- Mays retired with 660 home runs, then third all-time, now sixth
- He is perhaps best known for his overhand basket catch in the 1954 World Series.
- The Giants retired his number 24 in 1972 and there is a statue of Mays in front of Oracle Park.
Willie Mays, the Giants’ “Say Hey Kid” of the 1950s and ’60s, a home run hitter and center field star for most of his 23-year major league career, died Tuesday at age 93 after of a brief illness, the San Francisco Giants announced. .
Mays, almost indisputably the greatest living Hall of Famer, would be honored Thursday night when Major League Baseball hosts a Giants-St. Louis Cardinals at Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Mays’ hometown and site of his Negro League career before making his major league debut in 1948, a year after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier of the league. But on Monday he indicated that he would not be able to attend and that he would enjoy the game from home.
Mays earned 95% of the vote when he was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame on the first ballot in 1979, after a career with 660 home runs (third all-time when he retired), 3,283 hits, two MVP awards of the National League and a record 24 All-Star Game appearances (two games played each year between 1959 and 1962). Mays’ All-Star Game records include most at-bats (75), most hits (23), most runs (20) and most stolen bases (six).
“His incredible accomplishments and statistics do not begin to describe the amazement I felt watching Willie Mays dominate the game in every way imaginable,” Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement Tuesday night. . “We will never forget this true giant on and off the field. On behalf of Major League Baseball, I extend my deepest condolences to Willie’s family, his friends throughout our game, Giants fans everywhere, and his countless admirers around the world.
“Thursday’s game at historic Rickwood Field was designed to be a celebration of Willie Mays and his teammates. With sadness in our hearts, it will now also serve as a national memorial to an American who will forever remain on the short list of players.” most impactful individuals our great game has ever known.”
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Mays is perhaps best known for what is considered one of the greatest plays of all time, his basket catch in the 1954 World Series for the New York Giants against the Cleveland Indians.
It is known simply as “The Catch”. Mays called it “The Launch.”
The first game was tied 2-2 at the Polo Grounds in New York City when Vic Wertz hit a ball about 460 feet to center, appearing out of Mays’ reach. Running at full speed, Mays caught the ball over his shoulder and, in a single motion, threw it back into the infield.
The Indians failed to score and the Giants won the game on Dusty Rhodes’ pinch-hit home run in the 10th inning, sweeping the Series to win their first championship in 21 years.
“It was a catch by the wide receiver,” Mays said. “I knew I was going to get it. I was high enough to catch it. That wasn’t the problem. The hardest part was getting it back into the box.
“I knew Larry (Doby) could score (from second) if I didn’t get the ball back quickly. I scored a lot from second base on a deep fly that was caught. That was the only thing I was worried about.”
The basket catch was Mays’ trademark, catching fly balls at his waist instead of above his head. He learned that style while playing baseball in the Army after being drafted in the early 1950s.
“I wanted to do something different than other guys who play the outfield,” Mays said. “When I got out of the Army, (manager) Leo (Durocher) said he could do it. ‘Just don’t drop it.’ I missed two. One in Pittsburgh, one in New York, ten years apart.
“They invented the All-Star Game for Willie Mays,” Hall of Famer Ted Williams once said.
Five Tool Player
Mays won the National League Most Valuable Player award in 1954 in his first year back from the Army, hitting a .345 average with a league-leading 41 home runs.
He was a five-tool player who played with exuberance. He was revered by the Giants organization and loved by his adopted hometown of New York. He was frequently photographed in his youth playing stickball with children in his Harlem neighborhood after joining the New York Giants.
Had Mays not missed nearly two full seasons in the military or played his home games in San Francisco at windy Candlestick Park, longtime baseball observers believe he could have hit 800 home runs.
“I don’t like to look at it that way,” Mays once told the San Francisco Chronicle. “I like to look at it like I’m a good 20 or 22 years old. I had my time and I enjoyed it.”
His contemporaries in center field ranged from Joe DiMaggio of the New York Yankees, when Mays broke into the big leagues, to Duke Snider of the Brooklyn Dodgers and Mickey Mantle of the Yankees. Mays, Snider and Mantle became the inspiration for the 1981 song Willie, Mickey And The Duke, more commonly known as Talkin’ Baseball, by Terry Cashman.
Mays’ biggest idols, he said, were DiMaggio, Ted Williams, Stan Musial and Jackie Robinson.
“All you saw on the cover in my hometown (Birmingham, Alabama) was Joe, Ted and Stan,” Mays told the San Francisco Chronicle just before his 75th birthday.
“I wanted to choose who I wanted to be like, and I chose Joe, because Joe was a more versatile player than the other two. Joe couldn’t hit like Ted and Stan, but he could do everything. I played the same type of game.”
Mays learned the game from his father, Willie Sr., named after President William Howard Taft. Willie Mays Sr. played on all-black teams in the segregated South. Father and son played together on a semi-professional steel mill team when young Mays was 14 years old.
“Everyone knew him in Birmingham,” Mays said. “They called him ‘Cat’ because he could run like a cat, very fast. When I played with him, I played center, he played left. I told him: ‘You play on the line, I’ll take care of everything else.'” ‘
“He followed me to New York and then to San Francisco. He wasn’t just my father. He was my friend. We could talk about anything, which was good for me.”
Origin of ‘Say Hey Kid’
Mays’ favorite memory from all his years in baseball, he said, was his 1951 scouting report when he played for Class AAA Minneapolis, where he hit .477 with eight home runs and 30 RBIs in 35 games.
“Everything he does is sensational,” the report says. “(He) has made the most spectacular catches, runs and throws with the best… The sensational black boy is the outstanding player in the Minneapolis club and probably in all the minor leagues… (He) hits all the fields and hits all the pitches.
When Mays was later asked to define his style, he simply said, “When they throw the ball, I hit it. When they hit the ball, I catch it.”
He was assigned the 24th spot in his first year with the Giants and, months later, received the nickname “Say Hey Kid.”
“You see a guy and you’re like, ‘Hey, man. Say hello, man,'” Mays said. “Ted was ‘Splinter’. Joe was ‘Joltin’ Joe’. Stan was ‘The Man.’
“I guess I hit some home runs and they said, ‘Say Hey Kid.'” “
Mays gave the nickname to sportswriter Jimmy Cannon, while others attributed it to sportswriter Barney Kremenko.
Cannon created the nickname, he once said, because Mays didn’t know everyone’s names when he first came to the minors. Kremenko, then a writer for the New York Journal, referred to Mays as “Say Hey Kid” after hearing Mays say: “Say who,” “Say what,” “Say where,” “Say hello.”
The San Francisco City Council established Willie Mays Day on May 24 each year, celebrating the anniversary of his first day in the major leagues, May 24, 1951.
The Giants retired their uniform number, 24, in 1972 and the address of their home stadium, AT&T Ballpark, is 24 Willie Mays Plaza. The bronze statue of him in front of the main entrance is surrounded by 24 palm trees, and the right field wall is 24 feet high.
In 2015, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama.
Contributing: AJ Perez
Keynote USA
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