The STAR of the SHOW
Two clever tricks made Willie Mays the best entertainer in baseball
IT was one of Willie Mays’ trademarks. As the player would tear around the bases or run down a fly ball in center field, his cap would fly off his head, presumably powerless to hang on in the face of the gale-like wind generated by his almost superhuman speed.
Only, the hat-flying wasn’t exactly as spontaneous as it seemed. It was planned.
Mays would instruct the team’s equipment manager, Eddie Logan, to give him a cap that was a size too small, almost guaranteeing the headwear was going to become unstuck from his head. Mays did it simply to add drama. “People like that,” the legend says in the new book, “24: Life Stories and Lessons from the Say Hey Kid” (St. Martin’s Press), out now. “They want to see the hat fall off. No problem. I go back, pick it up, and put it back on.”
Mays is a legend of the sport. But as it turns out, he’s also one of the greatest innovators when it comes to showmanship.
At a time when players were encouraged to simply play — to not posture at home plate after belting a home run, to efficiently run the bases, to sit quietly in the dugout — Mays brought an extra level of excitement to baseball.
He helped pave the way for the modern branded athlete. In the days before Nike shoe contracts and Dikembe Mutombo’s finger wag, Mays understood that being immortal wasn’t just about onfield stats. It was about something extra.
“You could say he’s the best player of all time — and the best entertainer of all time,” says John Shea, a California-based sports writer and the co-author of the book with Mays.
“I just feel that when you’re playing sports, you have to do more than catch the ball and throw it back in,” Mays says in the book. “You have to do something different.”
Born in 1931, Mays spent his youth in an industrial town just outside Birmingham, Ala. His parents split up early, and he grew up with his father, Cat Mays, who worked at a local mill and also starred on various local semiprofessional baseball teams sponsored by companies.
Willie’s father introduced him to the game. “When I was one or two, he rolled a ball around the room, and I’d go get it and roll it back,” Willie says in the book.
“He told me later about how I always chased the ball, like it was a natural thing for me to do.”
By high school, Mays was a three-sport star athlete. Even as a teenager, he was already displaying the knack for entertaining that would later help make him a star.
Cat never thought his son would have a chance to play baseball in the majors, but when Jackie Robinson signed with the Montreal Royals in 1946, Cat sat his son down and told him, “Now you can do it.”
While still in high school, Mays began playing in the Negro Leagues for the Birmingham Black Barons.
Besides honing his on-field talent, Mays got a lesson in style.
“The Negro Leagues had an uptempo style, and many of those great players were flamboyant,” Shea says. “They had [pitcher] Satchel Paige and guys like that who took it to another level of entertainment. I’m sure what Mays saw in the Negro Leagues taught him it was OK to let it out and be himself.”
Mays excelled in the Negro Leagues and was eventually signed by the then-New York Giants for $4,000 and a salary of $250 a month. He hit the majors in 1951, but the next year, Mays was drafted into the Army. He spent most of the next two seasons stateside at Virginia’s Fort Eustis playing on an all-star military baseball team.
It was there that Mays developed another signature that would set him apart from others who played the game: the basket catch.
When players are learning the game of baseball, they’re taught to catch fly balls above their head, with their glove turned outward, looking the ball into the mitt. In the army, Mays began experimenting with catching the ball while holding his glove outstretched at waist height, his palm turned upward, waiting for the ball to drop in.
He’d seen one of his Giants teammates do it, and he decided to adopt the method to let fans know “this was a new game” and to give journalists something to write about.
“That’s all part of being entertaining,” Mays says in the book. “You’ve got to relax and have fun.” W hen Mays returned to the major leagues in 1954, he was poised to truly break out. It was at the end of the season during the first game of the World Series that Mays made arguably his most famous play.
During Game One, the Giants were facing the heavily favored Cleveland Indians at New York’s Polo Grounds. In the eighth inning, Cleveland’s Vic Wertz smashed a long ball to deep center. Mays, his back to the plate, sped toward the outfield wall and snagged the ball over his shoulder into his underhanded glove at a full run. (His cap, of course, falls off at the end.)
The grab is so famous, it’s simply known as “The Catch.” And although Mays insists it wasn’t actually his greatest play, it happened to come in a World Series and was televised, helping to cement Mays in baseball fans’ minds forever.
“Everything [great about him] is encompassed in that one six-and-half-second play,” Shea says.
Another thing that made Mays stand out was his unique throwing style. He sometimes slung the ball sidearm. It was another quirk he adopted to be more entertaining, although he insists he only threw it this way when no one was on base.
“If you look at film and I’m throwing sidearm, nothing is happening in the game,” Mays says in “24.” “But if I have to make a throw to get a guy out, I go over the top because you want the ball to go straight.”
One other choice Mays made that was vital to building his brand: He almost never sat out. For thirteen straight years, he appeared in more than 150 contests (still a record) and never missed more than three games until 12 years after he’d debuted with the Giants.
“He told me, if I play today and do well, the fans are going to come back tomorrow,” Shea says. “He talked about the importance of playing all the time so the young kids wouldn’t miss out on an opportunity to see him.”
And what’s a legendary athlete without a nickname? Mays earned his moniker early in his career with the Giants when he didn’t yet know everyone’s name, so he’d just offer a generic, “Hey!”
As a result, the sportswriter Barney Kremenko dubbed him the “Say Hey Kid.”
Since then, Mays has used his nickname on an apparel line and a charitable foundation. “He certainly appreciates and understands the personality and the marketing, not just on-field talent,” Shea says.
Now 89, Mays is still active with the Giants, which moved to San Francisco in 1957, and attends most games. For those who were around to see Mays play in person, like the venerable writer Roger Angell, he left an indelible impression.
“I can still see [Joe] DiMaggio with his long strides, never hurried, and I never remember him falling down or lunging for something,” Angell says in “24.” “But Willie would run faster and farther and make a great play. He engaged you. You’d go, ‘Wow.’
“You’d never go ‘Wow’ with DiMaggio.”