Willie Mays, supreme baseball expertise among the many greatest to ever play, dies at 93

Willie Mays, whose prodigious energy, blinding velocity and eye-popping protection thrilled baseball followers coast to coast throughout the recreation’s golden period, died Tuesday, the San Francisco Giants introduced. He was 93.

“It’s with nice disappointment that we announce that San Francisco Giants Legend and Corridor of Famer Willie Mays handed away peacefully this afternoon on the age of 93,” the Giants said in a statement.

Nicknamed the “Say Hey Child” for his boundless enthusiasm and penchant for greeting everybody, “Say hey,” Mays performed for 22 big-league seasons, breaking in with the New York Giants in 1951 after which changing into a fixture in San Francisco when the franchise moved west. He ended his profession again in New York with the Mets in 1973.

Mays was the game’s consummate “five-tool” expertise — he may hit for a excessive batting common, blast dwelling runs, gallop across the bases, catch the ball and throw it with authority.

He recorded a .301 profession batting common, slugged 660 home runs, banged out 3,293 hits, amassed 1,909 runs batted in and scored 2,068 runs. 

Mays’ prowess with the bat was solely matched by his capability to catch any baseball hit in his zip code.

He recorded 7,112 putouts as an outfielder, topping different legends similar to Tris Speaker (6,788) and Rickey Henderson (6,468). Mays additionally gained 12 Gold Glove awards, tied for probably the most by an outfielder with Roberto Clemente of the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Mays is credited with making the greatest defensive play in baseball history — an over-the-shoulder snag in Recreation 1 of the 1954 World Sequence, capturing a drive off the bat of Cleveland Indians slugger Vic Wertz.

Mays sprinted into deep middle and had his again to dwelling plate, 425 ft away, when he made “the catch” on Sept. 29, 1954, on the Polo Grounds in Higher Manhattan.

Corridor of Fame sportscaster Jack Brickhouse known as the play: “Willie Mays simply introduced this crowd to its ft with a catch which will need to have been an optical phantasm to lots of people.”

The MVP award for one of the best participant of the World Sequence was named after Mays in 2017.

Mays performed within the previous Negro Leagues and was among the many first technology of African American gamers in Main League Baseball, competing alongside and in opposition to future Corridor of Fame greats like Monte Irvin (a teammate), Jackie Robinson and Ernie Banks.

Then-President Barack Obama praised Mays, a Korean Struggle veteran, in 2015 when awarding him the nation’s highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

“His quiet instance whereas excelling on certainly one of America’s greatest levels helped carry ahead the banner of civil rights,” Obama, America’s first African American president, mentioned. “It is due to giants like Willie that somebody like me may even take into consideration operating for president.”

Mays was known as as much as the massive leagues in 1951 and made a direct affect — successful the Nationwide League’s Rookie of the 12 months award for his pennant-winning Giants.

Mays had a front-row seat to maybe the only most thrilling second in baseball historical past, when teammate Bobby Thomson blasted the “Shot Heard ‘Around the World,” a decisive three-run homer in opposition to the Brooklyn Dodgers to win the Nationwide League pennant on Oct. 3, 1951.

Mays was within the on-deck circle when Thomson, nicknamed “The Flying Scot,” hit the homer that thrilled New York baseball followers and hundreds of U.S. servicemen listening on Armed Forces Radio in Korea.

Mays mentioned he was satisfied the Dodgers would stroll Thomson to face him, then a 20-year-old rookie. He was so targeted on what he’d must do on the plate that Mays mentioned he did not even discover Thomson’s game-ending, pennant-winning hit.

“When Bobby hit the house run, I used to be the final man to get to dwelling plate” to rejoice, mentioned Mays, believing the ball had been caught, “and I am saying to myself, `You are on deck, idiot, stand up to the plate instantly.’ “

Mays was middle stage throughout New York’s golden period of baseball when the Giants, Dodgers and Yankees dominated America’s pastime.

From Robinson’s rookie yr in 1947 to the Giants and Dodgers remaining season in New York in 1957, a minimum of a type of three New York groups performed in 10 of 11 World Sequence.

A New York Metropolis group gained 9 world titles in these years, and there have been six all-Large Apple Fall Classics.

And all of these nice New York Metropolis groups had Corridor of Fame middle fielders — Mays, Mickey Mantle of the Yankees and Duke Snider of the Dodgers — resulting in a technology of college children within the 5 boroughs arguing over who was one of the best.

A 1981 music and ode to America’s pastime by Terry Cashman was appropriately titled “Talkin’ Baseball: Willie, Mickey & The Duke.”

