Willie Mays died on Tuesday, at the age of 93. He was unique, as a baseball player and afterwards, because he did not fade away. The San Francisco Giants and the city of San Francisco kept him active and useful and honored. The Giants' ballpark is in Willie Mays Plaza, and it features an eight-foot high statue of him. Today he's being called the greatest center fielder of all time, and perhaps the greatest baseball player of all time. But San Francisco especially will miss him (though it took a few years for SF fans to embrace him as a player.)
I was growing up in western PA during his playing days, first as a New York Giant (where he was Rookie of the Year in 1951 and League MVP in 1954), then in San Francisco (MVP in 1965, with 52 homers) when I was in college, before a final season with the New York Mets (where he made his last plate appearance in the World Series) when I was a working writer.
Mays is part of Pittsburgh Pirates history for his bare-handed catch of a deep fly ball hit by the Pirates' Rocky Nelson in 1957, but I hadn't gone to Forbes Field for a game yet. That was also the Giants' last year in New York, and their last game there was played against the Pirates. Bob Friend had thrown one pitch to Willie when the crowd spontaneously gave him a standing ovation as a personal goodbye. It's possible I did see him play at Forbes Field in the late 50s or early 60s, but I don't recall. I certainly watched him on television--he especially excelled at All-Star games. He played in 24 of them.
Today I relished the story San Francisco Chronicle sports columnist Scott Ostler told, of a barnstorming or winter league game somewhere--Puerto Rico probably--in which Mays was playing center field next to Roberto Clemente, the Pirates Great One, in right field. They apparently worked out a trick play in which, on a single hit to center, Mays deliberately seemed to let the ball go by him, tempting the runner on take another base. But Clemente was right behind him, backing up the play, and gunned down the runner. Clemente, especially early in his career, had the best outfield arm in the majors. Though Mays was pretty close.
On Thursday the Giants will play the Cards in Birmingham, Alabama, at the newly renovated baseball field where Willie first played professional baseball on the Negro League team. The game was meant to honor the Negro Leagues, for Major League Baseball has officially recognized them as major leagues (as it has a few other leagues in the past), and the statistics of their players are now in the MLB record books.
It was going to be special for the Giants' outfielder Carl Yastrzemski because it is the only field where both his father (with his career in the minor leagues--when the Negro Leagues disbanded, the field hosted a minor league team) and his famous grandfather (Hall of Fame star for the Red Sox) played. Three Carl Yastrzemskis is a story about the place of baseball in American history and American life, a sacred place. Even more is the story of Willie Mays,. The news of his death came the same day as the official announcement that he wouldn't be traveling to the game, but would watch it on TV.
Mays started with the Giants only a few years after Jackie Robinson broke the color ban with the Dodgers. He won hearts and minds--President Obama said that he made it impossible to be a racist, at least while he played. Obama gave him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015.
He did not live long enough to enjoy the milestone of Thursday game in Birmingham, but at 93 he had so many, as a player, a godfather to Barry Bonds, and as a mentor to many other players--for he had really studied the game. Right from the start he studied how to hit with power, he studied pitchers before he faced them (he wanted to know their best pitch, because he would probably see it) and eventually he understood the whole game so well that he directed his team's play from center field--allegedly including the catcher's call of pitches. He certainly passed this on to Barry Bonds, who startled Giants announcers on a plane ride by telling them the first 4 pitches he would see the next day--and he was precisely right.
Willie May's baseball intelligence helped make him a great player--he hit for power and average, many times a Gold Glove fielder, and a great baserunner. But what people remember is that he played with joy and style. That's something to be remembered for.
