Wille Stargell: A Life in Baseball, by Frank Garland, (McFarland & Company, Inc., 2013) is a walk down memory lane for anyone who grew up in the greater Pittsburgh area in the sixties and seventies, but also transcends the Steel City for so many people who were caught up in the “We Are Family” craze of the 1979 World Series Champion Pirates.
With 475 career home runs, Willie Stargell is a baseball legend. He spent 21 years with the same team, and his highest salary never reached half a million dollars. In today’s market, Stargell would be so richly paid that his great-great grandchildren would be set for life. But it was a different era of baseball, back before players injected themselves with performance enhancing drugs, and the players loved and respected the game for what it was.
Garland’s book is a well-written account of Stargell not only during his years with the Pirates, but also delves into those early years of growing up playing local ball, then being drafted into the Pirates’ organization after high school and what it was like traveling from city to city in the racially charged times of the early sixties. It’s interesting to learn how Willie handled these situations and how the times he lived through shaped and molded his personality that would lead to players in the future affectionately referring to him as Pops.
The book also gives detail about Stargell after his playing years were through, and what an effect he had on the Atlanta Braves organization that became such a juggernaut for so many years.
Pirate fans will really enjoy Willie Stargell: A Life in Baseball, but this is a story of one of the great players from the past that should be of interest to any baseball fan.
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