Palo Alto, California resident Willie Mays, the fiery center fielder for the Giants whose skill at the plate, in the field, and on the basepaths prompted many to refer to him as the best all-around player in baseball history, passed away on Tuesday. He was ninety-three.
The Giants’ president and chief executive, Larry Baer, stated that Mays, the oldest surviving Baseball Academy of Fame member, passed away at an assisted care facility.
What Happened to Willie Mays?
During his 22 National League seasons with the Giants in New York and San Francisco and his brief return to New York with the Mets in 1948, Mays put up incredible stats. He had 3,293 hits, a.301 batting average, and 660 home runs.
He did, however, represent the whole ballplayer. Mays was one of baseball’s and America’s most captivating characters thanks to his vibrant play style and bubbly attitude. Even those outside the baseball community could identify him as a national treasure almost away.
Mays was frequently mentioned in Charles M. Schulz’s “Peanuts” comic strip since Schulz was such a fan. In a spelling bee, Charlie Brown boldly ventured, “M… A… Y… S,” when asked to spell the word “maze.” Mays was listed second on Woody Allen’s “Manhattan” alter ego’s list of pleasures that made life worthwhile. (The first was Groucho Marx.) “Say Hey (the Willie Mays Song)” was recorded by the R&B group the Treniers in 1954.
“I didn’t know many people by name when I broke in, so I would just say, ‘Say, hey,’ and the writers picked that up,” Mays once said.
With an exhilarating flare, Mays launched himself into the Hall of Fame, sending his cap flying off as he sprinted the bases or chased down a drive.
Baseball writer Leonard Koppett described the young Mays as having an open personality, generous, energetic, and irrepressible. “He gave off the impression that playing ball was the best thing in the world for its own sake, regardless of his insecurities.”
And in a time when its clubs dominated baseball, New York welcomed this Alabama native and elevated him among two other greats who dominated the city’s center fields. With Mickey Mantle of the Yankees, Duke Snider of the Brooklyn Dodgers, and No. 24 of the Giants, a town not exactly known for composure enjoyed debating whose team’s slugger was the best.
At a time when Black players were only starting to make their mark in the major leagues and segregation was still unchecked in his home South, Mays managed to captivate the passion of baseball fans. He was well-liked in Black communities, particularly in Harlem, where he played stickball with kids outside his St. Nicholas Place apartment, which was close to the Giants’ Polo Grounds. He was also treated like a visiting king or queen at the original Red Rooster, once one of Harlem’s most well-liked eateries.
Taking Mays along on his plane to the 2009 All-Star Game in St. Louis, President Barack Obama said to him, “I’m not sure that I would get elected to the White House” if it weren’t for the mental shifts that African-American leaders like Mays and Jackie Robinson encouraged.
President Obama bestowed the highest civilian award in the nation, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, upon 17 Americans during a White House ceremony in November 2015. Among them were Mays and Yogi Berra, who received the medal posthumously.
Mays’s Velocity and Strength:
With boldness and elegance, Mays played center field. He made basket catches at the hip and threw with force and accuracy. He nailed an over-the-shoulder drive to the darkest center field during the 1954 World Series versus the Cleveland Indians. He then produced a fantastic throw to second base. This play is still famous as “The Catch.”
At 11 inches and 180 pounds, his build appeared average initially, but his exceptional peripheral vision and extraordinarily huge hands matched his quickness while chasing down balls. And his back was muscular; he was all steel.
The young Mays was mentioned in Branch Rickey’s 1965 book “The American Diamond,” where he talked about “propelling the ball in one electric flash off the Polo Grounds scoreboard on the face of the upper deck in left field for a home run.” Rickey was the executive who helped break the color barrier in major league baseball today by signing Robinson to the Dodgers.
Rickey wrote, “It was amazing how quickly the ball ascended there.” “It would crash off the tin like a pistol shot and fall to the grass below.”
In 1958, Mays made a name for himself in the West after the Giants and Dodgers moved to California. Even though San Francisco supporters were first unimpressed with him, he thrived while performing for them despite the strong winds and chilly Candlestick Park evenings. The Giants unveiled a bronze monument of Mays, standing nine feet tall, in 2001, the year they moved into their present ballpark. The park’s address is 24 Willie Mays Plaza.
Mays’s performance was so captivating, and his talent was so immense that it made numbers look unreal. All the same, his record-breaking accomplishments were astounding.
He scored over 100 runs in 12 straight years and drove in more than 100 in ten seasons.
In the history of the big leagues, his 7,112 putouts as an outfielder rank first (he had 657 more when playing first base). He also won 12 Gold Glove awards starting in 1957, the year the awards were first given out.
