Special memories of a special ballplayer, the great Mays

The only man who could have caught it, hit it. Such a perfect summation of Willie Mays’ baseball skills.

Bob Stevens wrote it for the San Francisco Chronicle after a Mays blast climbed over an opposing outfielder for an extra-base hit – was it at Milwaukee if memory serves?  

It was one of the first lines I thought about when I heard Tuesday afternoon Mays had died at 93.

The bell tolls for thee. Only two days ago there was a story about Mays, aging and fragile, not being able to attend the ceremonies at Rickwood Park in Alabama where he played as a youth when the sport was segregated.

Now a scheduled game at Rickwood on Thursday between the San Francisco Giants and the St. Louis Cardinals will serve as a memorial event.

The 660 home runs, the 339 stolen bases, the numbers that make baseball the game that it is will be properly documented elsewhere. Here the choice is to dwell on the recollections of a kid who on his way to becoming a sports columnist had the great luck of getting to know Mays from afar and close up.

Back, back, back. Special memories. 

They started when I was in High School and was able to catch the catch on TV of the ’54 World Series. Yes, you have seen it dozens of times in the intervening years, but I saw it live when it happened. After that, it was hard not to be a Mays fan. I saw him in person for the first time in 1961 when I was based in Fort Ord and drove the 100-plus miles to Candlestick Park. It was an evening when the pleasant temperature belied all the horror stories about the weather. Willie was roaming the outfield. I thought of that musical tribute by Terry Cashman, 'Willie, Mickey and the Duke.' The other two mentioned in the song were also Hall of Famers—Mickey Mantle and Duke Snider.

Willie was not an easy interview for a new guy.  I read how he favored the New York writers, and then he was comfortable with Stevens and Charles Einstein. I felt like an outsider. But in time my assignments as a golf writer for The Chronicle and then the Examiner proved advantageous.   

Willie loved the game until he grew old and then was unable to follow the flight of the ball because of eye trouble. He played when the opportunities were available.

During Spring Training, with the help of long-time Giants’ equipment manager, Mike Murphy, I would sit with Mays and he would pump me about certain golfers, primarily Tiger Woods, who had all the talent that Mays had in baseball. One superior athlete finding a reason to admire another.

When Don and Charlie’s was the gathering spot in Scottsdale, I, like every other journalist, would visit the place frequently. Mays and co-author James Hirsch produced a biography—Willie had been reluctant to do one—that came out in 2010. An agent brought Willie and a load of books to Don and Charlie’s, and Willie was autographing copies for his delighted fans. Willie, in a wonderful mood, asked my grandson, Ben, if he wanted him to sign a book. But Ben, 2 ½ at the time, shyly demurred. No problem—Willie signed it anyway. 

A great souvenir from the great Mays.

‘Say Hey’ says it all about Willie

SAN FRANCISCO — What a great few days for baseball stars from the Bay: Dusty Baker on the tube and on top of the world (Series); Willlie Mays on the silver screen and always on our minds; Barry Bonds on stage and on target.

On Saturday night there was Dusty in Houston, finally clasping the long-missing World Series title. Twenty-four hours later, we were at the century-old Castro Theater in San Francisco, and there was the documentary “Say Hey, Willie Mays!” and in attendance for what was the local premiere was Bonds, Willie’s godson and, of course, the single-season home run champion.

The film, directed by Nelson George, offers some material we’ve seen over the years — not that anyone wouldn’t want another chance to catch The Catch in the 1954 World Series — and other stories not as well known, such as the racism Mays encountered when attempting to buy a home in the City.

Mays, now 91, was only a kid from Alabama, still a segregated state, when he joined the New York Giants in 1950, but he was brilliant virtually from the start. The actress Tallulah Bankhead said, “There are only two geniuses the world — Willie Mays and Will Shakespeare.”

Shakespeare didn’t give interviews.

So much of Mays’ genius, certainly, is physical. He was a so-called five-tool player — hit, run, hit with power, catch and throw — as we see again after he chased down Vic Wertz’s towering drive in the ’54 World Series. Willie spun around and fired the ball back to the infield.

I came to San Francisco in 1965, when Mays still was hitting home runs. The Giants came here in 1958, and Mays has a tough time adjusting — not to the game but to the Candlestick Park winds that, as mentioned in the documentary, kept his long balls from clearing the fences.

San Francisco was Joe DiMaggio’s town. He grew up here and played minor league ball here, years before the Giants arrived.

So when Mays came here in ’58, long after DiMaggio’s retirement following the 1951 season, the press looked back and not forward. Willie was not appreciated, Tallulah Bankhead to the contrary.

DiMaggio was damn good. His 56-game hitting streak in 1941 surely never will be broken. After Joe left the game, he would make public appearances and be introduced as “America’s greatest living ball player.”

But Joe was no Willie Mays, and he wasn’t forced to play home games at Candlestick Park as Mays was. 

