Guest Posts on County 10 are provided by contributors and the opinions, thoughts, and comments within are their own and may not necessarily reflect those of County 10.
My dad always liked catchers. He talked about Roy Campanella, Yogi Berra, and Carlton Fisk, but always brought up Gene Tenace when we talked baseball. They were great, but in his eyes, Johnny Bench was in a league of his own.
For me, it was centerfielders, and none was better than the “Say Hey Kid” Willie Mays. Willie left us just yesterday at the venerable age of 93.
To put the greatness of Willie Mays into perspective you don’t have to look any farther than fellow Hall-of-Famer Johnny Bench.
“I was in awe of him,” Bench said. “The first time I met him (at the 1968 All-Star Game), the day before the game, he whispered in my ear, ‘You should be starting the All-Star Game.’ When he left, I couldn’t even speak for a short time. It was like, ‘Oh my God, Willie Mays just talked to me.’ That’s how great Willie was.”
Mays was my favorite baseball player and the best of all time in my opinion. On par with my other favorite athletes Jim Thorpe, Fred Biletnikoff, Jesse Owens, Larry Bird, Joe Frazier, Allison Felix, and Dick Butkus, Willie was the man.
As a kid, I knew nothing of his hardscrabble upbringing in rural Alabama, the racism and bigotry he faced when he broke into the Big Leagues with the New York Giants in 1951or his brief career for the Birmingham Black Barons in the Negro Leagues. I just knew Willie could hit, catch, steal bases, and be counted on in the clutch.
Willie was a spectacular player, but just 20 years old when he was called up to the Giants. Racism was rampant across 1950s America. Giants’ manager Leo Durocher found a home for Mays in Harlem with a couple who cared for the young ballplayer. It was just a short distance from the stadium and was a delight for the neighborhood kids.
One afternoon he hit two home runs then came home and played stickball with the local boys in the street in front of the house. Legend has it that he hit another homer in that stickball game.
My first professional baseball game came in the summer of 1968 when my cousins and I traveled to Candlestick Park with our collective uncles to watch the St. Louis Cardinals battle the San Francisco Giants. It was the only time I ever watched my favorite player of all time, “The Say Hey Kid,” Willie Mays in person.
That afternoon in San Francisco as an 11-year-old kid, was my first professional sporting event.
My dad, and my uncles Chris Pallas and Quentin Raymond took me and my cousins to Candlestick Park to watch the Giants play the Cardinals.
I came to watch Willie Mays play, he was my favorite player and remains so, but the rest of the lineup was a mystery.
There was another Willie on the Giants roster, Willie McCovey. No, I did not realize he was the National League home run leader that year with 36.
The Cardinals were unfamiliar as well. They had some guy named Bob Gibson pitching, I had no idea who he was.
I looked up Gibson’s stats years later and discovered he had a league-leading ERA of 1.12, an astounding figure in these days of situational pitching where no one goes the distance on the mound anymore.
Gibson won 22 games, lost nine, and was the National League’s Most Valuable Player that season.
All three of these baseball immortals now have busts in Cooperstown at the Baseball Hall of Fame, but that skinny, excited soon-to-be sixth grader had no idea who they were.
What I do remember is watching Mays and McCovey hit home runs off Gibson in the game. Home runs were a big deal for someone who didn’t understand the nuances of the game.
Shifts, bunts, tagging up on fly balls, double plays, all those were a mystery to be conquered later in life. I just liked watching the guys hit the ball.
Much later in life, I heard the Alabama hit “Cheap Seats” and it always takes me back to Candlestick.
“We don’t worry about the pennant much, We just like to see the boys hit it deep, There’s nothing like the view from the cheap seats.”
Singles and extra-base hits were great, and home runs were over the moon, but the rest of the game was just background to what was happening at the plate.
My dad was a sergeant in the US Air Force, my uncle Quentin was a baggage handler at San Francisco International Airport and my uncle Chris owned a television store in the Mission District with his brothers. None of them were wealthy, but they were able to take their sons out to a big-league ballgame in style. I’m not sure that’s possible today.
We ate hotdogs, drank too much pop, had popcorn and cotton candy, and we all left with pennants or other souvenirs.
As good as the game was in those days, it remained just a game.
I learned to be a sports fan that summer day back in 1968, and the magic has remained with me my entire life.
Despite the hype, fancy uniforms, ridiculously complex statistics (thanks to the computerized database), and media focusing on salaries rather than performance, it remains a great game.
America’s game, if you will.
But somewhere in the back pages of my memory, that hot, humid afternoon in the City by the Bay springs to mind often.
Football has “The Drive,” basketball, “The Shot,” but baseball has “The Catch” and that was Willie Mays.
Willie was just 23 years old when a deep drive by Cleveland Indian batter Vic Wertz went flying into deep center at the Polo Grounds in game one of the 1954 World Series. It looked uncatchable but Willie sprinted with his back to the plate and made an over-the-shoulder catch that the word “spectacular” is insufficient to describe. If you haven’t seen it, just look up “The Catch” on YouTube.
He was an athlete, arguably the best to ever play baseball, and a man in the discussion of the greatest in any sport, but he was gracious, funny, supportive, and the definition of a role model.
The “Say Hey Kid.” Thanks for the memories, Willie.