His 660 home runs rank sixth all-time, behind the 762 of Barry Bonds, the 755 of Hank Aaron, the 714 of Babe Ruth, the 703 of Albert Pujols, and the 696 of Alex Rodriguez.
He is ranked seventh on the lifetime list with 2,068 runs scored and 12th with 1,909 runs batted. With 3,293 hits, he is ranked No. 13.
At a period when the running game was not particularly favored, he stole 338 bases. Additionally, he participated in at least 150 games for 13 straight seasons.
The seven Negro leagues that ran from 1920 to 1948 will become major leagues, Major League Baseball declared in December 2020. That being said, Mays’s significant league totals have been increased by his statistical totals from his time spent with the 1948 Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro American League.
In addition to winning Most Valuable Player awards in 1954 and 1965, Mays was the 1951 National League Rookie of the Year. Playing for the Giants in 1951, 1954, and 1962, as well as the Mets in 1973, he was a member of four pennant-winning teams but just one World Series champion team—the 1954 Giants, who swept Cleveland. In addition to being chosen for 24 All-Star Games, he won the 1963 and 1968 MVP awards.
Athletes, authors, and historians surveyed by the Associated Press in 1999 ranked Mays as baseball’s second-greatest player after Babe Ruth.
When Mays was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1979—his first year of eligibility—Leo Durocher, his manager for most of his time at the Polo Grounds, remarked, “Willie could do everything from the day he joined the Giants.” He never required instruction. Joe DiMaggio was the only other player who possessed all of these skills.
Even DiMaggio, though, gave in to Mays. “I’ve never seen someone so close to perfection as Willie Mays,” he remarked.
Willie Mays: Who was He?
On May 6, 1931, Willie Howard Mays Jr. was born in Westfield, Alabama, close to Birmingham. His parents were adolescents without children.
It was rumored that his father was named after President William Howard Taft when the Republican Party was thought to be more understanding of Black people’s problems than the Democratic Party. Willie Sr., often known as Cat, was a Pullman porter after working as a steelworker and becoming a semipro baseball player.
When Willie was a baby, his mother, Annie Satterwhite, moved to Birmingham and left the family. Even though she married and had ten kids there, Mays remained in contact with her throughout his time as a major league player.
When Willie was still a little child, his father relocated to Fairfield, another Birmingham suburb, and assisted in raising him with his mother’s two sisters.
At Fairfield Industrial High School, where he was instructed by Angelena Rice—the mother of future Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice—Mays developed into an all-around athlete. According to Ms. Rice’s biography “Extraordinary, Ordinary People” (2010), Mays recalled her mother telling him, “You’re going to be a ballplayer.” Let me know if you have to depart early for practice.
DiMaggio was Mays’ hero when he joined the Negro American League’s Birmingham Black Barons in 1948.
In 2000, Mays told Bob Herbert of The New York Times, “As children, we would always pick one guy to emulate when we were in the South.” “I chose Joe to model myself after because he was such a great all-around player, even though Ted Williams was the best hitter.”
Ed Montague, a scout for the New York Giants, signed Mays in 1950 after noticing him while watching another player for the Black Barons. That season, Mays hit 353 with the Trenton Giants.
He faced taunting since he was the only Black player in the Interstate League then. In his Cooperstown, New York, Hall of Fame acceptance speech, he related an incident in Hagerstown, Maryland.
“I hit a triple and two home runs the first night,” he remarked. “I hit a double and two home runs the following night.” Now they’re saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, we know you don’t like that kid playing center field, but please do not bother him again because he’s killing us,” over the loudspeakers.
He said, “I went there on a Friday, and they called me all derogatory names.” They were applauding by Sunday. I won them over.
In May 1951, the Giants called Mays up while batting—477 with the American Association’s Minneapolis Millers. There weren’t many Black players in the major leagues four years after Robinson signed a Dodger contract. However, the Giants had four when Mays joined them: infielder Artie Wilson, sent to the minors to make room for Mays; star outfielder Monte Irvin; backup catcher Hank Thompson; and backup catcher Ray Noble.
Early in Mays’s career, the white and black players stayed apart. “We weren’t able to stay in the same hotels for a while,” he stated. “When we arrived in Chicago, we would exit on the South Side while they would exit on the North Side.”
When Mays debuted on May 25, 1951, he faced the Phillies in Philadelphia and went five at-bats without recording a hit. Before the Giants left for home, he was 0 for 12 in a three-game series. However, at the Polo Grounds, he struck out future Hall of Fame left-hander Warren Spahn of the Boston Braves on Monday night, May 28, for his first major league hit—a colossal home ball to left field in the first inning. Durocher sensed greatness in Mays right away.