Willie Howard Mays was born on Could 6, 1931, in Westfield, Alabama, the son of steelworker William Howard “Cat” Mays and Anna Mays, previously Sattlewhite.

His father and grandfather performed semi-pro baseball whereas his mother was a high basketball participant and monitor athlete in highschool.

By age 16, Mays was enjoying for the Birmingham Black Barons, the famed Negro League membership. He excelled enjoying in opposition to grown males of their 20s and 30s.

Giants scout Eddie Montague noticed Mays and instructed his bosses in New York to signal him instantly.

“They acquired a child enjoying middle discipline virtually barefooted that is one of the best ballplayer I ever checked out,” Montague reported, in accordance with a ebook by Mays’ future Giants supervisor Leo Durocher, “Good Guys End Final.”

“You higher ship somebody down there with a barrelful of cash and seize this child.”

The Giants signed Mays to a minor league deal in 1950, giving him $4,000 and the Black Barons $10,000, earlier than he was shining beneath New York’s brilliant lights a yr later.

After shedding all the 1953 marketing campaign serving within the Korean Struggle, Mays did not miss a beat in 1954.

He was that season’s Nationwide League Most Invaluable Participant and led the Giants to the title.

After the franchise moved to San Francisco for the 1958 season, Mays made the All-Star Recreation yearly as a Big and gained the N.L. MVP once more in 1965.

In lots of circles, Mays is taken into account the sport’s biggest all-around expertise regardless of accumulating simply two MVP awards. For instance, Mays’ godson Barry Bonds gained that honor seven occasions.

Though trendy statistical metrics would possibly place Mays as baseball’s third-greatest participant — behind Babe Ruth and Bonds — nobody may match the Say Hey Child’s aptitude for the sport.

“I am unable to consider that Babe Ruth was a greater participant than Willie Mays,” all-time pitching nice Sandy Koufax as soon as mentioned. “Ruth is to baseball what Arnold Palmer is to golf. He acquired the sport transferring. However I am unable to consider he may run in addition to Mays, and I am unable to consider he was any higher an outfielder.”

Mays ended his profession again in New York, traded to the Mets in 1972.

There have been occasional glimpses of previous glory. His first hit for his new group was a game-winning homer at Shea Stadium on Could 14 in opposition to his former Giants teammates.

Nonetheless, Mays’ New York revival proved something however a showstopper.

At age 42 in 1973, Mays could not outrun Father Time and sadly grew to become a logo of athletes who stick round a bit too lengthy.

He was a bench participant on the Mets’ inconceivable N.L.-winning “You Gotta Imagine” group that fell to the Oakland A’s in seven video games within the 1973 World Sequence. In Recreation 2, Mays chased a drive hit by Deron Johnson and fell flat on his face, a surprising sight to baseball followers who nonetheless remembered the famed 1954 Polo Floor snag off Wertz.

Later that very same recreation, Mays misplaced a ball — hit by future Yankees legend Reggie Jackson — within the solar for a triple. He partly redeemed himself later in that day, hitting an RBI-single (Mays’ final profession hit) within the twelfth inning, as Mets went on to win Game 2 to even the sequence.

However Mets supervisor Yogi Berra had misplaced confidence in Mays, who acquired to the plate only one extra time the remainder of the sequence (he grounded out).

He was saved on the bench when the Mets went to different pinch hitters in a Recreation 7 loss at Oakland.

Mays dressed shortly and bitterly left the clubhouse, denied what he had hoped to be a Thomson-like second he had witnessed 22 years earlier.

“Did Mays play too lengthy? In fact. However so did … numerous others who wished to stretch their glory,” wrote James Hirsch within the biography “Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend.”

“However Mays is synonymous with this specific sin for one purpose: He dedicated it within the World Sequence, on tv. The very medium that was central to the legend, that broadcast his items to all corners of America.”

Though Mays was bitter about how his enjoying profession ended, in later years he spoke fondly of these remaining seasons in Flushing, Queens — with specific heat for Mets proprietor Joan Payson, who engineered his New York return.

Earlier than bringing the Mets into existence, Payson was a diehard New York Giants fan. She was on the group’s board of administrators and voted in opposition to the transfer to San Francisco.

Mays mentioned he wished to hold it up earlier than 1973, however Payson begged him to remain.

“I performed the yr out in ’72 and I mentioned, Possibly I ought to stop (in) ’73 and Mrs. Payson would not let me stop,” Mays mentioned in a 2010 interview with GQ journal. “I loved it as a result of it was enjoyable to see the fellows successful.”

Beneficiant to a fault and admittedly careless with cash, Mays struggled in his post-playing years.

