Blast From the Past: Willie Mays

I just bought my copy of the new book Willie Mays: The Life, the Legend. I haven't had a chance to read it, but I've skimmed through a few pages. I looks like it's chock full of anecdotes from Willie's fabled career. Willie's career started before I was born, and I only started becoming aware of baseball in the waning years. Still, I don't think any player has had a bigger impact on my baseball consciousness. I was aware of the name Willie Mays at least a couple of years before I really became aware of baseball as an organized sport. Somehow just the name itself is magical. It flows off the tongue, working much better as a first and last name combined than either part of the name by itself. WillieMays! It's really just one word. The name itself gives me goosebumps to say it. As I started listening to games, there was a sense of anticipation like no other each time Russ Hodges or Lon Simmons announced his name as he came to bat. You had a sense that you were getting a minds eye glimpse of something truly special. More often than not, the anticipation was rewarded with a special feat on the field.

I started following baseball games on the radio in late 1965 and early 1966, right about the time Willie hit HR #500. That started the milestone watches as Mays passed legend after legend in various career statistics. Of course, the most important and most exciting were the home runs. Mel Ott was at 511. I was happy when I found out that Mel Ott also played for the Giants. Ted WIlliams was at 521. Then, Jimmy Foxx at 534. Nowadays, there are so many players with 500 career home runs, I have completely lost track. Back then, it was just Ott, Williams, Foxx and Babe Ruth with Willie Mays climbing through the ranks. Now it was just Willie and The Babe, the Great White Whale of my baseball fan life. It seemed like such a huge gap after clicking off Ott, Williams and Foxx. I used to subtract the difference and then divide it by the number of HR's I thought Willie could hit to see how many seasons it would take. I could tell Willie's career was on the wane and knew it was going to be a nail biter at best. #600 finally came, but they weren't adding up as fast as Mays seemed to be fading. Meanwhile, Henry Aaron was charging on the outside, clicking off 40 HR season after 40 HR season, seemingly getting stronger with age as Mays was fading.

Call me a homer, but I've never felt it was right that Aaron was the one who passed Babe Ruth. I had read a biography of Mays and knew he had missed the '52 and '53 seasons to military service. What if he could have played those two seasons? What if the wind at Candlestick Park didn't hold up balls hit to left field? What if Aaron hadn't played in that bandbox on Atlanta? Why did Willie's body seem to wear out before Aaron's? What if? What if? What if? The disappointment became sort of a microcosm of of my entire experience as a Giants fan. The Giants had the best record in the National League over the course of several seasons, but always finished second to somebody, the Dodgers, the Cardinals, the Braves, the Pirates. Juan Marichal never won a Cy Young Award. The 2002 World Series. Mays fell just short of The Babe's record while Aaron passed it. Years later, I would look at Barry Bonds' run at the record as an exorcism of those demons, and I think Willie Mays did too, in a way, but that's a whole other story! I'm still waiting.

Willie Mays was a role model. Back in the 1960's, the health dangers of smoking were just starting to come to light. Everybody, and I mean everybody smoked. I grew up in a strict Seventh-Day Adventist home. Smoking and drinking alcohol were forbidden. That was OK as long as we were in our local SDA community up in the hills above St. Helena, CA, but anywhere else you went, people smoked and drank alcohol. It seemed like there must be something wrong with us. When I read in Willie May's biography that he did not smoke or drink alcohol, suddenly, I didn't feel like we were so.....so odd. If Willie Mays didn't smoke or drink alcohol, it was OK for us not to smoke or drink alcohol too!

I was 15 years old when I went to my first baseball game at Candlestick Park. My dad was not into sports. My parents tolerated my interest in baseball and the Giants, but considered it to be borderline "worldly' entertainment. We lived way out in the hills of Napa County and rarely ventured into the city. Finally, early in the 1971 season, several of my friends and I got together and mail ordered tickets to Giants-Dodgers game on a Sunday afternoon in May. My dad and another dad agreed to drive us down and go to the game with us. The Giants had gotten off to a great start. They had an exciting young shortstop named Chris Speier. Bobby Bonds was just coming into his own as a star player. Mays, McCovey, Marichal and Perry all seemed to have something left. It was a great team! The game was sold out and we were way up in the nosebleed bleachers down the right field line. I only remember bits and pieces of the game. It was a sloppy game with a bunch of Dodger runs scored on errors. Bobby Bonds hit a monstrous 3 run homer to left field to temporarily give the Giants the lead. Willie Mays hit a double down the left field line. The Giants eventually lost 9-6. It seemed like kind of a let down after all the anticipation. Over the years, I have come to treasure that game and that experience. Living in Southern California, I sometimes feel like I have to explain why I am a Giants fans to my friends and co-workers who are either Dodger or Angels fans. I've found that I really only need to say one thing. "I saw Willie Mays play in Candlestick Park!" The questions stop. They exclaim how great that is and understand why I am a Giants fan.

As the decade of the 70's dawned, it was obvious that the end of the Willie Mays era was rapidly coming to an end. He contributed to the 1971 run that ended in a loss to the Pirates in the playoffs, but he was exhausted by the end of the season, and fading fast. It was a shock to hear he had been traded to the Mets, but I knew it was really just a formality. His career was really over. Charlie Williams had pitched a great game against the Giants the year before, and I was excited to think that they were getting an up and coming young pitcher from a team that seemed to have an endless supply of great young pitchers, the Mets. Alas, Charlie Williams was a bust as were so many players the Giants acquired in trades over the next few years. For those of you who might be young Giants fans out there, you see, being a young Giants fan is not much different than being an old Giants fan! Another disappointment, Willie Mays didn't retire as a Giant!

To me, the number 24 is the most hallowed of all Giants uniform numbers. I remember Juan Marichal for his leg kick and great pitching, but I have to stop and think that he was #27. Willie McCovey was #44, but so was Hank Aaron's. #24 was Willie Mays number and Willie Mays wore #24. I'm sure there have been other ballplayers on other teams that have worn #24. I think Barry Bonds wore it in Pittsburgh. #24 does not belong to any other player the way it belongs to Willie Mays. The Giants could unretire all the other retired numbers, and it wouldn't bother me a lot, but no other Giants player should ever, under any circumstances wear #24. I gave a copy of Willie Mays: The Life, the Legend to a friend at work who is a lifelong Dodger fan. He immediately whipped out his laptop computer and pulled up an old video of him and his family at Dodgers stadium as a kid. The camera panned down to the field where Willie Mays had just hit a home run and was trotting down the first base line. "There he is," my Dodger fan friend said, "number 24!"