Willie Mays at 90

Willie Mays in Spring Training at Casa Grande, Arizona, March 1964 (AP Photo)

I remember the day as if it were yesterday: May 13, 1964. I was 7 years old and in the 2nd grade, living on Balwynne Park Road in the Wynnefield Heights section of West Philadelphia. Though I had watched sports (mostly football and basketball) on TV with my dad and played wiffle ball in the alley behind our apartment, I had only the previous month started following Major League baseball, largely as a result of my mom's listening to the nightly radio broadcasts of the Phillies, with rookie phenom "Richie" Allen, that fateful season. That month dad also started buying baseball cards for my brother and me from the Jack and Jill ice cream truck that came down our street a couple evening a week. I well remember asking dad who the best player in baseball was. He mentioned two: Mickey Mantle in the American League and Willie Mays in the National League (He knew his stuff!). Since the hometown Phillies were in the National League, I became a National League guy. And Mays, in the spring of 1964, at the ripe old age of 33, was off to the most torrid start of his storied career. When I got home from school on the afternoon of May 13, I found the afternoon's edition of the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin to read the box scores from the previous day's games. Then I saw the headline on page 2 of the Sports page: "Mays Raises average to .478 as Giants Shut Out Houston." Indeed, Mays had gone 3-5 with 2 home runs and 4 RBI to lead Juan Marichal to his 6th win without a loss and the Giants to their 16th win in the season's first 23 games. In these 23 games, Mays had hit 13 home runs, scored 27 runs and driven in 34. From that day forward I had a new sports hero, to this day still the top one on my list. When, a couple of weeks later, I got the Willie Mays All Stars coin in my pack of Topps baseball cards, I was overjoyed. It remains to this day one of my most treasured pieces of sports memorabilia.

Mays's 1964 Topps Coin

Apart from my dad's hero, Babe Ruth, who not only excelled at both hitting and pitching, but entirely changed the game to boot, I consider Mays the greatest all-around player in baseball history. And I am not alone. Former ballplayers say the same thing: Bill White, Joe Morgan, Felipe Alou, Tim McCarver, Joe DiMaggio, and countless others. Ditto announcers such as Vin Scully, Curt Gowdy, and Harry Kalas. His first manager with the Giants, the irrepressible Leo Durocher, claimed that no one had ever combined Mays's skills so perfectly in the non-pitching aspects of the game: hitting for average, hitting for power, baserunning, fielding, and throwing. In the almost-70 years since Leo said that, no one has done so since, either. He remains the standard by which any putative "5-tool player" is measured and thus, implicitly, falls short. His career numbers are legendary: 3283 hits, .302 career BA, 2062 runs scored, 1903 RBI, 660 home runs, .557 slugging pct., 156 OPS+, 338 stolen bases, 12 Gold Glove Awards (which would have been 16, had the award been given prior to 1957), 156.1 WAR. For his 13 peak seasons (1954-66), Mays batted .315, slugged .601, and averaged

Mays's 1966 Topps Card

 117 runs, 40 homers, and 109 RBI while never striking out more than 85 times in a single season (indeed, he never struck out as many as 70 times in a season until 1960). In those 13 seasons, he compiled a cumulative 124 WAR, surpassing 11 in both 1964 and 1965, and 10 in 1954, 1958, and 1962-63. (By contrast, his only real peers, Mantle and the Braves' Henry Aaron, surpassed 10 WAR 3 and 0 times, respectively; today's best player, Mike Trout, has done so twice). In those 13 years, he led the Major Leagues in that category a staggering 8 times. Rarely is a slugger renowned as much for his defense as for his offensive exploits. Mays is the rare exception. Of course, he will always be famous for "The Catch" he made in Game 1 of the 1954 World Series at the Polo Grounds, when he took off at full speed and hauled in Vic Wertz's 430-foot drive over his shoulder as if he were Tyreek Hill hauling in a Patrick Mahomes bomb, stopped on a dime, and threw the ball back to the infield, with only one runner advancing on the play. Characteristically, Mays downplays the catch, saying he "had it all the way," and pointing to others, such as his 1952 grab of Bobby Morgan liner at the fence in left-center at Ebbets Field as superior (Scully calls that one the greatest defensive play he has ever seen). I too remember watching, on the Game of the Week, a grab he made at Candlestick Park in April 11, 1970 when, less than a month before turning 39 (!), he sprinted to the fence in right center and jumped over (!) a hesitant Bobby Bonds to rob Bobby Tolan of a home run.

