MAYS, Willie Howard

(b. 6 May 1931 in Westfield, Alabama), baseball player generally regarded as one of the most exciting athletes of the twentieth century and one of the best all-around players in baseball history.

Mays was the only child of William Howard Mays, a steel mill worker and railway porter who may once have played for the Birmingham, Alabama, Black Barons of the Negro National League, and Ann Sattlewhite, a high school track and field athlete. His parents divorced soon after his birth, and his mother remarried. She and her second husband had ten children; Mays has two half brothers and eight half sisters. Mays continued to live with his father, who, aided by a young woman called Aunt Sarah, raised Mays and taught him the fundamentals of baseball. By age ten, Mays was playing in sandlot games with boys several years older. He entered Fairfield Industrial High School in 1946, where he excelled in football and basketball and trained to work in a laundry. The school had no baseball team, so Mays pitched and played the outfield for his father's mill team and a local semiprofessional team, earning about $100 a month.

Mays's father arranged a tryout with the Black Barons in 1948, and the team manager, Lorenzo "Piper" Davis, signed the seventeen-year-old to play during his summer vacation with the proviso that he complete high school. Mays broke in by starting the second game of a doubleheader, much to the dismay of his older teammates, and got two hits against a veteran pitcher. He moved into the starting lineup after the regular centerfielder broke his leg and, over the course of three seasons, profited from Davis's careful instruction to become a promising young player. After Mays graduated from high school on 20 June 1950, the New York Giants paid the Barons $10,000 for the right to sign him to a contract. Still underage, Mays needed his father's consent to accept a signing bonus of $5,000 and a salary of $250 a month.

The Giants assigned Mays to their Trenton, New Jersey, club in the Class B Interstate League, where he batted .353 in eighty-one games and led the league's outfielders in assists. Advanced to the Giants top farm club, the Minneapolis Millers in the American Association, in 1951, Mays hit an astounding .477 before being promoted to the parent club after just thirty-five games. Manager Leo Durocher inserted him into the lineup on 25 May, but Mays had no hits in his first twelve times at bat. After getting his first major league hit, a home run off Warren Spahn, he went hitless again in thirteen at bats and began to doubt the level of his skills. Durocher, a belligerent, profane man, nevertheless consoled his insecure rookie, reassuring him that he was in the major leagues to stay. Mays responded by batting .274 for the year with twenty home runs. Both the Baseball Writers' Association of America and The Sporting News named Mays National League (NL) Rookie of the Year. When Giant Bobby Thomson hit his legendary home run, the "Shot Heard Round the World," in the decisive playoff game that deprived the favored Brooklyn Dodgers of the NL pennant, Mays waited in the on-deck circle, a threat all the same.

Mays was served with a draft notice immediately after the 1951 World Series, which the Giants lost to the New York Yankees, and played only thirty-four games in 1952 before being inducted into the U.S. Army. He spent the bulk of the two years at Fort Eustis, Virginia, playing ball until he was able to rejoin his team during spring training of 1954. That season, Mays came into his own as one of baseball's young stars. He led the league in batting with a .345 average, hit 41 home runs, drove in 110 runs, and won the NL's Most Valuable Player (MVP) award. The Giants won the pennant and upset the Cleveland Indians in the World Series. Mays hit only .286, but in game one he made what quickly became, and has remained, the most famous catch in baseball history. Cleveland's Vic Wertz hit a towering drive to deep centerfield. Mays turned his back to the plate and ran at full speed to the deepest recesses of the Polo Grounds. He glanced back over his left shoulder, and the ball settled into his glove, more than 450 feet from home plate. He wheeled and threw to second baseman Davey Williams, who relayed the ball home, preventing Larry Doby from scoring from second base. Mays later claimed that he made several better catches, and maybe he did, but this one, coming in a World Series, has been immortalized.

