Customer Reviews

Willie's Boys: The 1948 Birmingham Black Barons, The Last Negro League World Series, and the Making of a Baseball Legend

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Hall of Fame pitcher Carl Hubbell scouted Willie Mays as an 18-year-old outfielder with the Birmingham Black Barons in 1948. Hubbell's assessment was, "He's the best goddamned player I ever saw."

Author John Klima describes the young Mays as "baseball's Mozart, a child prodigy." In Willie's Boys, Klima traces Mays' early years with the Black Barons and his signing with the New York Giants. As the title aptly implies, Klima pays a great deal of attention to the players who mentored Mays and were his teammates with the Black Barons.

The first third of the book is about Piper Davis and the Black Barons. Davis was a legendary player with the Black Barons who was a candidate to break the color barrier, but was snubbed by scouts and deemed too old at 28. Davis, "Mays' baseball godfather," became the Black Barons' manager in 1948 and mentored Mays, who was still in high school.

According to Klima, Mays came along at the right time. "What Negro baseball needed most (in 1948, one year after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier) was a new star, someone who could play at such a high level that the ground below could not contain him, and the glass ceiling above could not limit him," writes Klima.

Mays, who looked 12 or 13, played for the Black Barons unofficially in May and June of 1948. He signed a contract with the club on July 4, 1948. Despite his age, Mays' extraordinary talents were evident.

Mays had "the raw natural resource of a ballplayer who lacked polish but was too gifted to spend his career playing in the Negro American League," writes Klima.

Mays stole the spotlight in Game 3 of the Negro World Series in 1948 as he won the game "with his legs, arm, bat and glove." He had just finished in sophomore year in high school.

The final third of the book is about the signing of Mays. Interestingly, the Boston Red Sox declined to sign Mays, even though one of their scouts had rated him A-plus. The Red Sox did not want to break the color barrier. The New York Giants signed Mays 19 days after his 20th birthday. This part of the book is particularly interesting since it reveals many of the behind-the-scene maneuvers and the thinking of the major league teams at the time.

Klima states that the signing of Mays by the Giants was one of three transactions that changed baseball (the other two were the sale of Babe Ruth to the Yankees and the Dodgers' signing of Jackie Robinson). And, many baseball fans will tell you that Willie Mays was the greatest player of all-time.

This is a fascinating book that every serious baseball fan will enjoy.

As a Willie Mays fan since 1955 (timing, folks, timing!), I truly enjoyed this ride back to 1948 and Willie's subsequent formative years. The research itself makes for a wonderful mystery ride, and the reader truly gets the feel and sights and sounds and smells of a bygone era. I salute John Klima's debunking of some popular myths (e.g., concerning Mays's signing and his being scouted. I also discovered some unsavory facts about the popular Kansas City Monarchs and their apparently racist owner. As an editor myself, I could not help noticing that the book suffered from some sloppy editing. There were too many passages like this one, on page 167: "Alonzo Perry went to the mound for the Black Barons in Game 5 during a steady drizzle and surrendered runs in the first and third innings to fall behind, 1-0." That just doesn't make sense. This sort of clumsiness occurs more than once. Still, the research over all is adventurous to read and detective-like in its diligence. Even the footnotes are worth perusing.

I absolutely loved this book! It is well researched, but it is not bogged down and boring. The author did a wonderful job of making sure that he did his homework, but put it all in a narrative form, so that it reads easily, quickly and enjoyable.

You really will feel like you are on the bus with Willie Mays and his team, through the South in the 1940s, and the discrimination and difficulties that accompanied it. You learn the rich language that the men of the Negro Leagues used and created. You will understand aspects of what it was like to live in that era. You will also learn never before known parts of Willie Mays's career, and how he actually got to the New York Giants instead of the numerous other teams that knew about him. You get to know the wonderful cast of characters who helped and taught Willie Mays when he was so young. (Piper Davis, Willie's player-manager is truly a great character!) You will see rivalries and discrimination and triumph over them. Willie's Boys offers great insight into the humble beginnings of a true baseball great.

So, if you like and are interested in baseball, Willie Mays, history, culture, orstories of struggle and discrimination, this is the book for you. It really does have something for almost everyone. I can not recommend this book more highly!

I live in Birmingham and absolutely adore Rickwood Field. I bought this book last month, mainly because any book which features Rickwood as one of the settings, is an easy sell for me. I was also fortunate to meet John Klima at the Birmingham Public Library to get my copy signed. (Unfortunately, I was late and missed his speech and the Q&A, but I found him to be very nice and engaging).

As for the book, my comments will echo the other reviews. The book was meticulously well-researched; I particularly like the quotations from the Black newspapers -- Kansas City's "The Call" and Birmingham's "The World" -- throughout the book. After all, these newspapers, and not their white counterparts, told the stories of the Negro Leagues day after day. These papers gave the book a contemporary feel, as opposed to merely relying on the often fuzzy and exaggerated memories of players 60 years later (as many other books do). I also liked how the papers were often contrasted with one another to show the very real rivalry between Birmingham and Kansas City based on how the games were retold by the beat reporters.

In fact, I got the sense that Mr. Klima must have zig-zagged across the United States visiting as many libraries as he did interviewing players. Any reader will appreciate this kind of attention to detail.

