Willie Mays

Willie Howard Mays Jr. played baseball with a joy so visible that it became part of his legend, but joy alone does not account for 660 home runs, 338 stolen bases, 12 consecutive Gold Gloves, and 24 All-Star selections. Mays was the most complete player the game produced. He could beat you five different ways in a single game, and he did, routinely, for more than two decades.

Birmingham to the Polo Grounds

Mays was born in Westfield, Alabama, and grew up in the industrial suburbs of Birmingham. He played for the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro American League while still in high school. The New York Giants signed him in 1950, and after tearing through the minor leagues he was called up to the Polo Grounds in May 1951. He went 0-for-12 in his first three games and told manager Leo Durocher he wasn't ready. Durocher told him he was the Giants' center fielder for as long as Durocher managed the team. Mays hit .274 with 20 home runs the rest of that season and won Rookie of the Year as the Giants won the pennant on Bobby Thomson's Shot Heard 'Round the World.

The Army took two years from Mays, the 1953 and 1954 seasons, during the Korean War. He came back better. In 1954 he hit .345 with 41 home runs and 110 RBI, won the batting title and the MVP award, and led the Giants to a World Series sweep of the Cleveland Indians.

The Catch

Game 1 of the 1954 World Series, September 29, the Polo Grounds. The score was tied 2-2 in the eighth inning with runners on first and second and nobody out. Vic Wertz hit a towering drive to deep center field, roughly 460 feet from home plate. Mays turned his back to the infield, ran at full speed toward the bleacher wall, and caught the ball over his left shoulder. He then spun and threw the ball back to the infield in one motion, preventing the runners from advancing. The catch preserved the tie. The Giants won in extra innings and swept the Series.

The play became the single most replayed defensive moment in baseball history. Mays himself said he had made better catches, and he probably had. But this one happened on the biggest stage, in the deepest part of a ballpark built for a different era, and it crystallized what Mays could do that nobody else could.

The Long Prime

Mays won his second MVP in 1965, hitting 52 home runs at age 34. Between 1954 and 1966, he never posted an OPS+ below 150. He hit 30 or more home runs in eleven different seasons. He led the league in home runs four times, in stolen bases four times, in slugging five times, and in OPS five times. He played center field with a reckless abandon that terrified outfield walls and delighted fans, his cap flying off as he ran, his basket catches turning routine fly balls into small performances.

The Giants moved from New York to San Francisco after the 1957 season, and Mays never quite received the same affection from San Francisco fans that he had enjoyed at the Polo Grounds. New York had loved him unconditionally. San Francisco weighed him against the memory of Joe DiMaggio, the city's native son, and kept some warmth in reserve. Mays gave the city everything anyway.

Final Years and Legacy

The Giants traded Mays to the New York Mets in May 1973, a sentimental homecoming that put him back where he started. He was 42 and diminished. He retired after the 1973 World Series, his last game a loss to the Oakland Athletics.

Mays finished with 3,293 hits, 660 home runs, and a career WAR of 156.2, the highest of any position player in baseball history. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1979 with 94.7% of the vote. He died on June 18, 2024, in Palo Alto, California, at age 93, two days before a game at Rickwood Field in Birmingham was scheduled to honor him and the Negro Leagues. The game went on. The tributes that followed said the same thing in different words. There would never be another player who did everything Willie Mays did.