James S. Hirsch

James S. Hirsch’s Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend will likely long stand as the definitive biography of one of the greatest players in baseball history. Hirsch tried for years to get Mays to work with him on the book project, finally securing that cooperation after nearly giving up hope. In addition to granting interviews, Mays directed the author to friends, colleagues, and family members, and provided access to documents, photos, and other archival material. Combining this with Hirsch’s extensive research, we get a clear and fully rounded picture of the man on and off the field. Hirsch’s literary style and narrative techniques put this book a cut far above most other baseball biographies.

Between the foul lines we see Mays’s thrilling feats and accomplishments, his unmatched brand of baseball dynamism, and learn of his astute grasp of even the smallest nuances of the game. Hirsch follows the chronology of Mays’s brilliant career from his Negro League days with the Birmingham Black Barons to his pure joy of playing with the New York Giants, the long-delayed fan acceptance of him in San Francisco, and the sad and shaky final two years of his illustrious career with the New York Mets. The book is structured so that the timeline is occasionally interrupted with a chapter that specifically deals with a particular aspect of his life, such as racial issues or Mays’s lifelong devotion to children. This technique works well as it serves to help flesh out aspects of Mays’s character in a more focused manner.

And Hirsch does not pull any punches when dealing with Mays’s personality traits or his personal issues. In the early years of his career, Mays’s early innocence, trusting nature, and happy-go-lucky manner were seen as byproducts of his youthful inexperience, but as he grew into manhood those traits largely intact it appeared to simply reflect a naïveté that was sorely out of step with the complexities of the adult world. His continual forgiveness for racial slights prompted rebuke from civil rights activists such as Jackie Robinson. Indeed his ensuing marital and financial problems can be linked directly to his trusting nature. And from those episodes he came to trust no one in his later years but baseball players, children, and household pets. None from those groups would ever betray him.… (altro)