The books I read in November 2022
Each month I have a goal of reading five books. Here’s my list from November 2022.
All posts tagged: Willie Mays
Giving thanks for childhood heroes
Willie Mays has written a glorious memoir, as you would expect from the greatest player ever.
The Say Hey Kid turns 90
As my childhood hero turns 90, I’m celebrating his talent and life while processing what that number means for me.
Guitars and Baseball
James Nash once gave some good advice to aspiring guitarists: Rule #1 for learning to play fast: don’t practice while watching the ball game. Well, tonight…I’m guilty. Two hours after starting, I’ve finally put the last instrument back on its stand. I was watching baseball the entire time. However, I suspect that the San Francisco-based Nash would approve of my choice of ballgame, as the hometown Giants are in the World Series against the Detroit Tigers. And while I didn’t get any real practice in tonight, it sure was fun to multitask around two things that I love. (Note to regular readers: Candice, who has become a baseball fan this year with the emergence of the Nats, is out-of-town. I wasn’t ignoring her.) I grew up as a Giants fan. The Braves hadn’t moved to Atlanta, so we didn’t have a MLB team in the South. And Willie Mays is, to my mind, the most complete player in the history of the game. He was so much fun to watch as a young kid in …
Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend
We’ve been blessed with two recent books about the greatest baseball player of all time – Willie Mays. I wrote about the first, Willie’s Boys, in a post in January. I’ve just finished the second, Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend, and found it is as satisfying as a well-played game on a warm summer evening. (Although at 556 pages it takes a bit longer to complete.) Author James Hirsch, who never saw Mays play live, has nonetheless captured the essence of a deeply private, and in many ways unknowable, larger-than-life legend. Mays is one of those people who touched so many people in so many ways. As Hirsch notes, “If you write a book that allows you to talk to Bill Clinton, Woody Allen, Hank Aaron, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Sandy Koufax, and Tom Seaver, you’ve probably got a pretty good subject.” Bill Clinton says that Willie Mays, “…lives his life with more than talent – he has the mind and heart of a champion.” Woody Allen, in the movie Manhattan, said Willie Mays was one …
Willie Mays and America’s oldest professional baseball park
Growing up, I was such a Willie Mays fan that my friends called me “Say Hey” in honor of the Say Hey Kid. In those pre-Internet days it was tough to live in Tennessee and keep up with late-night baseball in San Francisco. However, many was the summer morning I called the sports department of the Daily News Journal to ask for the previous evening’s scores off the wire. This was serious business. Many years and games later, I still believe Mays was the best, most complete ballplayer to play the game. So I was thrilled recently to see the new book Willie’s Boys: The 1948 Birmingham Black Barons, the Last Negro League World Series, and the Making of a Baseball Legend by John Klima. The title tells what’s in store. This is a book about the difficult period when major league baseball was undergoing integration and Birmingham – that hotbed of both baseball and racial segregation – was at the center of the story. In 1948, Mays was a 16-year-old rookie on the Black …
More to Come... 