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BY JOHN ESPOSITO

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

BOOK REVIEW / COMMENTARY

The baseball life of Willie Mays has been chronicled in countless books, magazines, film and song since his emergence as a 20-year-old rookie sensation with the New York Giants in May 1951. While the legendary heroics and statistics of the "Say Hey Kid" can be recited on command by many an adoring fan who cheered his magnificent artistry at the Polo Grounds, Candlestick Park and Shea Stadium, his personal life has always remained private and guarded.

It is only now with the release of his first authorized biography, Willie Mays, The Life, The Legend (Scribner, $30.00 – 628 pages), that a small lining in the armor has been removed. The result is the most revealing portrait of the man to date, at least to the extent that Mr. Mays will permit, without a sense of intrusion.

The author, James S. Hirsch, 47, is a former reporter for The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, who wrote the bestseller, Hurricane: The Miraculous Journey of Rubin Carter. His latest journalistic offering may ultimately serve as the definitive biography of this baseball legend.

Through an extensive examination of his family history, we gain a sense of Willie's complex personality and athletic prowess. The boyish, carefree and exuberant traits are shown to interact with the remote and sometimes temperamental disposition of the American icon since childhood.

William Howard "Willie" Mays, Jr. was born on May 6, 1931 in Westfield, Alabama, a black mill town outside of Birmingham. His parents, who never married, were William Howard Mays, Sr., nicknamed Cat, and Annie Satterwhite. During the Depression years, Willie was raised primarily by his sometimes-absentee father and mother's two younger sisters. The youngster proved to be a high school standout in baseball, football and basketball, receiving instruction from Cat, who himself was a semipro ball player.

Hirsch's well-researched book details Mays's growth years in the late 1940s with the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro Leagues, while still in high school, to his signing with the New York Giants in 1950 where he did a stint with a Class-B affiliate in Trenton, NJ, batting .353. Willie then graduated to the Triple A Minneapolis Millers in 1951 with a .477 batting average in the first 35 games, before the Giants called him up to the Major Leagues.

Despite growing up in the segregated Deep South, Mays escaped the blatant racism of the times, in part, due to his exceptional baseball skills. He was a young man on the move with only one apparent, immediate goal in mind – reaching the major leagues. After a slow start, under the guidance of his mentor and first Giants manager, Leo Durocher, the legend that is Willie Mays was born.

This informative biography provides a narrative account of his major accomplishments beginning in May 1951 through his retirement 22 years later as a New York Met in 1973.

Mays' individual records remain staggering. He received 1951 Rookie of the Year honors, Most Valuable Player awards in 1954 and 1965, the Hickok Belt as top professional athlete in 1954, eight consecutive 100-RBI seasons, twelve consecutive Gold Glove Awards and twenty-four appearances in the All-Star Game.

At the time of his retirement in 1973, Willie had accumulated a lifetime 3,283 hits, 338 stolen bases, a .302 batting average and slammed 660 home runs, ranking him third, at the time, and currently fourth on the all-time list (despite missing almost two years in 1952 and 1953 due to U.S. Army military service). The icing on the cake was his election to the Baseball Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility on January 23, 1979.

Some of the less popular aspects of Mays's personal life and career are delved into, including a bitter divorce from a first marriage, his current wife's affliction with Alzheimer's, and his financial difficulties. The author writes carefully of Willie's numerous collapses and hospitalizations for exhaustion, while only briefly mentioning his alleged amphetamine use.

Mr. Hirsch is more direct when discussing Willie Mays' failure to use his celebrity to directly address the issues of racism in American sports. Old ideas about race and class were dying at the time of his appearance on the scene. Disappointment in Mays' refusal to speak out was outwardly voiced by Jackie Robinson, who years earlier had broken baseball's color barrier.

The author, however, attempts to explain away Mays' lack of presence in the civil rights movement by asserting that Willie led by example, citing several examples of his diffusing racial issues on and off the team. The author clearly refuses to cast judgment, maintaining that it was not in Mays' character to be confrontational.

In 1958 the New York Giants moved to a new home in San Francisco. The change of landscape proved to be difficult for the young star. The Bay area fans did not immediately warm to Mays. The slugger had taken to the bright lights of New York and in return, the demanding New York faithful were simply wild about Willie.