Blast From the Past: Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend

I'm not much of a book reader. I read articles, because you can usually get to the gist of them pretty fast. The stuff on baseball websites is about the longest my attention span can go. As for books, I used to read books, mostly biographies and history stuff. I gave that up years ago when I started to read the biography of General Douglas McArthur. I found that the author kept repeating the same point over and over chapter after chapter. A book that was 1000 pages long could have easily been condensed into about 300 and not shortchanged the subject.

I decided to try to turn over a new leaf with the release of Willie Mays: The Legend, The Life by James Hirsch. I simply don't have time to sit down and read a book from cover to cover, but decided I would try to read one chapter per day until I finished it. I have read the first several chapters and while I have run into some of the same type of repetition that so turned me off from the McArthur book, I have learned enough new things about Willie Mays to keep going. I'm thinking I will like some of the baseball stories better as I get into his major league career.

I would say I have taken away 3 main points so far:

1. I never realized what long odds Willie Mays had to overcome as a child, or what role his father played in his upbringing. He was born to unwed teenage parents and essentially abandoned by his mother. His grandparents were all either dead or not available. He was cared for and raised by a maternal aunt who was younger than his mother! His father remained involved as was a major influence in his career and philosophy of life. Willie Howard "Cat" Mays, Sr. recognized his son's athletic potential at a young age and made sure to pass on everything he knew about the game from playing for industrial league teams in the Birmingham, AL area. His entire local community recognized his rare talent at an early age and gave him breaks in school, and helped keep him out of trouble so as not to have his potential derailed and squandered by bad habits, trouble with the law or lack of money. In a sense, Willie Mays was raised by a village, but his father and aunt played the dominant roles.

2. Although Willie Mays was born with 5 plus baseball "tools", by the time he was in his late teens he already had polished "skills", which helped his career immensely. His father, other industrial league players, and Negro League players taught him things like the correct side of the base to slide to, and how to hit a curveball when he was still just a young lad in single digit years of age. Later on, you could see this same philosophy practiced when Mays adopted a young Barry Bonds as his God Son, and Dusty Baker allowing Giants players kids to hang around in the dugout.

3. "Cat" Mays philosophy of life in dealing with racial oppression was to adapt rather than fight. He patiently waited for opportunities and took them when they appeared. He pounded the same notion into his son. Stay out of trouble! Maximize your potential to succeed! Don't take unnecessary risks! Don't smoke or drink alcohol! Stay away from the law! Don't get into fights! Don't work in the coal mine! You will get maimed or killed, and if you don't, your lungs will be ruined. Don't play football, the risk of injury is too great! Don't be a pitcher! Pitchers can blow out their arms and end their careers before they really start! As an adult, Mays would be criticized for being too passive in the struggle for civil rights, but his philosophy and actions were a direct extension of what his father taught him. I was struck by how much this philosophy reminded me of a Chinese language movie I saw years ago called To Live about the life of a Chinese man who survived and even thrived by staying non-political, and making himself useful to whoever happened to be in power after the most recent revolution.

I will post updates periodically as I work my way through the book.