Scott Mackey
The Significance of Willie Mays
He missed two years to military service in the prime of his career and still hit 660 home runs. He played in a ballpark where the winds blew so hard that they capsized sailboats in the adjacent bay, depriving him of at least another hundred home runs. He could stand flat-footed at the center field fence and throw the ball on a fly to home plate. One broadcaster called the center field he played as the place “where triples go to die.” On the base paths he didn’t run, he blurred, his cap flying off as he accelerated, a dust storm signaling his arrival at his chosen base.
I have a Willie Mays biography on my bookshelf. I once had his autograph. I once held his baseball glove. I will remember forever the day he handed the glove into the stads and it was passed to me. It was a MacGregor, so oiled and well-worn that I wondered if he’d used it make his miraculous catch in the 1954 World Series, the year before I was born. I regarded that iconic piece of leather with reverence, savoring its feel, its sweet leather smell, and the sheer moment it induced: I’m holding Willie Mays’ baseball glove!
For those of us who grew up in the fifties and sixties, Willie Mays was the player of our generation. Mays was black. For most of us suburban white kids in California he was the first black person we ever knew or admired.
It was a time when racial prejudice was common. When you saw Willie play, however, you didn’t see white or black. You saw beauty and brilliance. It’s no exaggeration to say that the way he played baseball was an art. He was a stylist. An innovator. The master showman on center stage in center field.
When I didn’t hear the games on radio, I’d open the Sporting Green the next morning to see how Willie did. When Willie had a good day on the ball field then it was a good day for me. Even more precious were the times we went to Candlestick Park, where I personally saw Willie:
Hit a home run off Sandy Koufax,
Rob Hank Aaron of a home run,
Steal second base, then third and score on an infield out,
Hit more than twenty of his 660 home runs,
Make scores of his patented Basket Catches.
Willie finished his career with the New York Mets. I watched one of his last games. It was sad. He bailed out on pitches. He stumbled on the bases. He was more liability than asset to his team. It was clear he needed to call it quits.
Willie hasn’t aged all that well. Today he can sound bitter and ornery. He’s not brilliant or media savvy. I’ve cringed at things he’s said in interviews. He’s no longer the Say Hey Kid. The Kid who broke into the majors at 20. The Kid who stayed a kid in his thirties and retired at age 42. Yet, no matter how his career ended or the inelegance of his retirement, I will always remember Willie for the kid he was and the way his youth forever shaped mine.
Willie Mays remains to me the most significant man of his era. He made white people appreciate the black man. Sure, he wasn’t the only one. Martin Luther King did it politically and emotionally, leading the movement that began eroding America’s racial divide. Louis Armstrong and other great musicians had been crossing cultures for many years. Muhammad Ali was the world’s most recognized and revered figure. Jackie Robinson was the first black player in the majors, and his quiet dignity and class made the subsequent destruction of baseball’s color line a forgone conclusion. Aaron hit more home runs. On the ballfield of the ‘60s and ‘70s others dueled for public adulation: Aaron, McCovey, Clemente, Banks, and Frank Robinson in particular.
But for sheer artistry, for eliciting unabashed awe in a generation of white folks, nobody topped Willie. We wanted to know him, wanted to play like him, wanted to live in a country where people like him could flourish. We wanted to live our lives with the same exuberance and flair. He symbolized what could be done in this country, in this life.
My son’s generation will never truly be able to appreciate the significance of Willie Mays. Grainy black and white replays of his exploits don’t accurately render his greatness. Statistics, supposedly the most objective yardstick for comparing ballplayers from generation to generation, cannot capture what Willie accomplished on the ball field or how he influenced every game he played. Looking at statistics, Mays had a great career, but he will continue to be passed on the all-time home run list, he barely hit .300 for his career, and he holds no all-time Major League Baseball records. No, the mark left by Willie Mays is not so much in the record books but in the hearts and souls of those who saw him play.
If you look at statistics, if you look at Sports Center highlights, if you read sports page headlines for the past ten years or so, one can only conclude that the throne of World’s Greatest Baseball Player is now occupied by Willie Mays’ Godson, Barry Bonds. Despite the bad press that Barry has deservedly received, Barry Bonds remains my son’s favorite player. He is held in similar esteem by an entire generation of youth who understandably are impressed by Bonds’ dominating ability to hit a baseball.
Yet for all his talent, for his larger-than-life persona, Bonds will never be Willie Mays. It is unlikely there will ever be another Willie Mays. Part of the reason is the times we live in. We are less naïve, more cynical. Today’s fame lasts 15 minutes, as the saying goes. No one person seems to endure, to resonate, to emerge as the standard bearer of a generation. Maybe Bonds or others can do it statistically. But ask them to transcend their era, to mean mo re than home runs and ESPY Awards and they can’t do it.
This is through no fault of the ballplayers. Times change, so does the meaning of our sports stars. Yes, today’s sports figures are celebrities. Willie Mays was that. And more. He did something to us. He was our own dream for greatness, nurturing our innocent beliefs that the world was magical and that magical things would happen for all of us. That magic seems to be missing these days. Willie is old and tired. So are the rest of us who grew up back then. But when I recall the days of Willie Mays, when a picture of him running enters my mind, a moment of hope returns and I think maybe the magic isn’t dead, maybe it’s just slumbering, waiting for a day when a Willie Mays can be a kid again.
©2005 by Scott Mackey
