Say what? Baseball legend Willie Mays turns 90 today.
Baseball’s greatest living player remains focus of sport’s awe
Just from the imaginary perspective of a historical flyover, 1931 appears to have been a highly significant year in the production of humans. Mickey Mantle was born that year, along with Ernie Banks, Beano Cook, Toni Morrison, Mikhail Gorbachev, James Earl Jones, and, 90 years ago today, Willie Howard Mays Jr.
For multiple generations of fans, it’s still difficult to position baseball’s greatest living player as a senior citizen, let alone a man who was born the same week they finished the Empire State Building.
So yeah, the truth is Willie’s really old, but according to San Francisco Giants president and CEO Larry Baer, who visited a KNBR podcast last week, Mays remains as vital as a 90-year-old with fading eyesight can be. “When you shake hands with him,” Baer said, “oh my goodness, it’s like he could grab a bat and clobber a baseball.”
The Giants have an off day scheduled today, Willie’s actual birthday.
I talked this week with former pitcher Don Schwall, who was the American League Rookie of the Year with the Red Sox in 1961 (and somehow avoided serving a home run ball to either Mantle or Roger Maris), then got traded to the National League’s Pirates, where he could deal with the likes of Mays and Hank Aaron.
“People say Mays was the best they ever saw, and that’s what I say when I’m asked,” said Schwall, now 85 and living in the North Hills area of Pittsburgh. “He just accomplished everything, but the thing I really loved about him was his natural-ness, the way he looked; he looked like he really enjoyed playing. Players who have that ability to love what they’re doing, that’s a gift, and he always had this kind of driving force to win and to play the game.”
This list of baseball measurements in which Mays led the National League between 1951 and 1973 would run farther than he could hit a hanging slider. I could tell you that once, twice, three times, four times, five times or 10 times, he led the league in this, that, and the other thing, and I could do it in multi-generational analytics. He led the league in WAR (wins above replacement, which roughly translates as “who is the best player?”) 10 times. Despite missing most of two seasons for military service and playing too many games with the Candlestick Park wind blowing straight in from left field, he hit 660 home runs.
Yet the numbers don’t match the images, much less the memories. That’s the problem with numbers. In the words of the great American philosopher and behavioral scientist Abraham Kaplan: “If you can measure it, that ain’t it.”
With Mays, it wasn’t so much in the numbers; it was the aura.
Steve Blass, who was a kid growing up in Connecticut when Mays made “The Catch” in the 1954 World Series against an Indians team Blass adored, recalled their first professional encounter.
“At Candlestick — I just got called up as a rookie in 1964,” Blass said. “He comes up. I think, ‘Oh my God, Willie Mays. I’m pitching to Willie Mays.’ I know I’ve got four of his bubble gum cards in a box at home. I throw it, and he hits it on the ground wide of (Donn) Clendenon at first. And I am so delighted that he didn’t hit into San Francisco Bay that I’m late going to cover the bag and Mays beats it out.
“The next day (Pirates manager Danny) Murtaugh wanted to see me in his office. ‘That Mays can really get down the line, can’t he?’ I said yeah. He said, ‘That will cost you $100, see if you can remember that.’ ”
Though he led the league in stolen bases four times, Mays’ baserunning is probably the skill for which he’s least appreciated. He won 12 Gold Gloves, same as Clemente, and his arm was the center field equivalent of The Great One, as well. Clemente teammate Willie Stargell, thrown out at the plate by Mays, got quoted like this: “I couldn’t believe Mays could throw that far. I figured there had to be a relay. Then I found out there wasn’t. He’s too good for this world.”
But if Jackie Robinson was the game’s greatest baserunner, he wasn’t more than a step ahead of Willie.
The late great broadcaster Harry Kalas once told me he saw Mays score from first in the Astrodome on a ground-ball single to left field. “And,” Harry said, pausing dramatically, “he was not running on the pitch.”
Kalas was the Astros’ play-by-play guy before moving on to Philadelphia. The single to left had gone in the direction of Bob Aspromonte. Mays took off at his typical break-neck pace, in part because Aspromonte was playing Jim Ray Hart deep and there was a small chance of taking an extra base. When the shocked outfielder looked up and realized he had no chance to nail Mays at third, he lolly-popped the throw to the infield. Mays looked over his shoulder, never broke stride and beat a relay to the plate.
I like to remember that when I see players who settle for singles on balls that should be doubles, and especially when they get two bases but should have had three. Mays didn’t settle. Daring was his brand, excellence his aura.
The first thing former Pirates relief ace Elroy Face said when I told him Mays would turn 90 this week was to tell me, “Well I’ve got three years on him!”
Then he told me this. “One game at Forbes Field, I came in in relief, and we had a threerun lead. I got the first out in the ninth, and then Mays came up, and he was hitless that night. The catcher, Hank Foiles, called for a curveball. My whole career, very seldom did I shake the catcher off. I might shake my head to make the batter think I was, but I mostly threw whatever was called.
“I’d always done fine against Mays. I threw him the curveball. He hit it into Schenley Park. Now we had a two-run lead. Hank came out to the mound. He said, ‘Well, he didn’t have a hit tonight, so I told him what was coming.’ ”
Why on earth? Dunno, but I’m guessing it had something to do with the fact that he’s Willie Mays.