"Say, Hey" Willie Mays: A Fond Personal Farewell to the Greatest All-round Baseball Player of All Time
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Willie Mays, and the joy of playing baseball (Image by Wikipedia (commons.wikimedia.org), Author: New York World-Telegram and the Sun staff photographer, William C.Greene) Details Source DMCA
As many of you know, the great centerfielder for the New York, then San Francisco, Giants, then New York Mets, passed away on Tuesday, June 18, 2024. Many obituaries have been, are being, and will be written about this man. Considering the five main skills that are considered to define what it is that a baseball player does in the game - hitting, hitting home runs, driving in runs, speed, and arm strength-and-accuracy, Willie is generally considered to have been the greatest player of all time.
Summing up his achievements in the five skills, plus several related ones, in the, also remarkable, 22 seasons that he played in, Willie drove in 100 runs or more in 10 different seasons, scored more than 100 runs in 12 consecutive seasons, made 7,112 outfield put-outs (more than anyone else in the history of the game, plus 657 more playing first-base), hit 660 home runs (which ranks him sixth of all time), scored 2068 runs (7th of all time), drove in 1909 runs (ranking him 12th all-time in that category), made 3,293 hits (13th overall), stole (for the non-baseball fans who might be reading this column, that's not literally) 338 bases, and he played in 150 or more games (when for the latter half of the time he was in the majors teams played 162 games; before 1962 it was 154 games) for most of his career. One must also remember that during the Korean War, Willie, a draftee, was in the Service for 1951 and part of 1952. Willie was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1979.
(It should be recalled that Ted Williams of the Boston Red Sox, another one of my all-time favorite players, was in the Air Force for four years during WWII and two years during the Korean War. Given the time he missed, I, and others to be sure, consider Ted to be the greatest pure hitter of all time. He hit quite a few home-runs too: 521. But neither Ted, nor any of the other greats, e.g., Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Rogers Hornsby, Ty Cobb, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Stan Musial [and yes, I know that I am dating myself with this particular list], was the all-round player that Willie was.)
As it happened, I had a particular attachment to Willie. For as a child, growing up on the West Side of Manhattan (New York City), I was a fan of the New York Giants, who played in the venerable Polo Grounds, about 3 miles north and an easy subway ride from where I lived. (The stadium had been built in the 19th century, and was at first used for --- you guessed it --- polo.) So how did I pick the Giants? At the age of ten, sometime in winter of 1946-47 I decided to become a baseball fan. The next issue was "which team should I root for?" New York City had three at the time: the New York Yankees, the New York Giants, and the Brooklyn Dodgers. Thinking the way I was already thinking at the age of 10, since I lived in Manhattan (and yes, even back then I did such things in a rather intellectual way) --- the Upper West Side of Manhattan as it happened, not too far from the home of the Giants, the Polo Grounds --- the choice was easy: a Giants fan I became.
Willie was signed by the Giants in 1950 and played for their Trenton, N.J. farm team that year. In 1951m he was promoted to the Minneapolis Millers. By May, he was hitting .477, and was called up to the Giants in that month. (If you are not a baseball fan, that number means that that player was extraordinary, getting a base-hit almost every other time at bat.) As it happened, making it a bit easier for Willie, since anti-Black sentiment was abroad as teams went on their road-trips, the Giants themselves were one of the earlier teams in Major League baseball to become integrated, with Hank Thompson, a 3rd baseman, and Monte Irvin, an outfielder, and future Baseball Hall-of-Famer, joining them in 1949.
In those days, for the most part one listened to broadcasts of the games on the radio. I knew about Willie (what Giants fan didn't?), and I tuned in for at least one of Willie's first three games, during which he got no hits in 12 at-bats, playing on the road against the Philadelphia Phillies at the old Shibe Park (later to become Connie Mack Stadium [after the Philadelphia Athletics' legendary owner and long-time manager of that team]). After his third hitless game, so the story goes, Willie asked the Giants manager, the legendary Leo Durocher, to send him back to the Millers. Leo refused. I clearly remember hearing the broadcast of Willie's first hit in the majors, in his fourth game. As it happened, it was a home-run against one of the greatest left-handers in Major League History, Warren Spahn of the then Boston Braves. The shot went over the left-field roof at the Polo Grounds.
Willie went on the have a legendary career himself, first with the New York Giants, then with the San Francisco Giants when the team had moved there following the 1957 season. While at the Polo Grounds, in the 1954 World Series against the Cleveland (then) Indians, he made The [legendary] Catch off the bat of Vic Wertz, followed by the [legendary] Throw that prevented the Indians' great center fielder, Larry Doby (who was the second Black player in the Majors after Jackie, and the first in the American League) from scoring on a "sacrifice fly" play. (Yes, "The Catch" has its own Wikipedia entry, along with a bunch of others.)
For most of Willie's time in San Francisco he played in the legendarily bad-place-to-play, Candlestick Park, built for the Giants, but in a legendarily cold and windy much of the time. (If you want to know how and why Candlestick was built there, get in touch with me and I'll tell you that story.) And even playing half his games every season there, Willie achieved what he achieved. And then, at the end of this career, he did come back to New York, for the 1972 and 1973 seasons. The Mets had been one of the first two National League expansion teams, created in part to re-establish National League baseball in New York City, following the departure of the Giants and the Dodgers, both in the National League, starting play in 1962.
