Mickey and Willis; Mantle and Mays, the Parallel Lives of Baseball's Golden Age

New York: Crown/Archetype, 2013. First Edition, First Printing [stated]. Hardcover. Good/Good. xiii, [3], 479, [1] pages. Illustrations (some in color). Footnotes. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Ex-library copy with usual markings. DJ is in a plastic sleeve affixed to the boards. Allen Barra is an American journalist and author of a number of sports books. He is a contributing editor of American Heritage magazine, and regularly writes about sports for the Wall Street Journal and The Atlantic. He has also written for the New York Times and New York Observer, and was formerly a columnist for Salon. He formerly blogged on sports for the Village Voice website. He frequently contributes to Major League Baseball Radio and Daily Beast. Acclaimed sportswriter Allen Barra exposes the uncanny parallels--and lifelong friendship--between two of the greatest baseball players ever to take the field. Culturally, Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays were light-years apart. Yet they were nearly the same age and almost the same size, and they came to New York at the same time. They possessed virtually the same talents and played the same position. They were both products of generations of baseball-playing families, for whom the game was the only escape from a lifetime of brutal manual labor. Both were nearly crushed by the weight of the outsized expectations placed on them, first by their families and later by America. Both lived secret lives far different from those their fans knew. What their fans also didn't know was that the two men shared a close personal friendship--and that each was the only man who could truly understand the other's experience.