George’s documentary, which will be streamed on HBO, doesn’t forget that Reggie Jackson played in Oakland and is a Hall of Famer, or Dusty Baker, who after the World Series win is destined to be one. 

Barry Bonds said the documentary “basically is about mentoring, about growing wiser and more proficient as we mature.”

The plan certainly worked for Willie Mays.

Dare we add, “Say hey?”

Mays turns 90; he gave us our strawberries in winter time

When he was the 49ers’ coach, Jim Harbaugh would ignore my questions. But as he walked by me, he often posed one of his own, to wit, “Who was better, Ruth or Mays?”

As much out of belief as Bay Area bias, I answered, “Mays,” meaning of course Willie Mays as compared to Babe Ruth.

Harbaugh would pause, then say, “Ruth pitched.” To which I would respond, “Mays could have.”

As Mays himself would remind when I told him the story, “I did pitch.” Indeed, he did.

Maybe not as a professional, but everywhere else along the way. “And I was good,” he would add.

Willie Howard Mays turns 90 years old Friday. The “Say Hey Kid,” as he was called because in his early days in New York he addressed people, “Say, hey,” is no longer a kid. But he remains a beacon and a reminder. To have watched him, at Candlestick Park, on television, was our good fortune.

There was no magic in his approach. There merely was brilliance. As kids we all play baseball, such a simple game. “They throw the ball,” Mays said, “I hit it. They hit the ball. I catch it.”

Two observations defined a career that produced 660 home runs, 3,283 hits and in 1954 arguably the most famous catch in World Series history.

This from Garry Schumacher, the onetime Giants public relations man, in New York and San Francisco, after Mays came up to the Giants in 1951: “We got to take care of this kid. We got to make sure he gets in no trouble because this is the guy — well, I’m not saying he’s going to win pennants by himself, but he’s the guy who’ll have us all eating strawberries in the winter time.”

This is from Bob Stevens, who covered baseball, Seals and Giants, for the San Francisco Chronicle from the 1930s to the 1990s, on a Mays extra-base drive past an outfielder: “The only man who could have caught it, hit it.”

No question Mays hit the spot for an America seeking sporting excitement after emerging from World War II, an America looking for good times and new heroes.

Baseball still was our game. The NFL would get its burst in the 1958 overtime championship game between the Baltimore Colts and New York Giants. And fate and fable combined to provide NYC with Mays, Mantle and Snider — Willie, Mickey and the Duke.

There were debates in Queens and Brooklyn. Years later, there was a song by Terry Cashman. Now there is only Mays. Father Time hasn’t quite caught up with the guy who could catch anything on a ball field.

Tallulah Bankhead, an actress, amongst other purists, once said, “There have been only two geniuses in the world, Willie Mays and Willie Shakespeare. But darling, I think you’d better put Shakespeare first.”

Geniuses are not always easy to comprehend, especially as in Mays’ case when they grow up in the segregated south of the 1930s and ‘40s. Mays developed in the Negro Leagues, but when he arrived in New York, sportswriters from the city’s six dailies looked out for him, rather than looking for trouble.

Mays was uncomfortable when the Giants shifted to San Francisco before the 1958 season. He couldn’t immediately find housing. He didn’t know the territory or the journalists. Finally, a banker, Jake Shemano, befriended Mays and helped him with his finances and locating a residence.

Willie was private, maybe suspicious. His story remained untold until 10 years ago, when he agreed to do an autobiography with James Hirsch, a former reporter for the New York Times — that NYC connection again. Then in 2020, Mays and San Francisco Chronicle baseball writer John Shea cooperated on 24: Life Stories from the Say Hey Kid.

My dealings with Mays were peripheral. A golf junkie, he knew of me writing the game. At spring training, I would reintroduce myself to Willie, and invariably he would ask about Tiger Woods.

And not, as Jim Harbaugh might have phrased it, if I thought he was better than Jack Nicklaus.

Of Samardzija, Mays and strawberries in the wintertime

By Art Spander

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Baseball still gets down to one person throwing a ball — pitching — and another trying to hit it. As it has been for 150 years. Before analytics and metrics.

When scouts saw a kid who could do it all and told management, “Sign him.”

A kid like Joe DiMaggio. Or Stan Musial. Or the man who was holding court in the Giants spring clubhouse, Willie Mays.

In an hour or so, Jeff Samardzija would make his first start of the exhibition season, work what he thought was effectively, at least to a point of self-satisfaction, an inning and third, allowing four runs Tuesday in a game that San Francisco would win, 14-12, over the Diamondbacks.

Then Samardzija would head to his locker, at the opposite end of the clubhouse from the table where Mays sits anytime he chooses, and Samardzija would lament the trend to replacing pitchers by the book, not on how they were performing, and the obsession in the sport on items such as launch angle and spin rate.

Whatever angle Mays launched balls at during a Hall of Fame career never will be known. But he hit 660 home runs, and missed two full seasons, 1952 and ’53, when he was in the Army — “I probably would have hit 40 each year,” he said unpretentiously. He also played home games for 23-plus seasons at cold, windy Candlestick Park.    

