In Brooklyn, the Dodgers' Duke Snider had the grit, and at Yankee Stadium, Mickey Mantle personified glamour, but for sheer excitement, no one would top the man who patrolled the Polo Grounds for the Giants - No. 24, the Say Hey Kid, Willie Mays.

As related in a new authorized biography, "Willie Mays: The Life, the Legend," by Clayton native James S. Hirsch, Mays excelled in all of what baseball experts consider the five big categories. He could run, throw, catch, hit and hit with power. Joining the big leagues a few years after Jackie Robinson broke the color line, he electrified the game. Acrobatic catches, rifled throws, exploits at the plate became part of his legend.

But Mays' impact was bigger than what showed up in the box scores. At a time when the struggle for civil rights was gaining intensity, he stood as an example of quiet pride and dignity, letting his accomplishments on the field speak more loudly than anything else. For some, he was too meek, but for others, he projected the right mix of talent and humility in his dealings with society.

He also was someone who did not let outsiders into his world very readily. Hirsch - a former reporter for The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal who left behind the tyranny of daily deadlines to write books - tried repeatedly to get Mays to tell the real story of his life, not the sanitized versions that had appeared in ghostwritten biographies.

Several times, he swung and missed in his attempts to connect with Mays, but in this case, three strikes didn't mean he was out. His persistence led Mays to finally invite him to drop into his home in San Francisco, even though for Hirsch, who lives in Massachusetts, the visit wasn't exactly around the corner.

Still, he flew across the country. The initial wariness of their meeting gradually turned friendly, and Hirsch was able to gain Mays' trust and confidence. Besides lengthy discussions with Mays, Hirsch reviewed thousands of articles about his career, his life and his times, plus conducted interviews with former teammates, opponents and other fans and admirers ranging from Bill Clinton to Woody Allen to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

The result is a detailed, usually adoring but generally clear-eyed look at someone whose name still brings a smile to the faces of people who remember seeing him make basket catches in the outfield and slam home runs where few hits had gone before.

The Beacon spoke with Hirsch by phone from his home in Needham, where he is collaborating on a book about "life lessons" with Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick.

Were you a baseball fan growing up? What are your memories of Willie Mays?

Hirsch: I lived and died and still do with the St. Louis Cardinals. There is a connection, in terms of my interest in Willie Mays and his contributions as a black ballplayer. I was born in 1962, and my hero was Lou Brock. It wasn't just that Lou was a phenomenal baseball player, but it was the way he comported himself on and off the field.

Provided

James S. Hirsch

I grew up thinking Lou Brock was the greatest thing there was. I didn't know anything about race relations growing up in Clayton. My first response when I learned more about history was puzzlement. It didn't make sense to me. As I learned more, and I have written about race at some length, I saw that the contributions to America by people like Lou Brock, and earlier by people like Willie Mays and Hank Aaron, were huge. It convinced white kids like us that racism makes no sense.

In the book, I quote Jim Bouton, a pitcher who grew up in a blue-collar town in New Jersey, as saying that he learned to love Willie before anyone told us that we couldn't. That is what we learned.

A lot of people say Mays could have done more for race relations in America. Is that a fair criticism or an unfair knock on what he did?

Hirsch: I think that's an unfair knock. He did a lot for race relations just by being Willie Mays. I quote Bill Clinton talking about how he grew up in Arkansas in the 1950s among segregationists, who sat home on Saturday afternoons and watched Willie Mays play baseball on television on the Game of the Week. Willie made a mockery of all forms of bigotry.

It is ultimately unrealistic to expect someone to be what he is not, and Willie was not hard-wired to be an activist. Growing up in Alabama in the '30s and '40s, you were taught very explicitly how to grow up in a white world. You keep your mouth shut and your head down. He was programmed that way, and it is unrealistic to think he could be deprogrammed.

His refusal to speak out about issues, about the racism he encountered throughout his life, has probably ill served him. Now he faces the question of why didn't you speak about it those few times it came to the fore, like in the case where he tried to buy a house in San Francisco. If you go back and read those quotes, he didn't say anything critical or unkind about the bigots who wouldn't sell him that house, or about the mayor of San Francisco's talk about the city's tolerance and sophistication while refusing to do anything about it. He just thought the greatest way to make a contribution to his country, the Giants and his family was to play baseball.

What are his memories of St. Louis, which during part of his career was the southernmost town in the big leagues? The Chase Hotel wouldn't let black players stay there at first.

He had very clear memories of the Chase Hotel. Willie actually was perfectly content for the black players not to stay at the Chase. The Giants put their black players in another hotel in St. Louis, and the Giants would give Willie and the others money to cover all their expenses, for lodging, food, transportation and so on.

But the black hotel was so grateful that Willie Mays was there, with Monte Irvin and the other black players, that as long as they hung out in the hotel and the bar, they didn't charge them. The hotel treated them like royalty, and they were able to pocket the money.

When he reflects back on those incidents, he'll try to put a positive spin on it. At the movies, he'll say, we had to sit in the balcony, but that wasn't so bad, because we had better seats. Still, deep down, it was something that hurt.

What about his relationship with his first manager with the Giants, Leo Durocher, which would probably be characterized today as condescending and paternalistic?

Hirsch: Willie needed that father figure who could give him unconditional love and support. Durocher knew exactly what he needed. He saw something special in Willie, not only as a baseball player but as a person, and he knew that as long as he felt appreciated, Willie would blossom on and off the field.

Now, we look back on it as a double-edged sword, because it played into the stereotypes of infantilizing young black players, but there was no question that Willie needed that protection. He was 20 years old when he joined the Giants.

Something to reflect on is how it would have changed the trajectory of his career if Durocher were not his manager and they had sent him back to the minors after his horrible start. At that time, black players didn't necessarily get a second chance. How well would he have responded? Would he have been able to rebuild his confidence? It's certainly within the realm of possibility that Willie Mays never would have been the major league player he became if he had had another manager, a mainstream manager who had less patience with black players. It could have change the course of baseball history.

What's the best thing you can say about Mays? What's the worst?

Hirsch: The best thing is his legacy. I really got a sense of what that was when I went to my son's grade school. I talked about what I do, and at the end I asked who had ever heard of Willie Mays. The kids were 6, 7 years old, but most of the boys raised their hands and even some of the girls did, too. Some had seen footage of his famous catch, but most said their father or their grandfather or their uncle had told them about the great Willie Mays.

He represented the platonic ideal of baseball greatness, the pure joy that he brought to the fans who saw him play, and they brought those loving memories to future generations so they might love the game, too.

The worst thing is his lack of trust in other people, which has cut him off from playing a much larger role in American life. You don't see him going out and talking about his experiences: playing in the Negro League, growing up with Jim Crow in the South, his relationship with Robinson and DiMaggio and Musial. He's a walking history book.

If he wanted to make that known more widely, that would have been good. It served my interests well that he didn't, but people don't know him as well as they should. Too often he thinks, people don't know me, they're just going to try to make money off me. That's the worst thing I can say about him.