Through the 1960’s, the San Francisco Giants had two of the most feared sluggers in the National League – Willie Mays and Willie McCovey. While Mays was considered to be the better all-around player, McCovey certainly had a special place in the hearts of Giants fans. His baseball story is captured in this book by Chris Haft.

The vast majority of pages are about McCovey’s time on the diamond, whether it was at Candlestick Park with the Giants or other teams either in the minor leagues or his three seasons with the San Diego Padres. Very little time is spent discussion his personal life and at times, this would be good information to go alone with the baseball or his life after retirement – whether that involved baseball or not. One example of where this might come into play is the very little amount of text about McCovey’s first marriage and daughter during his playing days. When he was struggling, did that affect his life at home – or maybe it was the other way around and if there were troubles at home, was that affecting his performance? Most other sport biographies include this type of personal information and it was surprising to see so little of it in this book.

The baseball text, however, is good and a reader will likely learn something new about McCovey – even if that person felt they already knew a lot about him. One example would be one that I didn’t expect to read – that McCovey was more popular among Giants fans than Mays. Considering that many non-baseball fans have heard of Willie Mays, but probably don’t know about McCovey, I found that surprising. Haft does a good job of explaining how this came about. Other interesting tidbits about McCovey revealed in the book is how McCovey got the nickname “Stretch” (his stretch at first base when taking throws from infielders) and the great reception he received from fans when he returned to the Giants after a three-year stint in San Diego. Also, a reader will certainly learn even more about the most famous at-bat in McCovey’s career, which was an out. There is an entire chapter dedicated to his famous line out to Yankee second baseman Bobby Richardson to end the 1962 World Series.

Overall, this book was decent for describing the baseball career of the first ballot Hall of Famer. One might stop short of calling it a “biography” due to the lack of much information outside of the diamond but for baseball fans, it will certainly help shake off the winter blues while awaiting the start of spring training.

I rated this book 3 1/2 stars of 5, rounded up to 4 for this site.

I wish to thank University of Nebraska Press for providing a copy of the book. The opinions expressed in this review are strictly my own.

Here are the things I know about Willie McCovey:
- He played almost his entire baseball career injured (much like Mickey Mantle).
- He has a body of water in San Francisco named after him.
- I often confuse him with Willie Stargell.

That is the extent of my knowledge of Willie McCovey.

Luckily, I received an advance copy of Chris Haft's upcoming biography A Giant Among Giants: The Baseball Life of Willie McCovey to try to fill that gap. A Giant Among Giants comes out via University of Nebraska Press on Feb. 1.

I won't bury the lede any further here, I had mixed feelings upon finishing this book. The writing is done well and Haft has done a lot of research and interviews. While I did find out more about Willie McCovey than I had known prior to picking up the book, I also came away with a lot of questions. The book comes off a tad bit hagiographic, and I'll get to that in just a second.

If you want to actually know more about McCovey, you can certainly read the book. However, you're going to run into extremely detailed portions about parts of McCovey's life, while other parts are completely left out. The author spends chapters on single seasons and at other points, glosses over multiple years in a couple of paragraphs. The pacing sometimes doesn't make sense.

For instance, McCovey's first wife is only mentioned one time and his daughter from that marriage is not mentioned at all until she becomes an adult. Yet page after page are dedicated to his two-month-long end of life marriage. I looked it up and that marriage lasted two years. Why is McCovey's mid-career marriage and divorce not even mentioned? Especially when that marriage coincided with one of the worst seasons of his career?

The author does actually devote a little bit of page time to McCovey's conviction for conspiracy to commit tax fraud, but one comes off with the impression that it was almost a clerical error instead of an actual crime McCovey committed (and pled guilty to). When you spend nearly an entire book talking about how great this man is, it seems a little weird to just randomly throw in that he was convicted of a crime (and had the President pardon him).

So my final thoughts on the book, it's informative, but it's weirdly paced and there are large gaps in the story. It seems geared towards Giants fans who already know a bit about McCovey and I don't know that I would recommend this one to anyone outside of that.

Well written book about a great man! Even if you are not a baseball fan I think that you will enjoy this well written story.