Sometimes life is just hard.  Many a successful athlete, following the depression era, and more so it seems for the children of African –American descent, have had their share of difficulties.  Willie Stargell would fall into both of those categories.  He was born in 1940, but wouldn’t meet his father for almost two decades.  It wasn’t that his father didn’t know he had a son, rather, that’s how many years it took for him to decide to have a relationship with his son.  Willie insisted later, “I accepted my father as he was.  I didn’t offer judgment on what he had done and eventually I grew to love him for what he was.”  Willie’s mother remarried when he was six, but Willie was sent to live with his aunt in Florida until his mother and her new husband could get settled, which apparently took six long years to do.  Willie’s aunt was harsh, to say the least, and he remembered that spankings became a permanent part of his late afternoon routine.  Despite his painful childhood, Stargell grew into a strong, athletic teenager and took up baseball on the neighborhood fields and around the projects.  “White boys from richer families were given other alternatives such as the Boy Scouts, family vacations, and field trips.  Baseball was all we had,” said Willie.  It was during high school in Alameda, California that Willie was picked up by Pittsburgh Pirates’ scout Bob Zuk, and was signed for $1,500 in August 1958.  It wasn’t without its troubles though.  Willie suffered from prejudicial treatment and had to endure the shame and shunning of those years.  “People treated me like a dog,”  Willie    confided.  But he knew he couldn’t go back to the projects, as they were filled with prostitutes, pimps, and muggers.  Baseball was his avenue out of the ghetto... 

Read the article in its entirety in the October  2015 Bevil newsletter, which accompanies the cover.