The book is also extremely well written (with a pace that varied intentionally -- the game descriptions moved very quickly, as if to capture the frenetic speed game of the Negro Leagues, while the stories outside the actual games slowed a bit more to mirror the slow pace at which young black men escaped, or sadly did not escape, the hot-box of segregation). Finally, even for a serious fan, Mr. Klima's book is highly educational. I thought I knew just about everything about Willie Mays, but I never realized that he essentially became the centerpiece of the Black Barons by the end of the season in 1948. And I never knew the importance of Piper Davis in Mays's career.

Also, I have never seen any critical presentation of Buck O'Neill, who comes off a bit "Machiavellian" in the book (and this characterization mainly comes from former players). This had to be risky proposition, to present a beloved American folk hero without deifying him; but the presentation of O'Neill is far more honest than any I have ever read and he actually becomes a bit more real for the reader.

"Willie's Boys" needs to be on the bookshelf of every baseball fan. I am glad Mr. Klima decided to take this journey for all of us.

Klima brings together key points of view of those who surrounded a ballplayer that we thought we already knew.
A great accomplishment.
From the scouts who longed to attach their names to Willie's skills and the players who shared in honing his limitless abilities, both are well represented.
The TEAM that helped shield Mays at the infancy of his career provide us a glimpse at the genesis of his rising star.
We longed to hear this story and the sharply focused assertions of Klima are right on the mark.
Traditions are challenged and some dropped on their ear.
WONDERFULLY SOLID STORY!
SOLID RESEARCH!

This is a superb book about the time immediately following Jackie Robinson's debut. It's not a story about Willie Mays per se as the story of the men surrounding him as he embarks on his Hall of Fame career. Whether you're a baseball fan or historian, it's a look at a transitional period in both baseball and american history. My daughter bought me the book for Christmas and my only regret is taking 4 months to read it.

The substance of "Willie's Boys" is much more than the tale of Willie Mays' early career as he breaks into the Negro Leagues and then goes on to stardom with the New York Giants. Willie Mays, although having enormous physical talent, did not burst on the scene like Roy Hobbs in the "The Natural." Instead his success came from hard work and the guidance of older Black ballplayers (including his father) who showed him the way and saw him as a reflection of what they might have been, if only a few years younger. "Willie's Boys" also gives the reader new insights into the personality of Mays as a callow and developing teenager, but the strength of the book lies in the portrayal of life for Negro Leagues ballplayers in the late 1940's. These were the years when Jackie Robinson's entry into White baseball changed everything. Along with hope and opportunity for a few, came disappointment for many stars and the rapid decline of the Negro Leagues as fan interest fell dramatically. The reader is brought into a gritty and highly competitive world which for all its faults and limitations offered a better life than what was normally available to Black men. Willie's Boys opening chapter gives a fascinating description of segregated baseball in Alabama from the small town industrial leagues to travelling teams and the Negro Leagues and focuses on Piper Davis, Manager of the Birmingham Black Barons and May's mentor. This chapter, by itself, is worth the price of the book. At the age of eight, Willie Mays became my idol and is still my all-time favorite athlete and the memories of him continue to send shivers down my spine. "Willis's Boys" adds perspective to his life and times and should definitely be on the reading list of baseball history fans. If only Willie could be young again! As a sports book I rate it a 5. In general, I suppose it would deserve 4 stars which is still pretty good.

I really thought when I bought this there would be more about Willie Mays in it than there was but
I surely enjoyed reading it. Well written and learned a lot about the 1948 Black Barons

A few random thoughts that don't necessarily pertain to the story itself, but sum up most of what you need to know about the book.

-This book feels very long. There is a lot of content, which is OK. But it just feels long. Part of that is that the title says "1948" but you get to the end of the 1948 season and the book is only 60% done. The book continues into the 1949 season and even beyond, in order to track the Barons and Willie Mays further down the road. It makes sense that it works that way, it was just a bit strange at first.

-This is as much a book about Piper Davis as it is about Willie Mays. That's fine; it might actually be a good thing since there are other books about Mays and Piper might actually be a more interesting character. The book is at its best when it is talking about Piper and his relationships with his players.

-Klima spends a lot of time speculating about what might have happened behind the scenes, or describing the back-alley transactions that did happen. Some of this is interesting, a lot of it isn't; some of it has been described in other places, some of it hasn't. This book is intended to be about everything that happened to get Mays to the major leagues. But the book is stronger when it talks about the players than when it talks about the front office.

-A lot of the book's content is just a compilation of other interviews and other stories. It's great that someone did it, and put together the story of Willie Mays. I just feel like the book could have been more focused, and maybe the wide variety of source material made it difficult to hone in on the key story.

Overall, I enjoyed the book. You get a clear picture of what the Negro Leagues were like in the late 40s, from the fading attendance to the simultaneous clamor for and institutional fear of getting these players to the major leagues. You get a feel for everything that surrounded Mays, and how everyone helped him and even sheltered him along the way. You get a feel for how special everyone thought Mays was, and how amazing he was even at a young age. If you're looking for a thorough background, this book is a good place to start.

After reading this book, I read "The End of Baseball" by Peter Schilling - it was a good follow-up to this one, and if you enjoyed Willie's Boys, I'd recommend pairing the two.

As a former ballplayer i reccomend this book. It decribes the plight of the negro league ballplayer. For anyone interested in the history of our nation it is a must read. Having the opportunity as a youth to be the only caucasion on an all negro team i was priveledged to learn the game and how to play it the right way. Willie's boys is a tribute to the pace setters that enabled the integration of baseball to take place. You got to have heart to play this game and these players certainly exhibited heart in giving their souls to the game.