With out the construction of professional sports activities, Mays can be chronically late or all collectively miss appointments. However his identify nonetheless had worth and firms, similar to Atlantic Metropolis resorts, coveted even probably the most tangential Mays connection to their properties.

Up to date and youthful followers, who pour hundreds of thousands of {dollars} into fantasy leagues and on-line playing, would possibly discover it laborious to consider that Mays and Mantle have been each banned from MLB for a number of years within the Eighties for his or her unfastened Atlantic Metropolis connections.

Mays took a largely ceremonial job with Bally’s Park Place On line casino Resort in 1979 whereas Mantle did the identical for the Claridge On line casino Resort.

MLB Commissioner Bowie Kuhn likened these jobs to playing and banned them each from all huge league actions.

These revocations have been overturned in 1985 when former Olympics chief Peter Ueberroth grew to become MLB commissioner. Ueberroth recalled sitting on a Southern California seaside, going over MLB recordsdata on Mays and Mantle’s banishments and failing to know why they have been persona non grata.

“There was actually nothing there,” Ueberroth instructed The Los Angeles Instances. “They (Mays and Mantle) had performed golf at casino-sponsored outings as celebrities; they have been on on line casino billboards, however selling golf occasions, not playing.”

He concluded: “It wasn’t even an in depth name. No umpire wanted.”

Mays insisted his work in Atlantic Metropolis was fully blown out of proportion by Kuhn.

“I’m very happy to be again in baseball despite the fact that I did not do something flawed to depart baseball,” Mays mentioned on the 1985 information convention that heralded his return.

All through his profession and for many years after, Mays’ identify in popular culture was synonymous with greatness and the game itself.

“Peanuts” animator Charles Schultz, a Northern California native and large Giants fan, drew a 1966 cartoon of Charlie Brown shedding a spelling bee when he was requested to spell the phrase maze, just like the puzzle. Charlie Brown spelled it: “M-A-Y-S.”

John Fogerty’s 1985 hit “Centerfield” used Mays’ identify as a metaphor for the boundless pleasure of baseball: “So say hey, Willie, inform Ty Cobb, and Joe DiMaggio. Do not say ‘it ain’t so,’ you recognize the time is now.”

Within the 1989 baseball comedy “Main League,” Wesley Snipes performed fast-talking speedster Willie Mays Hayes, who launched himself to teammates: “Say hey! Willie Mays Hays right here: Play like Mays and I run like (Olympic gold medal sprinter Bob) Hayes. How ya doing?”

In a 1997 episode of “Star Trek: Deep Area 9,” the son of Capt. Sisko searched the universe for a rookie Mays baseball card as a birthday present for dad, displaying that the Say Hey Child was nonetheless baseball’s most famed identify 3,000 years into the longer term.

Mays had quite a few TV appearances, together with on “Bewitched,” “The Donna Reed Present,” “My Two Dads” and “Mr. Belvedere.”

Regardless of a Corridor of Fame profession that performed out principally in San Francisco, Mays by no means forgot his New York roots.

Months after the Giants captured the 2010 World Sequence — the franchise’s first since leaving New York — Mays introduced the Commissioner’s Trophy to P.S. 46 in Harlem, a house run’s distance away from the place the Polo Grounds as soon as stood.

“This is my neighborhood!” he instructed college students that snowy morning on Jan. 21, 2011.

As a participant for the New York Giants, Mays lived on St. Nicholas Place, blocks from work, and would play stickball with children on the street within the mornings earlier than and evenings after video games on the Polo Grounds.

“I used to have possibly 10 children come to my window. Each morning, they’d come at 9 o’clock,” Mays as soon as mentioned. “They’d knock on my window, to get me up. … So I performed with them for about possibly an hour.”

When San Francisco gained all of it once more in 2014, Mays introduced the trophy to New York for a gathering with old-time Giants followers on the New York Palace Hotel on Jan. 24, 2015.

When requested the way it felt to be again in Manhattan, Mays mentioned he’ll at all times have a particular place in his coronary heart for New York.

“I by no means left,” Mays, who maintained an condominium within the Riverdale neighborhood of the Bronx all these years, mentioned, bringing a roar of laughter from the group.

He thanked New York baseball followers: “After they such as you, they love you.”

Mays married Margherite Wendell Chapman in 1956. After they divorced, he married Mae Louise Allen in 1971; each predeceased him. He and Chapman adopted one son, Michael.

Mays, who wore uniform No. 24 all through his profession, is at all times honored in each letter mailed to the San Francisco Giants, headquartered at 24 Willie Mays Plaza, San Francisco, California, 94107.