May 23, 2010
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Baseball Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson earned the nickname “Mr. October” for the crucial clutch hitting that led his teams to the World Series six times and won him two series MVP awards, and this skill at the plate is perhaps what he is best remembered for. But behind the bat was a man many don’t know — a man struggling to find his place in the world, at home, and in the sport that made him a star. Now, in the first biography of Jackson in more than twenty-five years — and the first to cover his entire career as a player — FOXSports.com columnist Dayn Perry provides an intimate, honest, and never-before-seen glimpse into the life and times of one of baseball’s all-time greats.
A cantankerous man full of swagger with a fearsome talent to match, Jackson was an outspoken iconoclast as a player — a gift that made him friends and enemies of some of the most colorful characters in the game. As large a presence on the field as he was outside the ballpark, Jackson backed up his talk by establishing himself as one of the best sluggers the sport has ever seen.
Yet Jackson’s story is about more than sports prowess. His life reflects a time, between Jackie Robinson and Ken Griffey, Jr., when black ballplayers were accepted but still considered inferior to their white teammates. There were unspoken rules to keep the racial waters still; Jackson not only ignored such conventions, he demolished them — paving the way for true equality for all black players.
From his childhood in a predominantly white neighborhood to heroics at the plate, from relationships with legendary players such as “Catfish” Hunter and Thurman Munson to battles with some of the sport’s most powerful figures, including notoriously cheap Oakland A’s owner Charlie Finley and the irascible George Steinbrenner, Reggie Jackson tells the full story of the man who was one of the first black baseball superstars — and one of the greatest players of all time.
William Morrow
Available May 1, 2010 in Hardcover
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April 5, 2010
Simon & Schuster
Available 03/16/10 in Hardcover
Before Jackie Robinson integrated major league baseball in 1947, black and white ballplayers had been playing against one another for decades — even, on rare occasions, playing with each other. Interracial contests took place during the off-season, when major leaguers and Negro Leaguers alike fattened their wallets by playing exhibitions in cities and towns across America. These barnstorming tours reached new heights, however, when Satchel Paige and other African-American stars took on white teams headlined by the irrepressible Dizzy Dean. Lippy and funny, a born showman, the native Arkansan saw no reason why he shouldn’t pitch against Negro Leaguers. Paige, who feared no one and chased a buck harder than any player alive, instantly recognized the box-office appeal of competing against Dizzy Dean’s “All-Stars.” Paige and Dean both featured soaring leg kicks and loved to mimic each other’s style to amuse fans. Skin color aside, the dirt-poor Southern pitchers had much in common.
Historian Timothy M. Gay has unearthed long-forgotten exhibitions where Paige and Dean dueled, and he tells the story of their pioneering escapades in this engaging book. Long before they ever heard of Robinson or Larry Doby, baseball fans from Brooklyn to Enid, Oklahoma, watched black and white players battle on the same diamond. With such Hall of Fame teammates as Josh Gibson, Turkey Stearnes, Mule Suttles, Oscar Charleston, Cool Papa Bell, and Bullet Joe Rogan, Paige often had the upper hand against Diz. After arm troubles sidelined Dean, a new pitching phenom, Bob Feller — Rapid Robert — assembled his own teams to face Paige and other blackballers. By the time Paige became Feller’s teammate on the Cleveland Indians in 1948, a rookie at age forty-two, Satch and Feller had barnstormed against each other for more than a decade. These often obscure contests helped hasten the end of Jim Crow baseball, paving the way for the game’s integration. Satchel Paige, Dizzy Dean, and Bob Feller never set out to make social history — but that’s precisely what happened. Tim Gay has brought this era to vivid and colorful life in a book that every baseball fan will embrace.
February 21, 2010
Pantheon
Available 05/11/10 in Hardcover
The first definitive biography of Henry Aaron — baseball’s great home-run champion and one of its most enduring legends.
As the steroid controversy has increasingly tarnished baseball’s image, Hank Aaron’s achievements have come to seem all the more remarkable: the first player to pass Babe Ruth in home runs, Aaron held that record for thirty-three years while shattering other records (RBIs, total bases, extra-base hits) and setting new ones (hitting at least thirty home runs per season fifteen times). But his achievements run much deeper than his stats. Chronicling the social upheavals of the years during which Aaron played (1954 to 1976), Howard Bryant shows us how the dignity and determination with which he stood against racism — on and off the field, and as one of the first blacks in baseball’s upper management — helped transform the role and significance of the professional black athlete and turn Aaron into an national icon.
