This is Pete Hamill's fake apology for the first few hundred words of his review of Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend, by James S. Hirsch, in which the reviewer blathers on and on about the Brooklyn Dodgers, a team Willie Mays did not play for, and about his own childhood in the most authentic borough of the most authentic city at the most authentic moment in the whole history of humankind: . . . .
I couldn't agree more. Of Americans who hate baseball, I'm guessing that there is about a 50/50 split between people who actually hate the sport, and people who are just sick of listening to blowhards use the game as an excuse to wax on and on about New York during the first half of the twentieth century.