Mays sliding into Pat Corrales, 12 July 1965 (AP Photo)

The most underappreciated aspect of Mays's game was his baserunning. Of course, he led the league in stolen bases four consecutive years in the late '50's, was the second player to hit 30 homers and steal 30 bases in a season, and the first to hit 300 homers and steal 300 bases for his career. In 1970, at age 40 (!), when his batting skills had eroded due to age and the fatigue of a long season, he became the prototype of the modern player by walking 112 times in only 537 plate appearances. Not only that, but he revived his base-stealing ways, swiping 23 and being caught only 3 times. But where he really excelled was his fearlessness as a baserunner. This could take the form of emulating Ty Cobb, such as when he used his left foot to dislodge the ball from the Phils' Pat Corrales while sliding into home at Connie Mack Stadium on July 12, 1965. That time, Corrales ended up in hospital for absorbing Mays's aggression. Other times it could go the other way, such as on March 12, 1959 when, during a meaningless Spring Training game, he needed 35 stitches to heal a wound he incurred on an ill-advised slide. Most often, however, his prowess as a baserunner was seen in his routine taking the extra base on hits, an index both of his speed and his alertness to defensive laxity. Recent research has shown that he took the extra base (2 bases on a single, 3 bases on a double) an incredible 63% of the time—compare this with Rickey Henderson (55%), Mickey Mantle (54%), Maury Wills and Lou Brock (53%), Joe Morgan and Hank Aaron (51%), and (from a later time) Ichiro Suzuki (41%—no doubt today's bandbox stadiums account for this lower number). Most stunningly, on multiple occasions Mays scored from first base on a single. I remember Harry Kalas telling the story of the time Mays did it on a ground ball single by Jim Ray Hart to Dick Simpson in left field (!) when he hadn't even taken a big lead (research earlier this week pinpointed the date as July 20, 1968; Mays's run was the lone score of the game). Further research pointed me as well to a game on May 8, 1956, when he pulled the trick, not once, but twice! The 1962 World Series famously ended when Willie McCovey smashed a liner to Bobby Richardson with batters on 2nd and third and two outs in Game 7 at Candlestick Park, with the Yankees leading the Giants, 1-0. The runner at 2nd was Mays, who had doubled with 2 outs off Ralph Terry into the right field corner. Roger Maris made a great play to cut the ball off before it reached the fence, preventing Matty Alou from scoring on the play. A couple of years ago I was reading James Hirsch's fine biography of Mays, and I was struck by Mays's regret that it wasn't he who was the runner at first base instead of Alou: "I would have found some way to score." And who's to doubt him? Certainly not me.

Mays, after hitting 4 homers against Milwaukee at
County Stadium, 30 April 1961 (AP Photo)

Today, when the great Willie Mays turns 90, I am 64 years old. The mind is brought inexorably to the words of the old Hebrew prophet: "All flesh is like grass, and all its beauty is as the flower of the field" (Isaiah 40:6). As the great Johnny Bench said recently while reminiscing on all his friends and peers who have died over the past 12, horrible months, "the warranty runs out on all of us." Time spares no one on this mortal coil. But memories persist. A lot of time has passed under the bridge since I first heard the name "Willie Mays" from my dad 57 years ago, but the vividness of the memories of what he accomplished on the field plays some happy tricks to make it seem like yesterday. To me, Willie still remains a 33-year old Giant roaming center at Candlestick or, for the many, happy days and evenings I saw him play in Philly, old Connie Mack Stadium. And it will ever be that way. So, I say, "Happy Birthday, Say Hey. May you have many more."