A little eye candy for some of my jillions of readers who may be wondering what all the fuss is about. He looks like he might have been an athlete, no?
I had the Twins on the radio when the news of his death became public. Announcer Dan Gladden, who came up in the Giants' organization, talked about all the times he spoke with Willie, how charming and brimming with baseball lore he was: cool, but it seemed like an odd way to talk about a guy who, on the morning of the day he died, was the only living person with a strong claim to being the greatest ballplayer ever. Who was a better hitter? Maybe the Babe, probably Ted Williams, possibly his National League contemporary Hank Aaron. But Mays's all-around game seems like it could put him ahead of these three, and I don't know who else should be considered.
He had a lifetime batting average of .302 and hit 660 homers, yet in the few days since he died identifying the greatest catch he ever made has become a parlor game among fans. The leading candidate is the back-to-the-infield, over-the-shoulder grab of a drive hit into the deep recesses of the Polo Grounds cavernous centerfield during the 1954 World Series. It's so famous that the guy who hit the ball, Vic Wertz, is known for little else even though he was a 4-time all-star. If perhaps the World Series context unfairly elevates that one, there is at the other end of the spectrum a catch he made on May 7, 1951, while playing for the Minneapolis Millers in Nicollet Park. The locally famous Halsey Hall described it in the next morning's Minneapolis Tribune:
Willie Mays turned scoreboard boy. Off Taft Wright, in the third inning, the young genius looked like he was hanging up numbers as he leaped almost to the level of the big league board for a fly ball, banged into the wall, and doubled a runner at second base. It will rank as one of the greatest catches you ever will see.
The guy for the rival Minneapolis Star wrote:
Mays in the third inning made the greatest catch anyone present could recall at Nicollet park. He literally climbed the right center field wall to pick off Taft Wright's jet drive.
It was so nearly an impossible catch that Jim Piersall, Colonel runner on second base, took off and raced for the plate. He headed for the dugout instead of trying to get back to second and the double play was easy.
It happened that my dad was one of the 1351 fans in attendance that evening. According to him, the catch was remarkable because Mays "leaped," not from the ground, but from a place well up the high wall, which he climbed by digging his spikes into the wood. He then fell in a heap to the ground before getting up to throw to second base to complete the double play.
Those two are probably the bookends of high- and low-profile outfield plays he made. Many, many more in the wide intermediate zone. It's harder to talk about his base running, but in the image of him I'll always retain he's sprinting between first and second base after hitting the ball over the rightfielder's head. His cap has fallen off, and he's looking over his right shoulder at the ball and the outfielder to decide whether to try for a triple. It was probably a triple. He hit 141 of them in his career and led the league in triples 3 times (4 times in home runs, notwithstanding the steady competition from, among others, Aaron). The math of 660 career homers is somewhat daunting—at 30 per year, it takes 22 years, so, like, from when you're 20 until you're 42. He had just turned 20 when the above picture was taken, and he made his major league debut about two weeks later.
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