MAYS, William Howard, Jr. ("Willie")

(b. 6 May 1931 in Westfield [some sources say Fairfield], Alabama), Major League Baseball player and coach whose all-out emotional and physical commitment transformed the game and whose record-setting play in the 1950s and 1960s earned him recognition from baseball historians as one of the greatest players of all time.

Mays's father, William Howard Mays, worked in a tool room for a steel mill and also played center field for a local semiprofessional baseball team. His mother, Anna Sattle-white Mays, had been a high-school track star. Mays's parents divorced when he was three years old, and he was raised by his father. His mother remarried and had ten children, who were half-brothers and -sisters to Mays.

Although he worked hard, long hours, Mays, Sr., made time for his son and encouraged the boy's athletic interests and natural talent, trying to steer him in the direction of professional baseball as a means of escaping the life of a manual laborer. He was a pitcher for the Negro amateur leagues himself.

At Fairfield Industrial High School, which did not have a baseball team, Mays was the quarterback of the football team and the highest scorer on the basketball team. Outside of school he began playing baseball with the semiprofessional Gray Sox at age thirteen. By 1948 he had joined the professional Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro Leagues as a center fielder at the request of the manager, Piper Davis. In spite of playing professional baseball and traveling around the country, Mays stayed in high school and earned his diploma in 1950.

Mays was spotted by a New York Giants scout and signed with that organization in 1950. A minor league team in Sioux City, Iowa, refused to accept Mays because he was African American, and he instead went to the Trenton, New Jersey, Giants of AA ball, where he performed well. The Giants management wanted to bring Mays along gradually, because he seemed unprepared for the rough treatment he would receive in the major leagues.

In 1951 Mays was moved to the Minneapolis, Minnesota, Millers, a AAA club. He had a .477 batting average and was beloved by the fans when he was called up to the major leagues. He performed poorly at first in New York and was unhappy with the racism he encountered. Mays asked to be sent back to Minneapolis, but the Giants manager, Leo Durocher, persuaded Mays to stay, insisting the young man was the best player he had ever seen. Mays's performance improved, and he was voted the National League Rookie of the Year for 1951.

In 1952 Mays was drafted into the U.S. Army. He served stateside, playing a great deal of baseball and learning his famous "basket catch." Mays was discharged from the army in 1954 and returned to the Giants. That year, in the first game of the World Series, Mays made a basket catch over his shoulder while running to dead center field off a tremendous blast by Vic Wertz of the Cleveland Indians. "The Catch" is often cited as the best ever made, but fans of Mays knew it was only one of many amazing plays. In 1954 Mays was named as the National League's Most Valuable Player, and he began his twenty-year run as a member of their All-Star team.

In 1955 Mays hit fifty-one home runs, stole twenty-four bases, and distinguished himself with consistently great play. The next year he stole forty bases and, at age twenty-four, secured his reputation as the greatest all-around offensive threat in the history of baseball. Soon after, he also was deemed the best defensive center fielder in the game's history. A favorite with Giants fans, Mays earned the nickname "Say Hey Kid" because of his enthusiasm on the diamond. In May 1956 he married Marghuerite Wendell; they adopted a baby boy in 1958. The couple had a messy, public divorce in 1963.

The Giants moved to San Francisco for the 1958 season and saw their attendance at a minor league park double from that of the previous season in New York. By then, Mays was generally regarded by baseball fans as the game's best player; many argued that he was better than Babe Ruth. Even so, Mays was going through dark times: his marriage was foundering, fans in San Francisco seemed slow in taking a liking to him, and racists in Dublin, California, politely told him not to buy a house there. Mays experienced the sort of petty, cruel racism that he had hoped not to find in California.

His wonderful play in 1962, during which the Giants won the National League pennant, brought him the adulation he had missed since leaving New York. Overcoming the damp, cold, shifting winds of Candlestick Park—the worst hitter's park in baseball, especially for home-run hitters—Mays bashed long balls at such a ferocious pace that journalists thought he would beat Hank Aaron to Babe Ruth's career record of 714 major league home runs. Mays also managed to maintain a high batting average that year and to set a career-high record of 141 runs batted in. In 1965 he hit fifty-two home runs, with an incredible average of 9.3 at bats per home run, while leading the league with a .645 slugging average. Mays received the league's Most Valuable Player award for 1965.

On 27 November 1971 Mays married Mae Louise Allen, a Howard University graduate who knew sports. Mays was traded on 11 May 1972 to the New York Mets, supposedly so he could close out his career in the city where he had first become famous. He did not want to leave the Giants and resented the trade. In 1973 Mays retired from the major leagues. In 1979, his first year of eligibility, he was voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. From 1986 to 1998 he rejoined the Giants organization to assist with coaching and public relations.

To most baseball historians, Mays remains the best of all players. He had the greatest range and throwing arm of any center fielder. As a base stealer and runner, he was astoundingly cunning and intimidating. He hit for high batting averages and a multitude of doubles (523, lifetime), triples (140), and home runs (660). As a power hitter, he ranks only behind Babe Ruth and Mark McGwire. Further, he was a master of all the strategies of baseball. When they played the Giants, opposing teams prepared three sets of signs for each game, because Mays would figure out the first and second sets of signs (maybe the third, too) and tell his manager, who would then know the opposition's strategy. The combination of Mays's great talent, immense dedication, and superior intelligence established him as the model of the perfect ball player, both in the 1960s and for following generations.

Mays and Lou Sahadi, Say Hey: The Autobiography of Willie Mays (1988), is an excellent sports autobiography, with Mays telling about both his good and bad experiences, from the racism in his early days of playing baseball to his induction into the Hall of Fame. Donald Dewey and Nicholas Acocella, The BiographicalHistory of Baseball (1995, rev. ed. 2002), provides a helpful summary of the essentials of Mays's life. George Sullivan, Sluggers: Twenty-seven of Baseball's Greatest (1991), offers statistics and other facts to explain Mays's greatness as a hitter.

Kirk H. Beetz