Eloquently written, detailed, and penetrating, this is a revelatory portrait of both the great ballplayer and the complicated private man.
February 20, 2010
By HILLEL ITALIE,
AP National Writer
Fri Feb 12, 7:39 am ET
NEW YORK – Once again, it’s Willie Mays vs. Hank Aaron.
This time, in the book world.
Long, and long-awaited, biographies of the two iconic baseball sluggers come out this year, within three months of each other: James S. Hirsch’s 600-plus page “Willie Mays,” just released, and Howard Bryant’s 600-plus page book on Aaron, “The Last Hero,” scheduled for May.
Mays, who spent much of his career with the New York/San Francisco Giants and Aaron, a longtime star for the Milwaukee/Atlanta Braves, are still endlessly compared, with Mays celebrated as the more dynamic on-field presence and Aaron honored for overtaking Babe Ruth as baseball’s home run king.
Both books are sympathetic accounts that cover not just Mays and Aaron but the era in which they played, especially how they responded — or didn’t — to the civil rights movement. Mays and Aaron, each of whom have published autobiographies, agreed to be interviewed by their respective biographers, although the relationships differed.
Mays was involved from the start and will share in the revenues from the Scribner release, billed as “authorized.” Aaron had not yet agreed to speak to Bryant when the author signed with Pantheon, in 2006. Aaron is not being paid and, Bryant said, didn’t even see the book before it was finished.
“Luckily, it turned out all right,” said Bryant, a senior writer for ESPN.com who has written books on steroids and the Boston Red Sox. “Had he not cooperated, it would have been a very different book.”
Biographies of living people generally are either authorized — written with the subject’s involvement and to the subject’s taste — or “Unauthorized,” written without the subject’s permission and often against the subject’s wishes. The most famous unauthorized biographies are Kitty Kelley’s best sellers about such celebrities as Jackie Kennedy, Frank Sinatra and Nancy Reagan. A Kelley book on Oprah Winfrey is due in April.
But in between stands a category you could call “cooperative,” in which the subject is available, but otherwise disengaged. “Cooperative” biographies in recent years have included Gerald Martin’s “Gabriel Garcia Marquez: A Life” and Peter Biskind’s “Star,” about Warren Beatty. The Mays book fits partly because Hirsch says he was granted full editorial freedom and “The Last Hero” does entirely because Aaron’s participation was limited to talking to Bryant.
For more, see Yahoo News.
February 7, 2010
Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend
by James S Hirsch
Scribner
Available 02/09/10 in Hardcover
Authorized by Willie Mays and written by a New York Times bestselling author, this is the definitive biography of one of baseball’s immortals.
Considered to be “as monumental — and enigmatic — a legend as American sport has ever seen” (Sports Illustrated), Willie Mays is arguably the greatest player in baseball history, still revered for the passion he brought to the game. He began as a teenager in the Negro Leagues, became a cult hero in New York, and was the headliner in Major League Baseball’s bold expansion to California. With 3,283 hits, 660 home runs, and 338 stolen bases, he was a blend of power, speed, and stylistic bravado that enraptured fans for more than two decades. Now, in the first biography authorized by and written with the cooperation of Willie Mays, James Hirsch reveals the man behind the player.
Willie is perhaps best known for “The Catch” — his breathtaking over-the-shoulder grab in the 1954 World Series. But he was a transcendent figure who received standing ovations in enemy stadiums and who, during the turbulent civil rights era, urged understanding and reconciliation. More than his records, his legacy is defined by the pure joy that he brought to fans and the loving memories that have been passed to future generations so they might know the magic and beauty of the game. With meticulous research, and drawing on interviews with Mays himself as well as with close friends, family, and teammates, Hirsch presents a complex portrait of one of America’s most significant cultural icons.
August 1, 2009
Satchel Paige
Random House
Available 06/09/09
He is that rare American icon who has never been captured in a biography worthy of him. Now, at last, here is the superbly researched, spellbindingly told story of athlete, showman, philosopher, and boundary breaker Leroy “Satchel” Paige.
