Baseball speedster Bobby Bonds was at nearly full speed approaching the ugly right-center fence at Candlestick Park when he took a stutter step as if considering a mighty leap.
Suddenly, though, moving even faster, no hesitation at all, came a freak of nature from the other direction, one named Willie Mays. Mays soared high above Bonds, glove stretched above the 10-foot fence, hitting both Bonds and the fence simultaneously. Mays crumpled to the ground, momentarily motionless, appearing to be knocked out.
Bonds, also shaken up, had the presence of mind to point to Mays’s glove and then lift it for all the world to see. Safe inside the webbing was the baseball he and Mays had been chasing.
As a 6-year-old on April 11, 1970, I saw the catch live on my grandmother’s TV. To this day, it remains the single most breathtaking baseball play I’ve ever seen. (Decades later, I found video of it on the internet. Please watch it here, although the video stops before Bonds lifts Mays’s glove.) The nearly 39-year-old Mays already had been my favorite player (albeit tentatively) because the back of my Mays baseball card showed him with 579 home runs, so much more than anyone else that it boggled the mind, while something about his casual smile on the front-side photo made him immensely likable.
But after that catch, the Say Hey Kid became my greatest sports hero — the more so as I read or saw retrospectives about how he doted on the neighborhood kids in New York in his early years, how he worked so hard for children’s charities, and how he was a beloved and generous teammate, a class act through and through. At some point, I learned of the time he had run to help opposing catcher Johnny Roseboro when Mays’s teammate Juan Marichal hit Roseboro over the head with a bat — then had cradled Roseboro’s bloody head momentarily before leading the catcher off the field for first aid.
In 1971, I followed in the sports section daily as a 40-year-old Mays seemed to will his injury-hobbled Giants almost single-handedly into the playoffs, leading the league in on-base percentage while notching a superstar-level OPS of .907. (OPS wasn’t a common stat then, but even without it, it was clear Mays advanced farther on the basepaths more often than just about anyone.) And in 1973, I watched admiringly as the retiring Mays, with his skills finally diminished, again played peacemaker by walking to the Shea Stadium outfield stands to stop fans from throwing objects at opponent Pete Rose, who was hard off a previous-inning brawl.
This was not just the greatest all-around ballplayer who ever lived but a good man, a bright light, a true sportsman.
Nobody played like Willie Mays — not with as much flair, not with as much boldness, not with as much intelligence, not with as much speed and power and joy in one package. And, as I later learned, he did it all in an era when black players often endured outrageous racism that, if directed at Mays, seemed to roll right off his back. He fought racism, he later said, by “changing hatred to laughter.”
Baseball aficionados once knew all the creative ways people strove to describe his virtuosity. “Willie’s glove was where triples went to die,” said one. The great Ted Williams said, “They invented the All-Star Game for Willie Mays.” Actress Tallulah Bankhead (shown here on a subsequent TV show with Mays) said, “There have only been two geniuses in the world: Willie Mays and Willie Shakespeare.” Cartoonist Charles Schulz used Mays’s name in his Peanuts strip more than any other real person because, he said, Mays “always symbolized perfection.” And one rock band recorded a whole song called “Sometimes I Dream of Willie Mays.”
Nobody was like Willie. He hit 660 homers despite playing home games in parks (the Polo Grounds and Candlestick) considered very tough for hitters during an era that was more pitcher-friendly (higher mounds, wider strike zones). He missed two seasons in Army service, costing himself probably another 60 to 70 dingers. He advanced from first to third base on teammates’ groundouts to the shortstop, and he ran all the way home after tagging up at second on sacrifice flies.
Today, Willie Mays turns 90. He is the oldest living Hall of Famer. Only the seventh black man ever to play in the Major Leagues, Mays is the only one of the first 10 who still lives. The greatest of the remaining superstars he played against, Hank Aaron, Bob Gibson, and Frank Robinson, have left us in the past two years. But Mays goes on, still relatively healthy apart from eyesight badly dimmed by glaucoma.
All too often, we writers save tributes until they are obituaries. Far better, I think, to write something a still-vital subject might read, to understand just how much he meant to people. So, if somebody can get this column to him, I say, “Happy 90th, Mr. Mays. You were magical. You set a wondrously admirable example. In the mind’s eye, you’ll always soar above the wall.”
