Welcome readers! My name is John Klima and I’m the author of Willie’s Boys: The 1948 Birmingham Black Barons, The Last Negro League World Series and the Making of a Baseball Legend. I’d like to introduce you to Willie’s Boys. You can stay on this cover page and read an introduction. You can also visit Amazon.com or Barnes and Noble.com to see a video about the book, as well as read the descriptions.

While much has been said and written about Willie Mays over the years, no book has ever explored how Willie became the player so many baseball fans consider to be the greatest all-around talent in the game’s history.

Willie’s Boys is the never-before told story of the baseball legend that might have never been. Willie’s Boys chronicles the remarkable journey that the teenaged Mays took from the Birmingham Black Barons to the New York Giants, a harrowing adventure through a historical time – when the Negro Leagues were dying and the Major Leagues were struggling to accept a diverse national pastime.

When you think of Willie Mays, there are images that spring to mind – the playful smile, the aggressive swing, the great catch in the 1954 World Series, and the throw that old timers will tell you wasn’t even the best throw he ever made.

But what is often only a footnote is that Willie Mays is a product of the Negro Leagues, and the rich Alabama baseball bloodline that gave us Henry Aaron, Willie McCovey, Satchel Paige and so many others.

Imagine for a moment Willie as a teenager, affable and awesomely gifted, yet thrown into a world where even major league teams that signed black players discriminated against them. For all the romantic images of the Negro Leagues, this was the reality. There were too many players and too few jobs.

So Willie got his education on the bus, with his wise player-manager Piper Davis, and a group of ballplayers you’ll meet when you hop aboard Willie’s Boys. There was Pipe, Squeaky, Stainless, Rocking Chair, Schoolboy, the Prophet, Zapp, His Majesty, Grease, Brit and Buck Duck – that was Willie.

Mays and his gifted teammates formed a brotherhood, centered around helping the youngest player among them achieve his dreams.

You’ll have a seat in the dugout when Piper, Willie and the Black Barons play Buck O’Neil and his mighty Kansas City Monarchs in the 1948 playoffs, on the road to the Last Negro League World Series against Buck Leonard and the Homestead Grays.

You’ll sit in the stands with the scouts, who in 1949 and 1950, tried to sign Mays for their teams. You’ll discover how hard it was for a white team to sign a black player, and how hard it was for a black player to get a fair shot – even with the talent of Mays.

You’ll have a front row seat when Willie plays his first game in New York’s Polo Grounds, not as a member of the New York Giants, but as a 19-year-old for the Black Barons. You’ll listen in as the Red Sox, Yankees, Dodgers, Indians, Boston Braves and White Sox all try to get Mays for their clubs, and learn how in the end, it was the underground railroad from Birmingham to Harlem that led Willie into baseball immortality.

I spent three years researching Willie’s Boys and traveled those same dusty roads to find this story, which I believe is one of the most important untold stories in sports history.

I hope you’ll enjoy reading Willie’s Boys, be it as a young fan or an old hand, and if you are a young athlete of any color, of any sport, you should read this.

Thanks for joining me and I hope you all enjoy Willie’s Boys.

Advance praise for Willie’s Boys:
“John Klima discovers a terrific story of overcoming all the odds to achieve your dreams. The dreamer was a dream player – Willie Mays. I loved this story and this book.”
--Torii Hunter, Gold Glove Award winner and All-Star center fielder, Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim

“I was a Willie Mays fan. When he was on the field, nobody could get at him. You couldn’t take your eyes off him. He was like a kid playing out in the street. He did everything with flair. John has done some digging. It’s hard to find those interesting stories.”
-- Joe Torre, New York Times bestselling author of The Yankees Years and manager, Los Angeles Dodgers, former manager New York Yankees, 1971 National League Most Valuable Player, and eight-time National League All-Star with the Milwaukee Braves and St. Louis Cardinals.

“John Klima has a delightful way of digging deep into a forgotten pocket of sports history and coming out with an unforgettable story. He does all lovers of Willie Mays and of baseball a great service with this fine book. I really, really enjoyed it. Well done!”
- David Maraniss, New York Times bestselling author of Clemente and Rome 1960

“Willie Mays was a dazzling ballplayer, but the story of his early career is much bigger than baseball. In Willie’s Boys, John Klima puts us in the front row for one of the most fascinating periods in the game’s history, as the Negro Leagues died and the Major Leagues struggled with integration. Mays is the perfect protagonist. The drama is real, the stakes are high, and Klima captures it with shimmering prose and hard-nosed reporting. I loved this book.”
-- Jonathan Eig, New York Times bestselling author of Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig and Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson’s First Season

“In Willie’s Boys, John Klima’s studious research and careful writing create a dramatic, important, and human story out of a line of agate – Willie Mays’s rookie year with the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro American League. As Mays himself told Klima, ‘You know more about this than I do.’ So will the close reader of this fine book.”
-- Glenn Stout, author and series editor of The Best American Sports Writing