Praise
I found Mr. Hayes’ book "14 Going on 24: Growing Up With Willie Mays" a wonderfully nostalgic trek through the subtle real-life nuances of our national pastime and its historical social influences. His ability to capture the cultural significance of my father’s character and impact as narrated through the Forrest Gump-like eyes of his central character was heartwarming.
Larry Hayes has written a splendid book on Willie Mays. It’s fiction, yet when you read through the pages of "14 Going On 24: Growing Up With Willie Mays", it feels real, as if you were side by side with the characters, including the Say Hey Kid himself. The author has keen knowledge and insight on Mays, so much so that some of the specifics he provides are known only by a select few.
Larry Hayes is an exceptional baseball researcher, but this book goes far beyond the archives. It beautifully weaves the story of baseball’s grip on a teenager growing up in 1950s New York City with themes of heroes, friendship, and the enduring legacy of one of the game’s all-time greats. This book succeeds not only in its rich historical detail but also in illuminating the lesser-known interpersonal qualities of the great Willie Mays.
Loved the clever chapter titles (a lost art!) and enjoyed watching the relationship of James and Willie develop and seeing that intertwined with the relationship that James and his mother had in their love of his father. It was really well-written and well-paced. I liked the story on a number of different levels.
The book is a wonderful look at some of the actual highlights of Willie Mays’s life in and around baseball brought out through enjoyable fictional characters as they tell the life story of the greatest baseball player of all time.
I loved it! It's a delightful and clever premise, beautifully executed. Wonderful job of setting the scene in terms of time and place. Great depth of characters. I definitely felt like I knew James by the end of the book.
A delightful coming-of-age story in 1950s New York with baseball at its core. Readers will be intrigued by the personal portrait of a young Willie Mays coming to the Giants.
Great story! It was easy reading, held my attention and the flow smoothly wove in so many meticulously researched historical events.
As I read this excellent tale, I was transported back in history to see this unusual relationship unfold before me. Mr. Hayes’ passion for sharing it could be felt from its opening lines.
Mr. Hayes weaves a tremendous story about the time the greatest there ever was, Willie Mays, spent in New York City and later in San Francisco. Using an unusual narrator, we are brought back into the franchise’s lore of the 1950s where it all started on the streets of Harlem for “Mr. Willie” on and off the playing field. A great read that often had me wondering what was fiction and what was non-fiction in this historical fiction narrative. KUDOS for such an inventive story that reads true to life.
This heartwarming story of Willie Mays and the young teenager that he befriended in the 1950s shares many touching moments while showcasing the kindness, generosity and love Mays gave to all of the youth he encountered throughout his life.
A fantastic read that tugs on many emotions by demonstrating the human side of our great game! Kudos for reinforcing why baseball and our heroes of yore will always be a part of our nation’s fabric.
A must-read for baseball fans, as told from the perspective of a fictional young man from Harlem. The story weaves around Willie’s baseball career, the Polo Grounds, and the Giants’ move to San Francisco. Willie’s love of the game and its fans is brought to life, as is his well-known support for the kids he so deeply cared about. 14 Going on 24 is a story to be enjoyed by all!
A much needed tonic for troubled times. An ode to optimism. A reminder of the good in all of us. Despair is easy; hope is not.
In 14 Going on 24: Growing Up with Willie Mays, author Larry Hayes has created a work of fiction which reads like a real life memoir. Hayes’ choice to render, in painstaking detail, the moving friendship between a young kid and the young man who would go on to become an American icon, on and off the baseball field, is a bold and apt one. There is an ease and confidence to Hayes’ prose which draws the reader in to the world he depicts. Baseball fans and fans of uplifting character sketches alike will love this book. It is a novel of optimism, and the more we fall into Hayes’ world, the more powerfully it sits with us. This event may have happened. This event could have happened. And most critically, this event should have happened. In dark times and light, the characters in 14 Going On 24 shine a light on the better angels of our nature. Facing racism and limited financial means, Hayes’ characters never succumb to their circumstances: they rise above them. They remind us of the infectious power of kindness, forgiveness and optimism. The book made this reader long not so much for a better imagined past, but for a future suffused with hope. Such a future might seem unlikely, as despair can be more seductive than hope, but as Hayes’ convincingly shows us, hope can begin with something as simple as one man playing stickball in the street with a couple kids.