Willie Mays could run, hit, field and throw and did all of it with the flair of a master showman. The “Say Hey Kid” may have tormented opponents, but he played with a smile that retained its boyishness into old age.
“I’m not sure what the hell ‘charisma’ is,’’ Cincinnati Reds first baseman Ted Kluszewski once said, “but I get the feeling it’s Willie Mays.”
Mays, the incandescent Giants outfielder and a symbol of baseball’s golden age, died Tuesday. He was 93.
With his exhilarating blend of power and speed, the Hall of Famer smashed 660 career home runs (sixth best all-time), tallied 3,283 hits (12th) and won four stolen base titles.
He made 24 All-Star Games, captured two MVP awards and won 12 Gold Glove awards for fielding excellence.
But looking at Mays through statistics is like measuring an artist by the dimensions of the canvas. His story is told in images: An over-the-shoulder catch at the Polo Grounds. A blur of legs churning from first to third on a single. A cap flying away as he glided across the outfield.
Mays could do almost everything.
“If he could cook, I’d marry him,” said Leo Durocher, his first manager.
Mays played in the majors for 22 seasons (1951-73), primarily for the Giants — first in New York and later in San Francisco.
Bay Area fans were initially cool to the New York import when the team moved West in ‘58. Local fans tended to gravitate more toward homegrown stars like Willie McCovey and Orlando Cepeda. But in the end, Mays proved impossible to resist.
“The line I always used to describe him was: Willie Mays was the happiest guy in the world to be Willie Mays,” the late broadcaster Lon Simmons once said. “That’s what he wanted to be: He wanted to be Willie Mays.”
The Giants created an address in his honor — 24 Willie Mays Plaza — when they built AT&T Park in 2000. A statue depicting his powerful swing greets millions of fans a year.
The real Mays, meanwhile, also became a fixture at the ballpark over his final decades of life. The Giants hired him as a special assistant to the president, but he was essentially paid to be Willie Mays. He regaled listeners, including awestruck current players, with tales about the Negro Leagues or facing Sandy Koufax or how he made his famous over-the-shoulder catch at the Polo Grounds in 1954. Mays also provided brilliant baseball tips to anyone brave enough to ask, a service available to the front office as well. (Mays took credit for endorsing the team’s interest in drafting a Florida State catcher named Buster Posey in 2008).
Along the way, Mays laughed easily and chattered constantly, just like he did while playing stickball on the streets of Harlem, which he often did after games at the Polo Grounds.
But for all of Mays’ speed, power and grace, rival executive Branch Rickey once said the player’s greatest attribute was actually “the frivolity in his bloodstream that doubles his strength with laughter.”
THE EARLY DAYS
Born on May 6, 1931, in Westfield, Alabama., Mays showed rare athletic gifts almost from the crib. His father, Willie Howard Mays Sr., worked as a railroad porter and also swept floors at the local steel mill, where he was a star on the company baseball team. Willie’s mother, Annie Satterwhite, was a standout in both track and basketball. (Willie Sr. and Annie never married.)
By the time he was 5, Mays would play catch with his father on the farmland near their home. Willie Sr. taught his son each position, one-by-one starting with catcher, and told him that he could boost his value by honing every skill available to a ballplayer.
Mays was a prodigious talent in whatever sport he tried. He was a rocket-armed quarterback and a sharpshooting forward for Fairfield Industrial High School. But the teenager concluded that his compact frame (5-foot-11, 170 pounds) was best-suited to the diamond.
He signed to play for the Birmingham Black Barons in 1948, when he was 17. Mays played three seasons in the Negro Leagues, where he learned to play with a zest capable of attracting large crowds. This was also where Mays mastered the art of turning a deaf ear to the immense prejudice he encountered from the segregated South. He never reacted to taunts from the stands, nor was he rankled when he was forced to stay in a hotel separate from his white minor league teammates.
“Positive thinking allowed me to look past whatever was happening,” Mays once said. “If you can overcome your pain and do your job, the pain disappears the next day.”
WELCOME TO THE BIG LEAGUES
The New York Giants outmaneuvered a growing parade of scouts to sign the 19-year-old wunderkind in June of 1950. They did so largely on the advice of San Francisco-born scout Eddie Montague, who told his bosses: “You better send somebody down here with a barrelful of money and grab this kid.”
