Willie Mays and Glory Days

If baseball is our first love, then Willie Mays was my first crush.

7 years old was I and playing baseball every day in my backyard with the barbed wire boundaries and cherry tree grandstands.

1954

Everybody calling themselves Wille Mays.

I don't think I knew for sure that Willie Mays was real.

I thought he was a comic book character,  a Batman or a Superman.

Then he made that over the shoulder basket catch in the World Series against Vic Wertz of the Indians and then he wheeled around and mid wheel uncorked a throw  from the deepest part of centerfield back to the infield. Some said the only living person who could have made that throw was also the only living person who could have made that catch.

That year the Indians set a record for most wims in a season.

They lost all four games of that World Series.

The Giants were the World Champions

Willie was 23 when he made that catch and that throw. He was beloved in New York City. The future was unlimited for Willie and for all of us as we entered a period of peace and hope. Being black on the diamond was cool beans.

Willie was the original 5 star player. He could run, field, throw, hit with power and hit for average.

He was the natural. He loved the game. He even enjoyed playing stickball with the kids in the streets of New York. Everybody loved Willie.

Wille had the luminous smile, the exuberant style and the otherwordly skills.

"Oh, and about that style. Willie was the first ballplayer to have his uniform custom tailored.

Not only did he play better than everybody, he looked better.

Even the fold in the bill of his cap was perfect.

And that cap was always flying off his head at the perfect moments like when he made the catch ,

The Giants won that 54 World Series with the help of characters like Dusty Rhodes, Whitey Lockman, Rochester's won pride and joy Johnny Antonelli, Leo Durocher, Monte Irvin, Hank Thompson on and on. Fantastic names. Names that rivalled names also playing in New York at the time, Yogi Berra, Phil (the Scooter) Rizzuto, Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, Pee Wee Reese, Roy Campanella, Duke Snider, Don Newcombe, Carl Furrillo. God how those names rolled off the tongue.

They all sounded like super heores.

They were all real. All in New York all at the same time.

And at the very top as 1955 rolled around was Wille Mays at the exact same time that I began to realize that baseball was something much bigger than what we were doing in the backyard.

I was in love with the game.

Eventually, the Dodgers and Giants split for the Coast breaking our hearts. Willie continued to be Willie but he never again won another World Series although he came close in his final season when he returned home to the New York Mets.

That dream was one dream too far.

Willie was of course a first ballot Hall of Famer.

Yesterday, Willie Mays turned 90 years of age. 

90

Willie Mays....the Say Hey Kid is 90.

All of the other famous New York names that were his contemporaries have passed away.

Only Willie remains.

The greatest living ballplayer.

Maybe the greatest ball player of all time.

All of us old guys always feel a little younger whenever we think of Willie Mays even today when we're in our seventies. For a few moments we are back in the Polo Grounds or in our backyards or Little League fields with our first mitts and battered baseballs.

We wanna be like Willie Mays. We still wear baseball caps.

And as for our playing careers well, we all went about as far as we could go before we took our last at bat and passed our glory days on to our sons and daughters.

God bless us all.