Few reliable records or news reports survive about players in the Negro Leagues. Through dogged detective work, award-winning author and journalist Larry Tye has tracked down the truth about this majestic and enigmatic pitcher, interviewing more than two hundred Negro Leaguers and Major Leaguers, talking to family and friends who had never told their stories before, and retracing Paige’s steps across the continent. Here is the stirring account of the child born to an Alabama washerwoman with twelve young mouths to feed, the boy who earned the nickname “Satchel” from his enterprising work as a railroad porter, the young man who took up baseball on the streets and in reform school, inventing his trademark hesitation pitch while throwing bricks at rival gang members.
Tye shows Paige barnstorming across America and growing into the superstar hurler of the Negro Leagues, a marvel who set records so eye-popping they seemed like misprints, spent as much money as he made, and left tickets for “Mrs. Paige” that were picked up by a different woman at each game. In unprecedented detail, Tye reveals how Paige, hurt and angry when Jackie Robinson beat him to the Majors, emerged at the age of forty-two to help propel the Cleveland Indians to the World Series. He threw his last pitch from a big-league mound at an improbable fifty-nine. (“Age is a case of mind over matter,” he said. “If you don’t mind, it don’t matter.”)
More than a fascinating account of a baseball odyssey, Satchel rewrites our history of the integration of the sport, with Satchel Paige in a starring role. This is a powerful portrait of an American hero who employed a shuffling stereotype to disarm critics and racists, floated comical legends about himself — including about his own age — to deflect inquiry and remain elusive, and in the process methodically built his own myth. “Don’t look back,” he famously said. “Something might be gaining on you.” Separating the truth from the legend, Satchel is a remarkable accomplishment, as large as this larger-than-life man.
May 5, 2009
Straw: Finding My Way
by Darryl Strawberry
Available 4/28/09
Former baseball slugger Darryl Strawberry, whose achievements on the field were often overshadowed by his struggles off the field, recounts the highs, the lows, and the lessons of hope and survival he learned along the way.
The youngest son of Henry and Ruby Strawberry, Darryl grew up in a working-class neighborhood in Los Angeles, where he channeled his energy into baseball and basketball. The New York Mets drafted him in 1980, and he won the National League Rookie of the Year Award in 1983. Strawberry became the first National League player voted to the All-Star Game in each of his first four full seasons. Throughout the eighties and nineties, however, Strawberry faced many personal challenges, including drug use, tax evasion, solicitation, and allegations of domestic violence. His seasons with the Dodgers, Giants, and Yankees were interrupted by suspensions, visits to rehab, and treatment for colon cancer. But in 2006, Strawberry’s life changed course dramatically. With his wife, Tracy, he devoted himself to his church and to his work with children and adults affected by autism and other developmental disorders. For the first time, in his own words, Darryl Strawberry delivers his inspirational narrative — the extraordinary story of his life.
July 13, 2008
Willie and the All-Stars
By Floyd Cooper
Illustrated by Floyd Cooper
Available September 2008
Willie, an African-American boy growing up in Chicago, dreams of playing baseball in the Major Leagues, like his idols. But it’s 1942, and Jackie Robinson is years away from breaking the color barrier. One day Willie sits with the old men in the neighborhood as they spin tall baseball tales. Willie knows the game like the back of his hand, but he’s never heard of Josh Gibson or Cool Papa Bell. “That’s because they’re Negro Leaguers,” says Ol’ Ezra. “Being a Major Leaguer is about a lot more than how good a fella is. It’s also about the color of his skin. And yours is the wrong color.” Willie is crushed. Until, that is, Ezra hands him two tickets to an exhibition all-star game between Major Leaguers and Negro Leaguers, and Willie sees firsthand how determination can change everything.
A beautifully illustrated tribute to the power of a boy’s dreams, and the great gift that is hope.
June 6, 2008
Satchel Paige: Striking Out Jim Crow
Author: James Sturm
Illustrator: Rich Tommaso
Baseball Hall-of-Famer Leroy “Satchel” Paige (1905?–1982) changed the face of the game in a career that spanned five decades. Much has been written about this larger-than-life pitcher, but when it comes to Paige, fact does not easily separate from fiction. He made a point of writing his own history . . . and then rewriting it. A tall, lanky fireballer, he was arguably the Negro Leagues’ hardest thrower, most entertaining storyteller, and greatest gate attraction. Now the Center for Cartoon Studies turns a graphic novelist’s eye to Paige’s story. Told from the point of view of a sharecropper, this compelling narrative follows Paige from game to game as he travels throughout the segregated South.
In stark prose and powerful graphics, author and artist share the story of a sports hero, role model, consummate showman, and era-defining American.
