Say HEY! Willie Mays, 75 on Saturday

I was Zooming last night with an internet friend (we've never met) from San Francisco who saw Mays all through his prime, going back to 1958, when he was five.

I think I have a 60s WM baseball card

Posnanski's Mays post went up today. It's less about Mays than trying to decide who is now the Greatest Living Player. I guess he wrote so much about Mays in The Baseball 100--Mays was #1--he didn't want to repeat himself.

He starts with the idea that Bonds is obviously the GLP, but eventually, and circuitously, settles on Griffey, which will no doubt raise the ire of many.

Gleaned one interesting thing from a quick skim. In '69, when the writers chose their greatest all-time and greatest living players lists, they moved Mays to RF so they could get him onto the living list:

RHP: Walter Johnson (All-Time); Bob Feller (Living--died in 2010)
LHP: Lefty Grove (All-Time); Lefty Grove (Living--died in 1975)
C: Mickey Cochrane (All-Time); Bill Dickey (Living--died in 1993)
1B: George Sisler (All-Time); George Sisler and Stan Musial (Living)
2B: Rogers Hornsby (All-Time); Charlie Gehringer (Living--died in 1993)
3B: Pie Traynor (All-Time); Pie Traynor (Living--died in 1972)
SS: Honus Wagner (All-Time); Joe Cronin (Living--died in 1984)
LF: Ty Cobb (All-Time); Ted Williams (Living--died in 2002)
CF Joe DiMaggio (All-Time); Joe DiMaggio (Living--died in 1999)
RF: Babe Ruth (All-Time); Willie Mays (Living--died in 2024)

"There’s a little bit to unpack here, particularly the fact that the writers put Willie Mays in rightfield to get him on the living team, which, you know, on the one hand, I get it, because having an all-time living baseball team without Willie Mays would have been ridiculous. On the other hand, listing Willie Mays as a rightfielder is like listing Leonardo Da Vinci as an auto mechanic. I’m sure he’d have been able to do one helluva tuneup, but it entirely misses the point."

Thinking about Jerry West and the NBA logo, this is a great idea.

https://www.tsn.ca/video/buster-olney-willie-mays-absolutely-should-be-new-mlb-logo~2943148

Haven't won since Mays passing. Down to 2 starters. This year's team just isn't any good, mediocre.

I need something else to do.

Wrong thread

from the old tyme baseball photos thread, h/t gyac

I follow former SI photographer Walter Iooss on IG (you should too) and he posted this pic he took of Willie Mays the other day on Mays’s 90th bday. Pull this picture out every time someone says “they didn’t have athletes then like we have now.” pic.twitter.com/y6buSb1o54

— Harry Arnett (@harryarnett) May 7, 2021

no idea what that last line of my post is doing there

Greil Marcus, of all people--he is from the Bay Area--got a long "Ask Greil" about Willie Mays that he responded to today. I'll only include the last bit of the question; I like his answer.

I'm sure as a Bay Area native, you have fond memories of Willie Mays, as do all baseball fans for his talents were wonderous, but whatever his civil rights battles were, they were mostly private, sad to say. —JAMES R STACHO

I imagine that in some part of his being, every day Willie Mays said to himself, not in these words, but in his own, I am my own revolution. How did he feel that night in 1963 when in the bottom of the 16-inning scoreless tie with Warren Spahn and Juan Marichal on the mound for every pitch he ended it with a home run? Oh, I feel so fine, I am so lucky to be allowed to play this wonderful game? Or was it, Take that, you fuckers. Go back down in the ground, you Klan killers. You’ll never catch me.

A lot of people saw that. A lot of people felt that. There’s no way to measure to what degree Willie Mays might have inspired the people at the Cleveland Summit to do what they did even if he didn’t do it, even if he thought, I had to do my service, go on and do yours--which I doubt.

(The Cleveland Summit being the famous gathering of Black athletes in 1967 to support Ali--not attended by Mays or anybody else from MLB.)

He may well have thought that. I was reading about how Henry “Hank” Aaron* and Jackie Robinson were angry that Mays never spoke out over the racism he and they faced. There’s this interview I always think of, from 2009, totally casual talk to young Giants players:

“My father told me no matter what anybody said, never to fight. Turn the other cheek. I’d call him up and he’d ask, “Did you fight today?’ Back then, you had to make sure you were bigger than those people who called you names. They called you all kinds of names. But I knew for me to get ahead, I had to take all that kind of stuff. Every time somebody called me a name, I hit the ball.’’

Finally watched the Reggie interview earlier today--fantastic. (I had to laugh at a couple of side issues: when Reggie included A-Rod on his list of all-time greats, wondered if Jeter did a slow burn; and when Ortiz brought up the HOF, wondered the same about A-Rod.)

"I am my own revolution"--love that.

Any Black player pre-'68 or so had a second overriding fact to deal with aside from society in general: baseball was far more conservative than basketball or football.

Re the Reggie interview: knowing how much all the A's hated Charlie Finley when it came to anything related to money, I thought it was gracious of Jackson to mention Finley walking the team out when his country club wouldn't let Jackson attend a ceremony (they relented).

I haven’t finished this yet but very good piece regarding Mays, Robinson and their respective politics:

https://frontofficesports.com/willie-mays-humility-key-to-his-genius/

Will read that for sure.

I came across this in the days after but didn't want to post it so soon.

https://www.villagevoice.com/hank-aaron-and-willie-mays-new-revelations-on-just-how-much-they-hated-each-other/

Do I believe the piece? Yes--Allen Barra is an excellent baseball writer.

Does it make me think any less of Mays? Not in the least--if he did have some resentment towards Aaron, I think that would be unfortunate but very human. 1) Mays spent most of his career as the guy who was going to pass Babe Ruth--first him and Mantle, then just him. To see his body break down while Aaron kept going, I'm sure that stung. 2) I could be wrong here, but Mays in the '50s might have led something of a double life. The overwhelming reality was life as a Black player, and all the garbage that went along with that. But maybe he also saw himself as part of New York baseball royalty, along with Mantle and Robinson and Berra and DiMaggio and everyone else. Which, for millions, he was. To see this guy in Milwaukee--and later, playing for a team in the deep South--come along and surpass him, maybe that stung too.

A friend - in his 80s, and a lifelong baseball nut - says: “ I don't think the article got the facts about Henry Aaron right. I always understood that he was outspoken and felt obligated to continue Jackie Robinson's approach.”

https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/2-GettyImages-81418934-scaled.jpg

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https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/may0-049-mays-U1067504.jpg

Lot goin on here...

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The first photo with Durocher was probably the one I saw second-most often in the days after. Weirdly, Mays had his back to the camera for the one I saw most often.

The two reporters in the locker room are absolutely killing me. These people existed! They weren’t just cartoons!

I was putting away some stuff today, including the NYT my friend bought for me the day after Mays died. Their front-page obit was written by helped-invent-rock-criticism Richard Goldstein.