Oh, was he special. From the start. “We got to take care of this kid,” Garry Schumacher, the publicist of the New York Giants, said in the 1950s. “We got to make sure he gets in no trouble because this is the guy — well, I'm not saying he's gonna win pennants by himself, but he's the guy who'll have us all eating strawberries in the wintertime.”

At this moment, at his table, the top autographed by Mays — “They sell it for charity,” he pointed out — Willie was eating a taco and, between bites, asking for a Coke.

“No Cokes,” he was told. “They want the players to cut down on sugar.” So Mays settled for water.

Willie will be 87 in May. His vision is limited. “I’m not supposed to drive at night,” he said to a journalist who also has eye problems. “But I feel good.”

It has been said one of the joys of baseball is that it enables different generations to talk to each other. A grandfather and his grandson, separated by 50 or so years, may have little in common. Except baseball. The game is timeless.   

Three strikes and Mays was out. Three strikes and Buster Posey’s out. Batters still are thrown out by a step. “Ninety feet between bases is the closest man has come to perfection,” wrote the great journalist Red Smith.

The closest any ballplayer has come to perfection is Mays. We know he could hit. He could run, steal any time wanted, third base as well as second. Defense? The late San Francisco Chronicle baseball writer Bob Stevens said of a Mays triple, “The only man who could have caught it, hit it.”

On Tuesday, writers were hitting it off with Mays when rookie pitcher Tyler Beede, the Giants’ first pick in the 2014 draft, sat down next to Mays. They were separated by some 62 years — Beede is 24 — but instantly they began a conversation.

“Where you from?” Mays asked Beede, a star at Vanderbilt, who is from Chattanooga.

“You play golf? Mays asked. Beede said he did. “Twelve handicap,” he added.

Mays laughed. “Got to watch you 12-handicap guys. Pitchers, they’re always playing golf. They have the time between starts.”

Willie was a golfer until he no longer could see where his shots landed. He started the game at San Francisco’s Lake Merced Golf Club, struggled for a while — “I can’t believe I can’t hit a ball that’s just sitting there, not moving,” he said when learning — but became accomplished.

Then Pablo Sandoval dropped by, almost literally, practically sitting in Mays' lap and wrapping Willie in a bear hug. “I need some money, I’m broke,” said Pablo. The two laughed.

Willie is rich. In memories and friends.

Newsday (N.Y.): Willie Mays, still a much-welcomed presence at Giants camp

By Art Spander
Special to Newsday

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — The eyes aren’t what they used to be, which is understandable, and to Willie Mays understandably frustrating. “I can’t see the ball,” he said when watching baseball. Then as if to remind us of skills once magical, he adds, “but I know where it’s going.”

Where Mays, 85, goes down here late mornings is to a table near a doorway in the San Francisco Giants spring training clubhouse. He can be found, bundled in a warm-up jacket, sitting, signing and ruminating.

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2017 Newsday. All rights reserved.

RealClearSports: No. 24 Reaches Birthday No. 80

By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com

SAN FRANCISCO — He described his skills in such clear, unpretentious terms. "They throw the ball,'' Willie Mays once said. "I hit it. They hit it. I catch it."

What he hits today is a milestone. Number 24 has reached birthday Number 80. And if we actually needed another reason to revel in the glory of arguably the finest baseball player ever, well, there it is.

"There have been only two geniuses in the world, Willie Mays and Willie Shakespeare,'' said ...

Read the full story here.

© RealClearSports 2011

SF Examiner: Giants icon Willie Mays is truly one of a kind

By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner

He is the last one, not so much standing but sitting, at his own table, with his autograph in silver ink on the top. It is there Willie Mays holds court in the Giants’ spring training clubhouse, reflecting upon a past inextricably linked to the present.

Part of a trio, connected by greatness and proximity in the days when New York had three teams and baseball was all flannel uniforms and grace.

Read the full story here.

Copyright 2011 SF Newspaper Company

RealClearSports: The Book on Willie Mays

By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- He sits in the clubhouse of the San Francisco Giants' spring headquarters, spectacles pushed atop his head, sometimes playing cards, frequently playing with our memories.

Willie Mays seems his age now, 78, hearing reduced, eyesight inhibited. Yet in the mind's eye he remains forever young.

Read the full story here.

© RealClearSports 2010

Global Golf Post: Say Hey, Mays Thinks Tiger Should Come Back Soon

By Art Spander
For GlobalGolfPost.com

SCOTTSDALE, ARIZ. --  Some 15 miles from the Tournament Players Club, Willie Mays sat in the clubhouse of the San Francisco Giants' spring training facility, asking questions and giving opinions about Tiger Woods.

"When's he coming back?" wondered Mays, the baseball Hall of Famer, echoing everyone else.

Read the full story here.

Copyright 2010 Global Golf Post