I’ve been raving about James S. Hirsch’s Willie Mays: The Life, the Legend ever since I began reading it. It’s my practice to read a baseball book every summer. When Mays died earlier this summer, a friend recommended the book. And I am in his debt. Not only does it recount the great playing moments in his career. It describes the greatness of his character (as well as his flaws).

Two brawls. One involved rookie Orlando Cepeda and a Pittsburgh pitcher. Needless to say, they got into it and Cepeda went after him with a bat. Mays saw what was unfolding and tackled Cepeda, a bigger man and held him down until the team helped him get back to their dugout. It saved Cepeda’s career. Another time, they were playing the Dodgers in a pennant contest. There was bad blood between Giants pitcher Juan Marichal and John Roseboro, the Dodgers’ catcher. When Marichal came to bat, Roseboro returned a pitch with a hard throw that grazed Marichal’s head. A fight broke out between the two that turned into a melee. That is until Mays broke through and pulled a battered Roseboro back to the Dodgers’ dugout and sat with him while the trainer tended to his injuries.

He stopped what could have been a riot. Pictures showed him in tears. Roseboro and others on the Dodgers team were friends and he was deeply concerned to see this happen among friends in a game situation. Of course, he hit a home run off of a rattled Sandy Koufax in his next at bat! He was known as “the Peacemaker.” Not all sports biography inspire me to be a better person. But this one does.

Five Articles Worth Reading

Yesterday (August 2) would have been James Baldwin’s 100th birthday. The New York Times ran “From Harlem to Selma to Paris, James Baldwin’s Life in Pictures.” In this photo essay, they capture the span of his life in images and accompanying text, including a clip of Baldwin debating William F. Buckley! A great way to celebrate this great American writer!

In The Atlantic, Vann R. Newkirk II introduces us to a side of James Baldwin those of us who only read his books have not seen: his letters. In “The Brilliance in James Baldwin’s Letters” Newkirk contends this is where Baldwin truly shone.

Did you know that between 1912 and 1948 poetry was an Olympic event? And that the first openly gay Olympian won a silver medal in poetry? Lit Hub covers this story in “Did You Know That Poetry Used to Be an Actual Olympic Sport?“

Matt Dinan asks the question of whether it is ever right for a writer to be mean in his Hedgehog Review article “Be Mean.” He writes “Being mean is not seething, cynical, or ironic resentment. It is not hatred or cruelty. It is honesty for imperfect people in an imperfect world. If we cannot say what we think, we may start to hate speaking altogether.”

Do you feel like you keep reading the same authors, the same types of books? If so, Molly Templeton’s “When It’s Time To Change Your Reading Habits” might be helpful. She invites us to read those things we’ve anticipated but put off for a rainy day.

Quote of the Week

While we are celebrating James Baldwin’s centennial birthday, I thought I’d share this thought-provoking quote from him:

“Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.”

So often, we conceal our true selves. The question here is, whose love is he speaking of? I think it is both the love shown us by others that gives us the courage to unmask, and the occasions of our great love of another, that compels us to show our true selves.

Miscellaneous Musings

It seems everywhere I go, AI is turning up, to assist me with searches, to summarize search findings, and even help me write. For example, in the last sentence, WordPress’s new AI feature told me “assist” in the last sentence was too complex and that I should substitute “help,” which I planned to use later in the sentence to avoid repetitiveness. Sometimes I find these features helpful, especially one that helps me cut out passive voice.. But I still think I’m a better writer!

I just had a Facebook follower send me a video of Ann Patchett recommending the works of fellow bookstore owner, Louise Erdrich. I’ve not read her work, but Patchett was pretty compelling. What do you think of her work, if you’ve read her?

I discovered, both to my chagrin and delight this week that I had not, as I supposed, read all of the Roderick Alleyn novels by Ngaio Marsh. The chagrin was that I was compiling my reviews for a blog post. I planned to list all the titles in order with links to my reviews. To my chagrin, I discovered that there was no review for Scales of Justice, number 18 in the series. I had bought it and thought I’d downloaded it to my Kindle. This was an instance where not reading in order caught me up. I had read all the books on my Kindle. But I’d missed downloading that one! The delight was discovering there was one more Ngaio Marsh to read which I am now doing!

Well, that’s The Weekly Wrap for this week!

Find past editions of The Weekly Wrap under The Weekly Wrap heading on this page.