Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend

I am not a big sports fan, so when I saw the size of the biography Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend, I wavered. Then, opening the 628 page book and seeing the size of the print made me even more nervous. This book was going to take forever to read. But then, I read the prologue. In those seven pages, I saw that James S. Hirsch, the biographer, was a remarkable storyteller. Those seven pages made me realize that the 621 that followed wouldn’t be so bad.

Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend begins with Mays’s childhood in Alabama and continues through his career with the Giants, his last seasons with the Mets, and on to his present life. As is expected (and preferred), the book focuses almost entirely on the baseball. Though Hirsch does touch on relevant parts of Mays’s personal life, his focus on the baseball matches the importance the game played in May’s life.

Throughout reading Willie Mays, I found it clear that Hirsch is an admirer and a fan. However, he did not turn his book into an adulation or let his admiration keep him from presenting Mays’s faults. Mays is a man who had almost super-human talents, and it was reassuring and humanizing to read some of his struggles and weaknesses.

Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend is filled with baseball games from the era that baseball truly was America’s pastime. Even though I’m not a sports person, I found myself excited and eager to find out what plays Mays was going to make and whether or not the Giants would win the game.

I give Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend a 4/5. I recommend it to you especially if you are a baseball fan, but those, like me, who aren’t could definitely enjoy it. Know that it’s a large book that takes a long time to read, but that it is one so well-written that you don’t mind spending the time to read it.

Watch Jon Stewart’s interview with Willie Mays

Buy the Book

Of course, the real question is what you think of Jon’s new beard. Personally, I’m not crazy about it. 2/5.

Cop Out

Cop Out, starring Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan, attempts to be both a comedy and an action flick and succeeds at neither. I did not once laugh, nor was I impressed or excited by the chase scenes and fights. Don’t go see it.

The story follows Jimmy (Willis) and Paul (Morgan) a pair of cops with the NYPD with their share of problems. The two have been suspended without pay for a failed drug bust, Paul thinks his wife is cheating on him, and Jimmy needs to sell a baseball card to pay for his daughter’s dream wedding; unfortunately for Jimmy, the card is stolen when he attempts to sell it and gets in the hands of a dangerous gang (which happen to be the same one for the earlier drug bust). Also, there’s another set of partners at NYPD who seem to dislike them, but I couldn’t really understand how those guys fit in.

So Jimmy and Paul set off on a mission to get the card, and end up wrapped up in drama with the gang. That’s the movie. I could give away the ending, but I bet you can figure it out on your own. Hint: All the problems are solved.

Watching Cop Out was a waste of time. I actually had to stop halfway through and watch episodes of 30 Rock to remind myself why I’m a fan of Tracy Morgan. It gets a 1/5.

Watch Jon Stewart’s interview with Tracy Morgan (Morgan is pretty darn funny in his non-sequitor ways, and the clip they show is the funniest part of the movie)

Buy the DVD

And it’s a long weekend filled with movies on the Daily Shill. Come back tomorrow for my thoughts on Tooth Fairy and Monday for a review of A Single Man.