As one who pitifully attempted to hit weakly pitched balls as a natural lefty (advantage, right?) back in Little League days, I stand in utter awe of Mickey Mantle, Eddie Murray, Larry Jones...average and power both sides...yikes!
Willie Mays was my childhood hero.
Rest well, Willie. Heaven is a better place today.
From a friend of a friend.............
"One of the greatest baseball players of all time died this evening. Willie Mays passed away at the age of 93. He has a special place in my heart and I thought I would share it.
At the age of 10 my best friend and I attended a game at Wrigley field. It was an afternoon ballgame (no lights) and we accompanied our mothers and siblings to the park on Ladies Day, a Cubs promotion where ladies paid half price for grandstand tickets and their kids were free. These were the years the Cubs were consistent cellar dwellers and nobody in Chicago was clamoring for tickets. This game drew less than five thousand fans. Tom and I looked at the centerfield bleaches and nobody (as in none) was sitting there. We asked our moms if we could go sit there by ourselves. We countered their reluctance with the rational that they could keep an eye on us because we would be easy to see. They agreed, with their usual warnings, and we proceeded with a sense of independence neither of us had ever experienced. We sat in the first row and peered over the centerfield wall to get a feel for our location, then waved to our moms as agreed. It was a cloudless, sunny day and a cool breeze hit us in the face. Perfect weather for a baseball game.
It got better. After the Giants batted in the top of the first a guy named Willie Mays came out to centerfield to play defense. Tom and I immediately shouted "say hey Willie" and Mays turned around and waved to us. Talk about excited, it can't get better than that. We were wrong. The next inning Mays came to CF but proceeded to the CF wall where we were sitiing. He introduced himself and asked our names. We replied. He remarked on the fact we were alone in the centerfield bleachers and we had the same view as he did. At this point we are bouncing on our bench with excitement and had the gumption to ask him to hit a homer to us so that we would have a new baseball to play games with. "I'll try" was his response as he resumed his position in CF.
The next time up, Willie parked a homer about five rows above us in CF. Having the CF bleachers to ourselves we now had a MAJOR LEAGUE baseball. When Mays came out for defense he came back to the wall with a huge smile on his face and we thanked him. He asked us who would keep the ball. We were dumbfounded. All we had thought about was that Willie Mays had hit one out for us and we would have a new baseball for tomorrows games. Our response must have touched him, because he answered his own question by stating that we needed another so that both of us would have a new ball. Later in the game another Giant (I believe it was Leon Wagner) it one out for us. Again, Mays came to the wall to ask if we had both baseballs. We each held up a baseball and confirmed we did, thanking him for our special day. He knew he had made a difference for two 10 year old kids, but he thanked us for making his day special as well. With that he returned to his position in CF for the final three outs in the ballgame.
I suspect that afternoon is a reason I have loved the game of baseball my entire life. That memory has always put a smile on my face. It is one of the best days of my life thanks to a man named Willie Mays. It is with true sadness that I type this story at Willies passing. Thanks for letting me share it with you. Thank you Mr. Mays.
Say hey Willie, say hey kid.
RIP
I grew up in the Bay Area so Willie was my baseball idol. My dad was a truck driver and worked really hard to support his wife and three kids, usually six days a week. He took me to just one Giants game when I was about ten. I was so excited! Willie comes up in the first inning and hits it high, he hits it deep, I jump to my feet, arms raised ready to scream as Willie rounds the bases, and then the shortstop makes the catch. Oops, I sit down quickly hoping no one saw, nobody said anything cause they knew I was just an ignorant little kid that had never seen a real home run in person. So Willie didn't hit a homer for me, I didn't get a baseball to take home, and I had to wait 50 years for the Giants to win a championship. My dad was a little on the prejudice side, using the n word occasionally, but I could bring that to an immediate halt by simply saying "so you're telling me Willie Mays is lazy and stupid", worked every time. Willie was never in a fight, always the first one to a fight to break it up. As a kid that taught me one of the greatest lessons of my life, more important than anything else he did on the field. Thank you Willie, I'll never forget, you're the greatest of all time. Say hey Willie, RIP.
For me, the passing of Mays is most significant because it is the final nail in the coffin of the Mantle/Mays/Aaron era of baseball. Most pick Mays as the best of this magnificent trio, but I was always most fond of Aaron. Mantle/Mays overrated based on playing in front of NYC media. Aaron, vastly, vastly underrated.
I just checked a few prominent lists of the top baseball players of all time, including ESPN, Bleacher Report, The Sporting News. Aaron ranked no lower than fifth.
Dr. B, I'm not sure who you are listening to who is "vastly underrating" Aaron, but they clearly don't have much baseball knowledge.
^^^^^^ What he said. ^^^^^^ In no cognoscenti-esque baseball evaluation world has Aaron been "vastly, vastly underrated". To be blunt.......that's simply a false statement. However......the general assessment that Mays was a *smidgen* superior defensively and on the basepaths is accurate - or at the very least a valid viewpoint to take.
Perhaps one of the more astonishing baseball stats I've ever seen:
Hope that link works. "WAR", of course, was/is not on the backs of my baseball cards, nor was it "a thing" until relatively recently............so my archival/legacy/first-hand grasp of that metric does not exist. But I believe "the math" behind it is solid, or generally regarded as so. I'm not gonna take time to look up Aaron's at the moment.........but that would/will be interesting to compare.
[Edit/update: Mays 156; Aaron 143. But Aaron had 1445 more PAs. Both utterly gaudy numbers. Reminds one of MrFixit's elo.]
And now.........only 10 days after Willie......
https://www.npr.org/2024/06/29/nx-s1-5023670/orlando-cepeda-baseball-hall-of-famer-baby-bull-dead
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orlando_Cepeda