Over the next few seasons, Mays cemented his reputation as a superstar and a gifted "five-tool" player. He could hit, hit with power, run, throw, and field. Casual observers often described Mays as a natural athlete, but in truth he honed his craft with hard work and intense dedication. Moreover, in the competitive cauldron that was New York baseball in the post–World War II era, he more than held his own in the debate over who was the better centerfielder: Edwin "Duke" Snider of the Dodgers, Mickey Mantle of the Yankees, or Mays. All three were sluggers, but Mays and Mantle augmented their power with unusual speed, both in the field and on the base paths. Mantle hit several prodigious home runs, legendary for their length, but his achievements and career statistics were truncated by frequent injuries that caused him to retire prematurely. As a result, baseball historians have often placed Mays higher in the ranks of the game's all-time greats.

Mays endeared himself to fans by the flair with which he played and the childlike joy he seemed to exude. One of baseball's first African-American stars, he also was one of the first sluggers to possess exceptional speed and utilize it with abandon. He wore a cap too large for his head just so it would fly off as he rounded first base or dashed across the Giants' vast Polo Grounds outfield to snare fly balls. He played stickball with kids in the streets of Harlem and greeted people with a cheery "Say hey." Whereas most outfielders caught flies with their hands positioned above their shoulders, he perfected the basket catch, holding his hands below his waist and allowing the ball to drop into his glove. The celebrated entertainer and Giants fan Tallulah Bank-head captured his greatness this way: "There have been only two authentic geniuses in the world, Willie Mays and Willie Shakespeare."

Mays married Marghuerite Wendell Kennedy Chapman in February 1956. They adopted an infant boy, but were divorced after five years of marriage. In November 1971 Mays married Mae Allen. He continued to play with the Giants through their move to San Francisco after the 1957 season, was traded in May 1972 to the New York Mets, and retired after the 1973 World Series. He batted over .300 ten times, scored over 100 runs in 12 consecutive seasons, and drove in over 100 runs 10 times. He led the National League in stolen bases 4 times and home runs 4 times, including 51 in 1955 and 52 in 1965, when he was again named the league's MVP. In 1955 he became the first player to hit at least fifty homers and steal at least twenty bases in the same season. On 30 April 1960 he became the ninth player to hit four home runs in one game, and on 18 July 1970 he collected his 3,000th hit. He set league records for putouts and chances and won eleven straight Gold Glove awards, emblematic of fielding excellence. Mays played in four World Series and in every All-Star game between 1954 and 1973, often making this contest his personal showcase. The Sporting News named him Major League Player of the Decade for the 1960s.

Over a 22-year career, Mays batted .302, stole 338 bases, drove in 1,903 runs, and hit 660 home runs, third on the all-time list. He was elected nearly unanimously to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1979, his first year of eligibility. Just three months after his induction, though, Commissioner Bowie Kuhn forced Mays to end his association with baseball after he signed a contract to represent the Bally Manufacturing Corporation, a company with gambling interests. Kuhn's successor, Peter Ueberroth, lifted this ban in 1985. In 2000 Mays received three crowning honors. Major League Baseball chose him for its All-Century team, ESPN ranked him as the eighth best athlete of the century, and the Sporting News named him the second-best player of all time, behind only Babe Ruth.

Mays's decision to appear at autograph shows across the country, but not to interact with fans in a friendly manner, dimmed some of his luster in his retirement, but his status as a player remained secure. "Willie Mays's glove," Dodgers executive L. Fresco Thompson said once, is "the place where triples go to die," and sportswriter Walter "Red" Smith, who reported on New York baseball during the "Willie, Mickey, and the Duke" years, wrote, "You could get a fat lip in any saloon by starting an argument as to which was best. One point was beyond argument, though. Willie was by all odds the most exciting."

Mays worked with two sportswriters to produce three autobiographies: Born to Play Ball, as told to Charles Einstein (1955); Willie Mays: My Life In and Out of Baseball, as told to Charles Einstein (1966); and Say Hey: The Autobiography of Willie Mays, with Lou Sahadi (1988). Other fine portraits of Mays are included in Donald Honig, Mays, Mantle, Snider (1987); and Bob Broeg, "Willie Mays," in Superstars of Baseball: Their Lives, Their Loves, Their Laughs, Their Laments (1994).

Steven P. Gietschier