This book brings to life one of baseball's greatest sluggers, Willie Stargell. It examines the factors that shaped him as a man growing up in the tumultuous racial times of the 1950s and '60s, and then recreates the major moments in his Hall of Fame baseball career. His various endeavors during the post-playing days are fully explored as well. Interviews with more than 80 people—family members, childhood friends, teammates, opponents, front office workers and others—combined with dozens of newspaper and magazine articles shed light on the iconic patriarch of one of baseball's last great "families," the 1970s-era Pittsburgh Pirates.