When it comes to examining the great African-American baseball players of yesteryear, they all stand out. Josh Gibson may have been the best home-run hitter. Leroy Robert “Satchel” Paige may have been the best pitcher. And Jackie Robinson may have been the first to play in the professional leagues opening the doors for others by overcoming the racial taunts and bigotries of people even on his same team.
But Willie Mays was the GOAT. All baseball players, especially African Americans after Mays, stood on his shoulders. And it all began with one catch while Mays was only 23 on Sept. 29, 1954, during Game 1 of the World Series between the San Francisco Giants and the Cleveland Indians. Score was tied 2-2 with the bases loaded by the Indians when Cleveland batter Vic Wertz hit a deep fly to center field. Mays running after it with his back toward home plate caught it in his glove. But this wasn’t going to be a sac fly as he turned around and threw it to infield preventing any runners from advancing.
The over-the-shoulder catch helped the Giants go on to win the first game in extra innings 5-2. San Francisco would win the World Series that year. But it made Mays the thing of legends. Considering his accomplishments on the field, it was the thing that kept the naysayers from saying it was a fluke or a lucky catch. Mays started out with Birmingham Black Barons before moving on to the Giants in 1951 and 1952 and staying with them from 1954 to 1972 ending his career at the New York Mets in 1972 and 1973. Both the Giants and Mets retired his number 24.
Mays finished his career with a batting average of .302. At the time of his retirement, he held the National League record for career runs scored (2,062), and ranked second in league history behind Stan Musial in games played (2,992), third in home runs (660), at bats (10,881), runs batted in (1,903), total bases (6,066), extra-base hits (1,323) and walks (1,464), fourth in hits (3,293), fifth in slugging percentage (.557), and eighth in doubles (523).
His 140 triples ranked fourth among players active after 1945. He holds major league records for games as a center fielder (2,829), putouts as an outfielder (7,095) and extra-inning home runs (22), and ended his career behind only Ty Cobb in total games as an outfielder (2,842), ranking seventh in assists (188) and third in double plays (59) in center field.
Mays was elected in 1979 to the Baseball Hall of Fame during his first year of eligibility and was named to the Major League Baseball All-Century Team in 1999. In 2015, President Barack Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
This is why I think the kids in The Sandlot wouldn’t have been praising Babe Ruth as much. It was the summer of 1962. They’d be talking about Mays and the homerun battle between Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris. Ruth had played his last game on May 30, 1935, a good 27 years before the movie is set and probably before their parents had gotten married. There’s one thing I know about kids and when they’re tweens about to hit puberty and discover women like Wendy Peffercorn, they don’t see anything past 10 years at the most.
They all would’ve assumed Ruth was some old fuddy-duddy grandpa. It’s the same as you don’t like the music your parents listened to even though it was probably The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin until you get older. You don’t really care about the wonders of the older movies until you yourself get a little older. No, they would’ve all been excited if Mays had signed the baseball not Ruth.
Well, maybe Benny would’ve been a huge Babe Ruth fan, but even Smalls would’ve known who Mays was.
It also helped Mays came about during the same period in which Elvis Presley took the music and entertainment world by storm. As John Lennon said, “Before Elvis, there was nothing.” While Ruth, Cobb and Lou Gehrig may have been great ball players that adults and children alike could admire, Mays became of of the first major celebrity athletes. In City Slickers, they discuss going to a baseball camp as a child that Mays was at and Daniel Stern’s character says Mays was his idol.
But more importantly, Mays took his celebrity stature with great humility. Reggie Jackson says there was a lot of racial discrimination and bias he suffered. It was bad for Robinson and Mays. Yet, Mays had to take it all like Robinson did by not letting it get to him. The best way to prove the racists and bigots wrong is to show them he wasn’t an inferior person. Hank Aaron also dealt with the racism as it became more apparent he was going to break Ruth’s homerun record, Aaron said when two young men ran out on the Atlanta Braves field on April 8, 1974, he was scared they were going to hurt him.
However, all the two 17-year-old boys (Britt Gaston and Cliff Courtenay) wanted to do was pat him on the back and maybe shake Aaron’s hand. It’s a lot different world today 50 years later as it was 70 years ago during the World Series game. But it seems some things haven’t changed. If they say surviving is the best revenge, then proving people wrong should be a close second.
Goodbye, “Say Hey Kid”!
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 