In this enjoyable memoir, told in the third person, John Shea (co-author) and Willie Mays narrate the life of one of MLB’s greatest baseball players. Drawing on hundreds of interviews from the likes of fellow legends Hank Aaron, Rickey Henderson, Reggie Jackson, and Willie McCovey, and three presidents (Clinton, Bush, Obama), Shea chronicles Mays’s life and legacy with attention, detail, and awe.

Shea first proposed the idea some 15 years ago to Mays, who envisioned the book as something to be taught in classrooms. Shea collected anecdotes from several important figures who have since died, including Mays’s former Giants teammates Willie McCovey, Alvin Dark and Johnny Antonelli and the former Giants owner Peter Magowan. He also interviewed opponents, historians, current stars like the Angels’ Mike Trout and the former presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
“I found out with both Bush and Clinton, their childhood heroes were Willie Mays,” Shea said. “Bush told me that he didn’t want to be a president, he wanted to be Willie Mays.”

The narrative follows Mays’s early playing days in Tennessee through his professional career with the New York/San Francisco Giants and New York Mets and into retirement. When describing his famous catch in the 1954 World Series, Mays humbly recalls, “It was simple to me. You go back, you catch the ball, you spin, you turn, you throw it back to the infield.”

He reflects on other parts of his life, as well, including his Army service during the Korean War (“You’ve got to serve your country, and that’s what I did”), and discusses the significance of black athletes, from Jackie Robinson through to when Mays himself received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama (“It wasn’t about riding Air Force One, it was the thought of someone from my race inviting me aboard”).

This definitive work about a living legend is for baseball fans and our Carver kids.