselling, authorized, “enormously entertaining and wide-ranging” (The Seattle Times) biography of the late, great Willie Mays.
Willie Mays (1931–2024) was arguably the greatest player in baseball history, revered for the passion he brought to the game. He began as a teenager in the Negro Leagues, became a cult hero in New York, and was the headliner in Major League Baseball’s bold expansion to California. He was a blend of power, speed, and stylistic bravado that enraptured fans for more than two decades. Author James Hirsch reveals the man behind the player.
Mays was a transcendent figure who received standing ovations in enemy stadiums and who, during the turbulent civil rights era, urged understanding and reconciliation. More than his records, his legacy is defined by the pure joy that he brought to fans and the loving memories that have been passed to future generations so they might know the magic and beauty of the game. With meticulous research and drawing on interviews with Mays himself as well as with close friends, family, and teammates, Hirsch presents a brilliant portrait of one of America’s most significant cultural icons.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The legendary outfielder remains an idol in this starstruck authorized biography. Journalist Hirsch (Hurricane: The Miraculous Journey of Rubin Carter) makes Mays "the savior" of the floundering Giants franchise, celebrates his "supernatural" power, speed, and fielding chops and his godlike physique; toasts his "innocence and joy," abstemious lifestyle, and kindness to children; and credits him with stopping a San Francisco race riot with a public service announcement. Hirsch is more restrained about his subject's darker side, his financial difficulties and his often cold and prickly personality. He barely mentions Mays's use of amphetamines, which he does not connect to the athlete's frenetic on-field demeanor and recurrent collapses and hospitalizations for "exhaustion." Hirsch is more incisive on the racial tensions roiling a fast-integrating baseball during Mays's career, and on the shift to a faster, more aggressive style of play that Mays helped inaugurate. The author is at his best probing the strategy and mechanics behind Mays's feats of fielding and baserunning; his detailed exegeses of individual plays, including an epic account of the over-the-shoulder catch in the 1954 World Series, reveal just how much art and science went into being Willie Mays. In Hirsch's admiring portrait, Mays is certainly awe inspiring, but also remote and a bit impersonal.
