Mays, Willie H.
Baseball
b. May 6, 1931, Westfield, AL
Mays brought more than just great skill to the game of baseball. He also brought a rare exuberance and excitement to the sport, prompting Leo Durocher to say, "Willie is without doubt the most dynamic, most dramatic, most fantastic, most exciting performer in action today. He is Joe Louis, Jascha Heifetz, Sammy Davis, and Nashua rolled into one."
At sixteen, he was playing for the Birmingham Black Barons. The New York Giants paid $15,000 for his contract in 1950 and gave Mays a $6,000 signing bonus. After a season at the Class B level, he jumped to Minneapolis in the Triple-A American Association, where he batted .477 in the first 35 games of the 1951 season.
The Giants then brought him up. Mays went hitless in his first 21 major-league at-bats, but he ended up batting .274 with 20 home runs and 68 RBI in 121 games and fielding sensationally to help win a pennant.
Mays missed most of the 1952 season and all of the 1953 season while serving in the Army. He returned in 1954 to help lead the Giants to another pennant, leading the league in hitting with a .345 average, in slugging with a .667 percentage, and in triples with 13. He also had 41 home runs, 110 RBI, and 119 runs scored, won the league's most valuable player award, and was named male athlete of the year by the Associated Press.
In New York's four-game World Series sweep of the heavily-favored Cleveland Indians, Mays batted .286, scoring 4 runs and driving in 3. But the unforgettable play of that World Series was his catch--"the Catch"--in the 8th inning of the first game. With the score tied 2-2, Cleveland had two men on and nobody out when Vic Wertz hit a tremendous drive to center field. Racing toward the fence, Mays made an over-the-shoulder catch about 425 feet from home plate, then somehow recovered to make a strong throw back to the infield, holding the runners. The Giants went on to win the game 5-2 on Dusty Rhodes' three-run homer in the 10th.
Mays led the league with 13 triples, 51 home runs, and a .659 slugging percentage in 1955; with 20 triples and a .626 slugging percentage in 1957; and with 121 runs scored in 1958, the team's first season in San Francisco. It wasn't a happy move for Mays. He encountered racial prejudice when he bought a home in a formerly all-white section of the city, and San Francisco fans at first preferred a younger hero, Orlando Cepeda.
But his 1962 performance won over most of the fans. He led the league with 49 home runs, batted .304, scored 130 runs, and had 141 RBI to help San Francisco win its first pennant. However, he hit only .250 in a seven-game World Series loss to the New York Yankees.
Mays won two more home run titles, with 47 in 1964 and 52 in 1965. He also led the league in slugging both years with percentages of .607 and .645, and he won the 1965 most valuable player award. That was the last season in which he batted over .300.
Early in the 1972 season, Mays went back to New York to play for the Mets. He hit just .250 that year and he retired after batting only .211 in 66 games in 1973.
Mays had a career .302 average with 3,283 hits, including 523 doubles, 140 triples, and 660 home runs. He stole 338 bases, scored 2,062 runs, and had 1,903 RBI.