A giant among Giants

A day at the office.

Farewell to Willie Mays, the "Say Hey" Kid, one of the very greatest baseball players of all time, if not the very greatest. He left us at age 93 yesterday.

Being a Yankee fan growing up, back when baseball's two leagues were almost entirely separate entities, I didn't really see as much of Mays's play as I now would have liked. There were all the all-star games, though, and the '62 World Series between the Yankees and his San Francisco Giants. The Yanks managed to pull that series out, in seven games, against Willie, the other Willie (McCovey), and Orlando Cepeda. The final score of the deciding game was 1-0. Mays doubled, and McCovey tripled, but Ralph Terry of the Yankees scattered those and two other hits in a complete-game win. Those kinds of games don't happen any more.

I just missed Willie. The Giants had played in New York, at the Polo Grounds, until 1957. You could walk there from Yankee Stadium, although it was a pretty sketchy 'hood. Our fathers talked about it. Mays played there for seven years before the team pulled up stakes and moved to San Francisco.

He came back to New York for the very tail end of his career. He played for the Mets, who were managed at the time by Yogi Berra. I think I've attended only one Mets game in my life, and if I'm remembering correctly, it was the weekend before Mays arrived back in the Big Apple.

Extraordinarily talented, he was also a brilliant student of the game, and he played with a grace that you didn't often see then and almost never see now. No wonder he had crowds all over the country eating out of his hand. When he started out, there was no Golden Glove Award for defense, but he wound up winning a dozen of those. He patented the "basket catch." He hit 660 major league home runs, not counting his Negro League days. And that was with chilly, windy Candlestick Park as his home stadium. 

His eulogists include George Will, who's written here. Here's a good one by Kurt Streeter. The San Francisco Chronicle, naturally, was ready, here. And here's a nice story about him from last year. Executive summary: Willie Mays was special. Those of us who were lucky enough to be around when he was playing, even the then-Yankee fans, have many memories to savor.