Willie Horton: 23: Detroit's Own Willie the Wonder, the Tigers' First Black Great by Willie Horton (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Willie Horton: 23: Detroit's Own Willie the Wonder, the Tigers' First Black Great by Willie Horton Paul Hensler Willie Horton with Kevin Allen. Willie Horton: 23: Detroit's Own Willie the Wonder, the Tigers' First Black Great. Chicago, IL: Triumph Books, 2022. 256 pp. Cloth, $30. When four American League teams vied for the right to play in the 1967 World Series, one of those clubs, the Detroit Tigers, fell short but would go on the following year to capture the Fall Classic by overcoming a three-games-to-one deficit against the St. Louis Cardinals. Members of that squad are fondly recalled in Willie Horton: 23: Detroit's Own Willie the Wonder, the Tigers' First Black Great, and Horton, along with co-author Kevin Allen, have crafted a narrative devoid of any academic pretense—there are no endnotes or bibliography, but one wishes that an index had been created as well as an appendix of Horton's career statistics. In publishing his life story, Horton has invited readers to pull up a chair so he can tell them all about it. Indeed, the text barely draws a PG rating and eschews Ball Four as a template. Horton's personal journey is compelling on its own merit, although the timeline of his narration wanders in spots. Born in rural western Virginia as the youngest of twenty-one children, Horton was challenged to keep track of his many siblings as he, his parents, and other members of his family settled in the Jeffries Projects of Detroit. As a teen at Northwestern High School, Horton played with future American League batting champion Alex Johnson, and he served as the baseball team's catcher; his physique and prowess at the bat drew [End Page 135] comparisons to Roy Campanella. A precursor of his later renown came in 1959 when Horton hit a home run onto the roof at Tiger Stadium during the city high school title game. Such heroics did not escape the attention of his kindly mother or his father, possessed of a sterner approach to life and a man who kept his athletic son well grounded. When baseball scouts expressed their interest in Willie, his father cautioned, "Don't sign that contract unless you're willing to make a commitment to the people. You have to promise that you'll serve the community as a player for the Detroit Tigers" (43). As Horton's life continued to unfold in his adopted hometown, he fulfilled that promise after his apprenticeship in the minor leagues. Landing on the Tigers' roster for keeps in 1965, Horton made the AL All-Star team as the starting left fielder, and so integral was his performance to Detroit that he earned the tag of "franchise player" before the term became fashionable. That label was one he was reluctant to accept: "Not fully understanding what it meant, I thought it sounded negative" (213). While Horton worked hard to be an adequate outfielder, it was his bat that spoke for him, and as a former boxer in his youth—a point only casually mentioned—he wasn't bashful about taking a stand when the occasion warranted. Horton also appreciated the relationships he cultivated with teammates during the formative period of the mid-to late 1960s as the Tigers coalesced to become a force in the junior circuit. He especially credits Black teammate Gates Brown for influencing his development as a major leaguer. This last point is a primary theme of the book and never dips far from the surface. Because the Tigers were one of the last teams to integrate their major league roster, Horton arrived in 1963 as part of the latter vanguard to racially balance the Detroit lineup. Stunned by what he endured playing in the minor leagues in the early part of that decade, he confesses, "I didn't experience true racism until I signed my first professional contract" and then attended 1962 spring training in Lakeland, Florida (1). Fully awakened to this harsh societal reality, Horton was particularly stung by racial epithets "because my grandmother—my father's mother—was White," and he is not wrong to draw a line from his...