The first principal owner of the Mets, one Mrs. Joan Whitney Payson, had been a part-owner and member of the Board of the New York Giants. She was the only board member to vote against the move to San Francisco. She also had been a huge Willie Mays fan during his time at the Polo Grounds. So, when she was able to arrange a trade with the San Francisco Giants to bring Willie back to New York in 1972, to end his career there, she jumped at the chance. Among other things, when Willie retired at the end of the 1973 season, Mrs. Payson promised him that his number would be retired for the Mets, meaning that no future Met would ever wear that number. The promise plays a role in this story, at its end.
As for the continuation of my baseball fandom after the NY Giants left town, I rooted for the San Francisco Giants for the first few years, when many of their best players, like Mays and Willie McCovey, I knew from their playing days in New York. But when most of them moved on to other teams or retired, my interest dissipated (that dissipation helped by two years that I spent in London, England, doing a post-doc fellowship in 1963-65). And so, I lost interest in baseball altogether (and certainly could NEVER be a Yankees fan). That is until my son started developing a rooting interest in the game at about the age of 7, at the end of the 1970s.
Then, in fact, we went to Mets games frequently at the old Shea Stadium, to see, among others, the fabled Doc Gooden and Darryl Strawberry (two great Black players of the 1980s-90s) develop with the Mets. On television we saw the famous "Bill Buckner Play" which of course also has its own Wikipedia entry for) against the then still-benighted Boston Red Sox in the 1986 World Series, and the Mets comeback win in the 7th game of that series. Although the Mets never again made a World Series in that era, they were a very good team and fun to watch, at the Big Shea and on television.
(On a side note, Jacob and I got to meet Willie Mays at an American Booksellers Association meeting in Anaheim, CA in 1985 [which I was attending to promote a couple of my books]. Late one afternoon we exited the Convention Center and there was Willie, waiting for his ride. We went over to say hello. He was as nice as he could be and surely gave me an extra-big smile when I told him that I had been following him from his first days at the Polo Grounds in 1951.) After Jake went off to college, I continued to follow the Mets on and off right down to the present time.
Which brings us to the Old-Timers Day/Game of August 27, 2022, which we chose to watch on television. That indeed turned out to be a much better experience than going to Citi Field, the Mets' present ballpark, would have been for the event. On television, one saw everything. All the interviews, up close and personal, with the returning Mets. All the highlights of Mets history that were presented. All the details of the game action, and they actually did play a couple-of-innings-plus, some of the younger invited old-timers moving around pretty well, as did a few of the older old-timers as well.
To name a few, there were the greats, like for example Dwight "Doc" Gooden, Darryl "Straw" Strawberry, Keith Hernandez (no nickname), Mike Piazza (none for him either), Mookie Wilson, Pedro Martinez, Bartolo Colon (a way-overweight but still very good pitcher when he was with the Mets in his 40s and hit his first major league home run at age 42), and John Franco, as well as the not-great-but-very-good, like Todd Ziele --- now a pre- and post-game commentator for the Mets and a very good one at that.
But the highlight of the day for me, was the retirement of Willie Mays' No. 24. Willie, still with us then at 91, could not be at the game because he was recovering from a hip replacement (at 91!!!). He was represented by his son Michael. There have been a series of owners of the Mets since Mrs. Payson sold the team, some good, some, like the present one Steve Cohen really good, and some, like the Madoff-saddled-Wilpons not-so-good. As it happened, it was Steve Cohen who decided to set up and pay for this first Mets Old Timers Day for over a quarter-century, and who decided to finally have the team honor Mrs. Payson's promise to Willie and retire his number 24. (The Mets have only six other retired numbers.)
And so, coming full circle, it was actually very moving for me, at age 85, to see retired the number which Willie wore for the New York Giants, the San Francisco Giants, and the New York Mets. Willie is still my all-time favorite player, whose first hit for the New York Giants I did not see, but certainly heard, over the radio, and remember that hearing of it down to this very day. Willie's number is now ensconced up there on the Citi Field upper deck facing along with those first six. WOW. What a feeling.
As for Willie's passing, let us finish this remembrance of him with the statement that he would have delivered at Rickward Field in Birmingham, AL, where he played as a youngster at the ceremony celebrating the Negro Leagues that was held there on June 19, 2024.
"I wish I could be with you all today. This is where I'm from. I had my first pro hit here at Rickwood as a [Birmingham Black] Baron in 1948. And now this year 76 years later, it finally got counted in the record books. Some things take time, but I always think better late than never. Time changes things. Time heals wounds, and that is a good thing. I had some of the best times of my life in Birmingham so I want you to have this clock to remember those times with me and remember all the other players who were lucky enough to play here at Rickwood Field in Birmingham. Remember, time is on your side."
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For three superb, highly personal, obituaries on Willie, see: Richard Goldstein in The New York Times, June 20, 2024; Mark Hermann in Newsday, June 19, 2024; and Neil Best in Newsday on June 20, 2024.
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This column is based in part on one that I published in this space close to two years ago, on 9/1/22: "On NY Mets Old-Timers Day; First, Some Personal Baseball Fan History:" Click Here. It happened to contain some significant amount of text about Willie, which I consider to be appropriate for re-publication.