Baseball, though its star has dimmed against the bright glow of the National Football League, is still America's Pastime. And back when I was a kid, long before we ever knew about performance-enhancing drugs or the reserve clause or free agency or $25 million per year contracts that have all contributed to baseball's decline, the game was played by some of the brightest stars ever to strap on a pair of cleats. Hitters like Frank Robinson, Hank Aaron, Roberto Clemente, and Pete Rose were stepping into the batter's box against the likes of Tom Seaver, Juan Marichal, Sandy Koufax, and Bob Gibson.
But the greatest player of all time was a young outfielder who played for the New York and San Francisco Giants named Willie Mays. In baseball, a great player must possess five key skills: he must be able to hit, hit for power, run, catch, and throw. Mays possessed all five of these skills and displayed them to the delight of his fans for more than twenty years. He broke onto the scene in 1951 and soon worked into the starting lineup of the Giants. In his first year in the league, the Giants played in the World Series--having completed one of the most improbable comebacks in baseball history. On August 11, the Brooklyn Dodgers held a commanding 13 1/2 game lead over the Giants with little more than six weeks to go in the regular season. But the Giants won their next 16 games and 37 of their final 44--a blistering .841 winning percentage--to catch and tie the Dodgers on the last day of the regular season. As any baseball fan knows, the Giants won the playoff series in the third and deciding game when Bobby Thomson hit 'The Shot Heard Round The World' in the bottom of the ninth inning to clinch the pennant for the Giants. What is little remembered is that Mays was on deck when the home run was hit.
Perhaps Mays' most enduring moment occurred three years later in the 1954 World Series. The Giants were playing against the heavily-favored Cleveland Indians, who had won an astonishing 111 games in what was then a 154-game regular season. (To this day, no team has finished with a higher winning percentage during the regular season.) But Mays set the tone in Game 1 with what is still known simply as "The Catch". With the score tied 2-2 in the top of the 8th inning and runners on first and second base, Vic Wertz clubbed a towering drive to straightaway center field. Because the game was being played in the Polo Grounds--a huge baseball venue--the hit would have been a home run in any other ballpark, having traveled an estimated 420 feet from home plate. But Mays broke immediately on the ball when it was hit, running straight toward the center field wall at full speed. He caught the ball over his shoulder and then spun and fired the ball back to the infield, preventing the Indians from scoring the go-ahead run. The Giants eventually won the game 5-2 and swept the Series.
Mays finished his career with a .302 batting average, having hit 660 home runs (despite missing two full seasons in the peak of his career to serve in the Korean War), a .557 slugging percentage, and 1,903 runs batted in. He was voted Most Valuable Player twice--in 1954 and again in 1965, and finished second in the voting two other times.
Willie Mays was my boyhood hero. I have fond memories of sneaking my transistor radio under my pillow and listening to games broadcast by Russ Hodges and Lon Simmons, regaling me with the tales of Mays' heroics for the Giants in the 1960's. I got to see him play a few times at Candlestick Park, which is still in existence--now the home of the football 49ers. Mays played the game all-out, with an evident joy, and he never used illegal drugs--performance-enhancing or not. Within the past couple of months, a new and authorized biography of the great Willie Mays has been published, entitled "Willie Mays--The Life, The Legend". Appropriately enough, the book currently sits 24th on the New York Times Bestseller List. Why is that appropriate? Because Mays wore # 24 on his jersey his entire career.
