An intimate portrait of a tortured player, this biography culls interviews, letters, and the personal account of baseball legend Willie Mays Aikens. Touted from a young age as the next Reggie Jackson, Aikens' promising career quickly turned disastrous when he fell into drug abuse and was ultimately sentenced to the longest prison sentence ever given to a professional athlete in a drug case. Not only an exploration of baseball and culture in the 1980s, this book also delves into the United States justice and penal systems. "Willie's story is an amazing one and one that we can all learn from. The fact that Willie was able to take the hard circumstances of his life and turn it into a compelling story and life lesson is wonderful. It is great to see him doing so much with his life after all of the adversity he has been through." —Cal Ripken, Jr., Baseball Hall of Famer "Willie Aikens did a lot of bad things, and many bad things were done to him. But Greg Jordan's vivid and unsparing account of Aikens' tragic journey is heartfelt and, at last, even tender." —Frank Deford, author, Over Time: My Life as a Sports Writer "Some people have the good—or, more often, bad—fortune of living lives that reveal the larger human story. Greg Jordan certainly found one such character in Willie Mays Aikens, and then held on tight for years, to unearth—through a kind of fierce, reportorial empathy—every astonishing twist and step and slide. The result: an amazing tapestry of dream, nightmare and redemption, cheers and tears, marked 'America.'" —Ron Suskind, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and author of Confidence Men and A Hope in the Unseen " Willie Mays Aikens: Safe at Home  is far too complex to be regarded as just a baseball book. Gregory Jordan is a master storyteller, expertly weaving a narrative that is both fascinating and disturbing while ever mindful of the human spirit." —Tom Verducci, senior writer at Sports Illustrated and coauthor, The Yankee Years "Gregory Jordan has written a touching book about an old ballplayer who made mistakes but did not hide from them, and who paid a steep price but did not allow himself to become embittered. It is good to see that Willie Mays Aikens, who was given a name of baseball royalty, really did find his way home." —Joe Posnanski, senior writer at Sports Illustrated and author, The Machine "[A] gritty, fascinating and disturbing pieced-together story about...how an athletic career was taken down by drugs, but built back up by the forces of forgiveness."  —Tom Hoffarth's Los Angeles Daily News blog "Farther Off the Wall."  "In this age of slick pieties and specious beliefs, it's all too easy to be cynical about the redemptive power of faith. Greg Jordan's poignant story of Willie Mays Aikens' journey from stardom through self-destruction to recovery is a tale of justice and injustice, courage and perseverance and, finally, forgiveness and love." —Mark C. Taylor, Chair of the department of Religion, Columbia University "The story is so gripping, and I became so attached to the people involved, that I hated for it to end."  —Royals Heritage blog  Gregory Jordan has written about sports, movies, politics, and books for The New York Times, Crisis Magazine , and The Hill . Jordan worked with Mark Shriver on A Good Man , Mark’s biography of his father, Sargent Shriver, due out in June 2012. Jordan has also collaborated on books with former NFL player Joe Ehrmann and attorney Ron Shapiro. He lives in Sherwood, Maryland, on the Chesapeake Bay. Willie Mays Aikens Safe at Home By Gregory Jordan Triumph Books Copyright © 2012 Gregory Jordan All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-60078-696-9 Contents Author's Note, Prologue, Part 1. Seneca, 1954–1973, Part 2. The Great American Game, 1973–1980, Part 3. Hellfire George and His Band of Merry Pranksters Are Coming to Burn Your Town Down, 1980, Part 4. Somebody Tell Me What's Happening, 1980–1994, Part 5. El Disciplinante, 1995–2007, Part 6. Terrible Love, 2008–2011, Epilogue, Acknowledgments, Photo Gallery, CHAPTER 1 Part 1. Seneca, 1954–1973 The sunlight bounced off the shiny field of wet watermelons and smacked Willie in the face. An old man sitting next to him in the pickup was sweating moonshine the whole ride over to the fields. Willie could see the sweat dripping through the holes in the old man's shirt. The stench made Willie's nose pinch; he hid his head in Cille's belly. She smelled, too. The black kids didn't start school until October so they could pick cotton, and Willie held his nose and wished he could start school in September like the white kids did. As he hopped out of the truck, a tall white man handed Willie his bag. The burlap pricked his fingers, and the bag was bigger than the bag the white man gave his sister Hattie. "Cille," Willie said as he tugged at his mother's purple dress. "He guh-guh-give me the wruh-wruh-wruh-wrong bag." Cille did not look down at him.