Willie Stargell: A Life in Baseball by Frank Garland (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Willie Stargell: A Life in Baseball by Frank Garland Dave Ogden Frank Garland. Willie Stargell: A Life in Baseball. Jefferson nc: McFarland, 2013. 263 pp. Paper, $29.95. This biography captures Stargell’s charisma and impact on a team that won its division six years during the 1970s, with World Series championships in 1971 and 1979. Garland provides rich detail and weaves quotes from fellow players and opponents, baseball officials, friends, and family (including an ex-wife) with anecdotes, to create an in-depth profile of Stargell’s life on the diamond. Garland follows Stargell’s career from Willie’s days as a baseball standout at Encinal High School in Alameda, California, to his last days as coach and consultant in the Pirates organization. Garland describes how baseball was the fiber of Stargell’s life, and there were clear signs of that when Stargell was [End Page 160] a youngster. Even before high school, Stargell was hinting at the mammoth power he would display in the major leagues. One high school teammate said Stargell was hitting a baseball more than four hundred feet by the time he was twelve years old. Garland describes Stargell’s evolution as a baseball player as seamless, with Stargell signing with the Pirates right out of high school. According to Garland, the biggest obstacles in Stargell’s career were the same ones with which society as a whole was grappling. First among those for Stargell was the blatant racism he and other black players faced in the 1960s and 1970s. Garland notes that Stargell found it particularly difficult to accept racial segregation among players, especially for dining and lodging. Garland wrote that Stargell’s upbringing in the racially mixed and open community of Alameda sheltered him to an extent from the harsh realities of racism. Stargell wasn’t prepared for the treatment he had to endure in the minor and major leagues. Garland claims that Stargell was able to rise above the prejudice as his leadership and athletic skills continued to blossom. In the 1970s, Stargell used those skills, Garland said, to bring a sense of calmness to the clubhouse and to transform a racially mixed Pirates team to a close-knit group of players. Thus, when manager Danny Murtaugh had an all-minority lineup in a September 1971 game against the Phillies, some Pirates players didn’t notice or give much thought to the major leagues’ first all-black starting nine. Al Oliver, for example, “was not even aware of the historic nature of the lineup until [Pirates third baseman Dave] Cash mentioned it to him in the third or fourth inning” (89). The 1979 team showcased Stargell’s leadership on the club, and Garland devotes an entire chapter to that team. Sister Sledge’s “We Are Family” became the emblematic song for a team that won the World Series and helped to net Stargell the mvp award for the Series and the season (although Keith Hernandez was named co-mvp for that year). Stargell, in his later years, became outspoken about the lack of African Americans in leadership positions in the Major League Baseball, and Garland said that his impact was also felt off the field. Garland touts Stargell as a champion for social justice and awareness not only in baseball but also in the community and the nation. For example, Stargell began his own foundation to raise money and public awareness to combat sickle-cell anemia and kidney disease. While the foundation raised almost $160,000 after the Pirates’ 1979 World Series championship, it folded in 1982, partly because it spent too much on administrative costs. Garland said that Stargell remained committed to fighting sickle-cell anemia and became a spokesman for the National Association for Sickle Cell Disease. After Stargell retired in 1982 as a player, he worked for his former manager, [End Page 161] Chuck Tanner, as a coach and followed Tanner to the Braves after Pittsburgh let Tanner go. While Stargell’s coaching career is common knowledge, his career as a commercial pitchman and as an artist is less known, and Garland provides a detailed account of that period in his life. In 1983, Stargell embarked on...