The Giants pounced, landing the future Hall of Famer with an offer of $5,000.
The do-everything center fielder made short work of the minor leagues, starting the 1951 season by batting .477 over 35 games for the Minneapolis Millers of the Triple-A American Association.
Mays was at a movie theater in Sioux City, Iowa, when the projectionist stopped the film to make an announcement. “If Willie Mays is in the audience,” a man asked, “would he please report immediately to his manager at the hotel.” He was being summoned to the big leagues.
Mays was 20 years old when he made his debut on May 25, 1951, the third African-American to play for the Giants, following Hank Thompson and Monte Irvin. He had only one hit in his first 26 at-bats, but the lone hit was a titanic homer off future Hall of Famer Warren Spahn.
“I’ll never forgive myself,” Spahn later quipped. “We might have gotten rid of Willie forever if I’d only struck him out.”
That homer aside, Mays continued to struggle against everyone else. Giants coach Herman Franks finally noticed the kid crying in front of his locker after a game. He alerted Durocher by telling him: “You better go down and see your boy.”
Durocher sidled up to the disconsolate Mays and draped a fatherly arm over his shoulder. “As long as I’m the manager of the Giants, you’re my center fielder,” Durocher told him. “Tomorrow, next week, next month. You’re here to stay. With your talent, you’re going to get plenty of hits.”
The next day, Mays drilled a single and a 400-foot triple to right-center field, signaling the true arrival of a baseball prodigy.
Mays would go on to win rookie of the year honors while help the Giants overcome a 13-game deficit to catch the Brooklyn Dodgers. Mays was on-deck when Bobby Thomson hit the so-called “Shot Heard ’Round the World,” a three-run homer to give the Giants the pennant.
The Giants lost that ’51 World Series to the Yankees. Those six games marked the only time Mays and the aging Joe DiMaggio played on the same field.
MOVING TO S.F.
The Giants franchise migrated to San Francisco in ’58, a blow to Mays, who adored New York City. Mays once described his reaction to relocation as “more sadness than anything.”
He alienated some San Francisco fans with such frequent reminiscing about his New York days. At the end of 1958, fans responding to a newspaper poll voted rookie Cepeda the team’s MVP, even though Mays led the team in almost every offensive category.
The wall eroded over time, thanks to one impossible feat after another. On April 30, 1961, he showed up for a game in Milwaukee feeling queasy after eating some bad ribs. He begged out of the lineup, but reconsidered after powering a few long balls in batting practice. Mays also had a chat with infielder Joe Amalfitano.
“I asked him, ‘What are you from 1 percent to 100 percent?’ He said, ‘Maybe 70,’’’ former Amalfitano later recalled. “I said, ‘Well, your 70 is going to be better than whoever goes out there for their 100.’ ”
Mays marched back into the clubhouse and wrote his name on the lineup card, hitting third. He proceeded to go 4 for 5 with four home runs and 8 RBIs, the most prolific day of his career. His only out was a ball caught at the center field wall by Hank Aaron.
A year later, Mays helped lead San Francisco to its first World Series in 1962 by hitting .304 with 49 home runs and 141 RBI.
The Giants lost that fall classic in a memorable showdown with the New York Yankees. Matty Alou was at third base and Mays was at second base when McCovey lined out to second baseman Bobby Richardson to end a 1-0 loss in Game 7.
In the aftermath of that narrow defeat, a reporter wondered if Mays would have actually had time to score the winning run, considering how hard McCovey had blistered the ball.
“By the time they got the ball home,’’ Dark snapped, “Mays would have been dressed.”
THE WINDS OF CANDLESTICK
Mays never reached another World Series with San Francisco but continued to put up terrific seasons amid the blustery conditions of Candlestick Park. In a move typical of his baseball savvy, Mays recognized that the swing he’d once used at the Polo Grounds, where the left-field fence was only 277 feet away, was no longer as potent at the ‘Stick, where the wind blew in from left.
So Mays reconfigured his swing path to aim another direction. By the time he was done, Mays estimated that 80 to 90 percent of his home runs at Candlestick Park went to right-center.
Simmons, his friend and longtime broadcaster, said the adjustment illustrated Mays’ genius-level baseball IQ.
