The Sporting News Names Willie Mays Player of the Decade

On January 17, 1970, The Sporting News named Willie Mays its Player of the Decade for the 1960s. The honor recognized a stretch of sustained excellence from the San Francisco Giants center fielder that outlasted the competition of two other generational talents, Hank Aaron and Roberto Clemente, both of whom received serious consideration.

Mays entered the 1960s at age 28 and played the entire decade at an elite level. Over those ten seasons, he hit 350 home runs, drove in 1,003 runs, scored 1,050 times, and stole 126 bases. He won a Gold Glove in every year of the decade. He led the National League in home runs twice, in 1962 and 1965, and in slugging percentage and on-base percentage multiple times.

The Sporting News carried enormous authority in baseball during this period. Its Player of the Decade designation functioned as the closest thing the sport had to an official retrospective judgment, and the selection of Mays reflected a broad consensus among writers and executives. Mays had finished in the top five of NL MVP voting seven times during the 1960s, winning the award outright in 1965 with a .317 average and 52 home runs.

Aaron had put up comparable raw numbers over the same stretch, and Clemente had delivered a higher batting average. But Mays combined power, speed, defense, and baserunning in a way that set him apart. His play in center field at Candlestick Park, with its swirling winds and treacherous conditions, added a daily degree of difficulty that inflated his defensive value beyond what the statistics alone could capture.

By January 1970, Mays was 38 years old and entering the final phase of his career. The Sporting News designation served as a formal acknowledgment of what fans and opponents had witnessed across 1,514 games in the decade just ended.