The Indomitable Willie Mays

Today my final individual look at the four men, Willie Mays, Sandy Koufax, Henry Aaron and Johnny Bench voted baseball’s greatest living players last week.

The indomitable Willie Mays was the quintessential “5 tool player” baseball scouts dream of discovering. He could hit, hit for power, field *as few others if any), run and throw.

Incredibly, for 12 straight seasons playing for both the New York and San Francisco Giants, Mays scored over 100 runs, and at one point drove in 100 runs or more for 8 straight seasons. He hit over 50 home runs eleven years apart in 1954 and 1965.

Yet statistics tell so little of his greatness. One need only see him play, “a baseball genius” as John Unitas was in football, to see his brilliance.

Willie has said he made better catches, (one off the bat of Bobby Morgan, which has no film record is often cited), but it is Willie Mays’ “over the shoulder” catch in game one of the 1954 World Series vs the Cleveland Indians on a drive off the bat of Vic Wertz, that is immortalized.

Wertz, who had 4 hits in that game was robbed of an extra base hit when Mays raced back to grab his drive with runners on first and second and none out in the top of the eighth inning.

He made a great throw, some say better than the catch, which kept runner Larry Doby from scoring. The Giants eventually won the game on Dusty Rhodes’  pinch home run and went on to sweep the (111-43) Cleveland Indians in four straight games.

The way Willie played and loved the great game of baseball, running the bases as no other, pounding his glove and making his “basket catch,” are all indelible, great memories.

A childhood memory: it was either Jerry Weinberg or Stan Gardner, each of whom an adult at the time and destined to die young, the latter shot to death in front of his son who has the same name as me, “hit” a ball (Spalding, red rubber ball) “off the stoop” (6 steps leading up to the garden apartment in which I lived with my parents) sailing well over my head.

Approximately 10 years old, I raced back and caught the ball over my shoulder. Either Mr. Weinberg or Mr. Gardner, perhaps both, said to my father, who was sitting and watching, my catch was similar to Willie Mays’ catch in the World Series!

If only I could go back and feel that triumphant again!

Appreciating the great fortune that I saw the great Willie Mays play is a good way to start!

Click here to watch the 1954 catch and throw.