Willie Mays

Looks like I am the first to review this book....Sorry Willie! All my respects go to the man, but next time hire someone who can write. This book was written at about a fifth to sixth grade level. I’m not even sure how inspirational this “inspirational” book was. I adore baseball and generally enjoy baseball books, but this really was bad. Read the first chapter and you’ve read the book...redundancy is the books middle name! 24 chapters for Willie’s uniform number....interesting concept but you should have 24 unique concepts to match those chapters. Having Bob Costas write the Forward is not a selling point either. So....Again, Willie is the greatest, no doubt, just not this book. Finished 02.06.2020 at the NR.… (mere)

The book is OK and entertaining as far as it goes. Perhaps the most enlightening section is Mays' description of his childhood and of his early days playing in the Negro Leagues while still a teenager.

But too much of the book seems to have been written purely by Sahadi. Quite a bit of it is made up of descriptions of one pennant race after another, with not enough personal observations or anecdotes to be really interesting. There are certainly some places where the book picks up and focuses in more closely on Mays and his memories, but not enough to make this a book particularly compelling. The new Mays book is getting some good press. Maybe I'll have to read that one, now.… (mere)