“Mays was not the fastest guy in baseball, but he was the quickest to react,’’ Simmons said. “Go to a game now and watch how long it takes a runner to react on a wild pitch — there are times when it’s practically to the backstop. Willie was gone before that ball passed home plate.”
Simmons also noted that Mays would often stop at first base on a potential double because doing so prevented opponents from issuing an intentional walk to the dangerous McCovey hitting behind him.
Other players swore that said Mays would intentionally flail on a hittable curveball as a way of tricking the pitcher into throwing him that same pitch later in a crucial situation. It was said Mays didn’t need coaches while running the bases, because he was always aware of where each outfielder was positioned.
“You talk to Willie Mays for 5 minutes and I guarantee you he’ll bring up something you’ve never thought of about the game,’’ former Giants outfielder Carl Boles said in a 2012 interview.
Mays had 17 seasons with at least 20 home runs. He twice topped the 50 mark – and did so 10 years apart (in 1955 and again in ‘65).
As a testament to his all-around skills, Mays was the first National League player to reach the 30-30 mark (homers and stolen bases) and the first in either league to reach 30-30 in consecutive seasons (1956-57).
Even his fellow ballplayers were in awe.
“You used to think that if the score was 5-0, he’d hit a five-run homer,’’ Reggie Jackson said.
“He amazed me every single day,’’ Cepeda said.
Mays remains the Giants franchise all-time leader in runs, hits, doubles, home runs and total bases — marks threatened, but not surpassed by, his godson, Barry Bonds. He also ranks second in triples, RBI and OPS.
“I’ve always said Willie was the greatest player I ever saw,” said Mike McCormick, the longtime Giants pitcher and ’67 Cy Young Award winner. “He’d hurt you offensively and, defensively, I can’t even recall a favorite catch: he made too many.”
BACK TO NEW YORK
After the 1971 season, Mays lobbied owner Horace Stoneham for a 10-year contract so that he could finish his playing career in San Francisco and remain in the organization.
Instead, Stoneham decided he could no longer afford the fading 41-year-old and traded Mays to the New York Mets on May 11, 1972. In return, the Giants received forgettable pitcher Charlie Williams and $50,000.
His career ended with ’73 World Series against the A’s. (Mays is the only player to play in Fall Classic at both 20-or-younger and 40-or-over).The image of the once-graceful outfielder slipping in pursuit of Deron Johnson’s double during that series became a cautionary tale for athletes who play beyond their expiration date.
But Mays always rankled at the charge. Years later, he told KCBS sportscaster Steve Bitker: “They said, ‘Well, look at the old man falling down.’ But anybody could have slipped. It was a wet field. … That was one of my big disappointments, when writers can criticize a guy that slips.”
Forgotten, Mays pointed out, was that he drove in the game-winning run in the 12th inning of Game 2, the penultimate game of his career. “They didn’t write too much about that,’’ he said.
ENSHRINED IN COOPERSTOWN
Mays was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1979, receiving 94.6 percent of the vote.
After years adrift, he was embraced back into the Giants fold for for good when former owner Peter Magowan signed Mays to a lifetime contract in 1993. The Hall of Famer would tutor young players or regale them in his high-pitched voice with tales of jousting with Mickey Mantle in the All-Star game. He remained boyish into his 80s — the Say Hey Octogenarian.
In 2014, a few days before Giants outfielder Michael Morse hit a crucial pinch hit home run against St. Louis in the playoffs, Mays scribbled out a few batting tips on a sheet of paper. “And all I could think about,’’ Morse said, “was saving the piece of paper.”
Mays’s statistics have held up well over time, despite the fact that he missed about 266 games due to military service from 1952-53. His home run total ranks behind Barry Bonds, Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth, Alex Rodriguez and Albert Pujols.
As Mays himself put it in 1979: “I think I was the best player I ever saw.”
Mays was at his best in the annual showcase of baseball’s elite. He holds All-Star Game records for runs (20), hits (23), stolen bases (six), at-bats (75) and was twice selected as the game’s MVP.
“They invented the All-Star Game for Willie Mays,” Ted Williams once said.
On Nov. 24, 2015, Mays was honored at the White House with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. It is the nation’s highest civilian award.
This obituary was written in 2017 by former Bay Area News Group staff writer Daniel Brown