In his 1975 book “Nice Guys Finish Last,” Durocher stated, “The word is magnetism.” With Ed Linn. “A personal magnetism that permeates their surroundings and gives everyone the impression that they are the ones who will lead them to victory.”
A Black Family Incorporated:
Mays even encountered difficulties while trying to buy a house in a posh district in San Francisco, as nearby residents expressed displeasure that a Black family would lower property values. A front-page piece on the problem was published in the San Francisco Chronicle, and Mayor George Christopher promised to temporarily house Mays and his wife if they were turned down elsewhere. Finally, the home’s owner approved the offer, saving the city from humiliation.
Following two seasons at Seals Stadium, the Giants relocated to the recently constructed, notoriously windy Candlestick Park. Mays discovered that smearing heated oil all over his body was the only way to fight the cold wind. Many vehicles were kept in the park by such winds.
Mays famously remarked, “Playing in Candlestick cost me 10, 12 home runs a year.” “I’ve always believed that it prevented me from surpassing Babe Ruth’s record.”
However, Mays prospered in San Francisco. He started eight seasons in a row in 1959, where he scored at least 100 runs. He blasted four home runs against the Braves at Milwaukee’s County Stadium on April 30, 1961. He scored three in a game at Philadelphia on June 29 of the following year.
In an exhibition game at Yankee Stadium on July 24, Mays returned to New York to play for the first time since the Giants had relocated to San Francisco. Approximately fifty thousand people saved their loudest applause for Mays.
The Giants were starting to resemble New York again. They defeated the Dodgers in three playoff games to win the pennant in 1962 when Mays hit 49 home runs. However, the Yankees beat them in seven games in the World Series.
When Mays blasted 52 home runs in 1965, he became one of just four players—Ruth, Jimmie Foxx, Ralph Kiner, and Mantle—to have hit at least 50 in a single season more than once. Mays broke the 511-home run National League record established by former Giants outfielder and manager Mel Ott on May 4, 1966.
Mays had changed, but he could still play amazingly as he got closer to 40.
In “A Thinking Man’s Guide to Baseball,” Leonard Koppett noted that “Willie, as he grew older, became more withdrawn and suspicious, more cautious, more vulnerable and with plenty of reason” (1967). “Life became more complicated for him, personally and professionally, and he experienced some sadness.” Mays “went through a painful divorce” following her marriage and adoption of a kid, according to Koppett.
Mays was transferred to the Mets on May 11, 1972, in return for minor league pitcher Charlie Williams by the longtime Giants owner Horace Stoneham to provide Mays with long-term financial security. At the time, the team’s attendance was declining.
Mays was in the final year of a two-year deal that paid him $165,000 per season, or around $1.25 million in modern currency. The Mets president, Joan Payson, who had owned stock in the New York Giants and was a big fan of Mays, promised him an additional $50,000 per year for ten years after the agreement was signed, on top of his baseball income. After his playing days, he planned to become a goodwill ambassador and part-time instructor.
When Mays initially joined the Mets, he was only hitting.167. However, on May 14, in front of a Sunday crowd of around 35,000 at Shea Stadium, he defeated the Giants with a home run in his first game. However, by 41, his abilities had diminished. He suffered from damaged ribs, an injured shoulder, and swelling knees the following year, and on September 20, 1973, he declared his retirement.
Willie Mays: Best Ballplayer
Mays avoided controversy and rarely addressed racial matters; however, in 1966, he appeared on the radio to assist in putting an end to a riot in San Francisco following the shooting of a Black adolescent by a white police officer. Jackie Robinson chastised him during the 1960s civil rights movement for failing to use his influence to address contemporary concerns. Mays responded by holding a press conference in the spring of 1968.
James S. Hirsch cited him as stating, “People do things in different ways,” in “Willie Mays: The Life, the Legend” (2010). “I can’t picket outside, for example. I’m not a fan of preaching from a soapbox. Understanding is what matters most. I’ve conveyed that idea to children in my speeches. We are all God’s children fighting for the exact cause; thus, it doesn’t matter if you are Black or White.
Mays conjured up the idea of a “natural,” a fantastic athlete who required little practice to become proficient. However, that was untrue.
According to Mays’ statement to baseball writer Roger Kahn in “Memories of Summer” (2004), “I studied the pitchers.” “I was aware of the optimal pitch for every pitcher. You may be wondering but why? What would the pitcher throw in a pinch when the game is on the line? His strongest argument. Straight line, slider, fastball, etc. His strongest argument. I would be prepared as I had read and committed that to memory.
Mays was asked to choose the finest ballplayer he had ever seen after being inducted into the Hall of Fame. He answered, “I believe I was the best ballplayer I’ve ever seen.” “No one in the world could perform to my level on a baseball field.”
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