Mays, Willie

views updated

Mays, Willie

May 6, 1931

The son of steel-mill worker Willie Howard Mays and Ann Mays, baseball player Willie Howard Mays Jr. was born in Westfield, Alabama. After his parents divorced soon after his birth, Mays was raised by an aunt in Fairfield, Alabama. At Fairfield Industrial High School he starred in basketball, football, and baseball.

At the age of seventeen Mays began his professional career, joining the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro National League. During three seasons with the Black Barons, he played 130 games in the outfield and compiled a batting average of .263. In 1950 he started the season with the Black Barons, but he was soon signed by the New York Giants. He played on the Giants' minor league teams until early in the 1951 season, when he joined the major league club. Mays was voted the National League Rookie of the Year and acquired the nickname "the 'Say Hey' kid" when he forgot a teammate's name in 1951 and used the phrase.

In 1952 and 1953 Mays served in the U. S. Army, but he returned to baseball in 1954 to play one of his best seasons ever. He led the National League with a .345 batting average and had 41 home runs and 110 runs batted in, leading the Giants to the 1954 National League pennant and world championship. In the first game of the World Series with the Cleveland Indians at the Polo Grounds in New York City, Mays made one of the most famous catches in baseball history: With his back to home plate, he ran down Vic Wertz's 440-foot drive to center field, wheeled around, and fired a perfect throw to the infield, thus preventing the Indians from scoring. Mays was named the National League's Most Valuable Player for 1954. He won the award a second time in 1965.

Mays is often considered the most complete ballplayer of the postwar era, if not of all time. He excelled in every aspect of the game. He hit over .300 in ten seasons, and totaled 660 home runs. He was one of the game's great base runners and a superlative fielder. (His fielding earned him twelve consecutive Gold Gloves from 1957 to 1968.) Mays played in every All-Star game from 1954 to 1973 and in four World Series (in 1951 and 1954 with the New York Giants; in 1962 with the San Francisco Giants; and in 1973 with the New York Mets).

Because of his formidable abilities, and because of racism, Mays was also the target of an inordinate number of "bean balls"—pitches thrown at the batter's head. However, Mays was one of the first black superstars to receive widespread adulation from white fans. In the 1960s he was among the many black athletes who were criticized for not publicly supporting the civil rights movement. As on most controversial issues, Mays projected a naive innocence when confronted about his political silence. "I don't picket in the streets of Birmingham," he said. "I'm not mad at the people who do. Maybe they shouldn't be mad at the people who don't."

Mays played with the Giants (the team moved to San Francisco in 1958) until 1972, when he was traded to the New York Mets. The following year he retired as a player but was retained by the Mets as a part-time coach. He was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1979. Three months later, he was ordered by Major League Baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn to choose between his job with the Mets and fulfilling a public relations contract with the Bally's Casino Hotel. Mays, along with Mickey Mantle, chose the latter and was banned from any affiliation with professional baseball. In 1985 the new commissioner, Peter Ueberroth, lifted the ban.

In 2000 a statue of Mays was unveiled at Pacific Bell Park, the new home of the San Francisco Giants.

See also Baseball