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I promised everyone several weeks ago that I was going to put together a piece on Willie Mays. Here it is, finally.
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The trouble with Willie Mays was that he spoiled the fans. He played the game with a flair for excitement. He made sensational catches and cloud-stirring slides. He was majestic. He had a great style. He had a great personality. He had a great nickname, the "Say Hey Kid." It is easy to see why he has such a hold on anyone who saw him play. I wish I had seen him in his prime.
He also had great demographics. He was the best player in the game in the 1950s. He was the best player in the game for much of the 1960s. He excelled playing in New York, on the East Coast. He was the first superstar in the Bay Area on the West Coast.
He played a key position (center field) for a key franchise (the Giants) in the dominant league (National League) at a time in history when football and basketball and football had yet to overtake baseball as the most popular sport in the United States.
Those who favor Willie Mays as the all-time greatest player point to the fact that Mays was a baseball genius, superior in the following skills: hitting, hitting for power, running, catching, and throwing. What a fantastic player he was! There were those who had higher batting averages, hit more home runs, stole more bases, and were great fielders. But few have ever matched Mays in excellence in all of these categories.
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He joined a Giants team that was near the bottom in the standings, having recently lost 10 consecutive games. The New York manager was Leo Durocher, who showed an enormous amount of patience with his young phenom. Mays went hitless on his first few games, and had only one home run (a HR off of future Hall of Famer Warren Spahn) in his first 25 major-league at bats. Mays asked out of the lineup, but manager Durocher refused him.
The Giants were down 13.5 games to the Dodgers in mid-August, catching Brooklyn by the end of the season, forcing a three-game playoff for the pennant. One of the main reasons the Giants made their comeback was Willie Mays. On August 15, 1951, his catch of a long smash off the bat of Brooklyn's Carl Furillo and Mays's 325-foot throw to double up Billy Cox at home plate had most observers at the time calling it the greatest catch-and-throw play ever made. Mays always maintained that it was his best-ever defensive play. Mays was the National League Rookie of the Year, hitting 20 HRs in his first 121 games. Willie was on deck when Bobby Thompson hit "the Shot Heard Round the World" to give the Giants the pennant.
Only a month into the 1952 season, Mays was drafted into the army, and wouldn't return to the Giants until the 1954 season. The Giants, who finished first with Mays in 1951, fell to second place and fifth place in the two years Mays missed. In 1954, with Willie back from the army, the Giants won the pennant and returned to the World Series.
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Tim McCarver: "Mays is still the best I've ever seen. In so many ways he could beat you. Aaron resigned himself to more or less just to be a hitter, but Mays never did that. He took tremendous pride in his baserunning, for example. He would use intimidation and mind games. He once told me when I was catching, that he cut off Del Rice from his knees to his left cheek once sliding home, but not to worry, that he didn't want to do that anymore. Remember, catchers used to plant their left leg, and were vulnerable from the knee to the ass. You bet he tried to use intimidation. He told pitcher [and opponent] Ray Sadecki that he would never get blocked off a base. Never. Willie had an interesting slide into the catchers: not leaping, but he left his left foot up a little bit. It was a cross between a straight-in slide and hook slide, and boy, he had it down. The detail was so far ahead of the other guys as far as baserunning, in a day when things were more conventional ... nobody ran the bases like Willie."
It's not possible to get off the fact that he missed those two seasons due to army commitment. When one looks at his 1954 numbers, you can assume that Mays lost 70 home runs while he was in the army. He would have been the one to break Babe's career record of 714 (Hank Aaron was three years younger than Willie. He entered the majors in 1954 and never served the army.)
Following 1954, Mays continued to put up excellent numbers, with no one watching him. The New York Giants played in the Polo Grounds in Harlem, and attendance was low. After the 1957 season, the Giants moved to San Francisco.
In his four full seasons in New York, Mays averaged 41 home runs a season. Willie would've padded his 660 career total plenty if the Giants stayed in New York, or almost anywhere else. Candlestick Park in San Francisco opened in 1960, and it did Willie no favors. The Polo Grounds had a lot of room in the outfield gaps, which helped Willie lead the league in triples each of the four full seasons he played there. Mays also lead the league in stolen bases four straight seasons (1956-1959).
The financially strapped Giants were not a good team in those final seasons in New York, but the addition of some good players (Orlando Cepeda in 1958, Willie McCovey in 1959, and Juan Marichal in 1960) made the Giants annual contenders.
In his first year in Candlestick, Mays hit just 29 home runs. It was not as if he had a bad year. His .319 average was still the third highest in the league, and he finished third in the MVP voting.
The 1961 Giants improved from fifth place to third, as McCovey and Marichal began complimenting Mays. In 1962, with one game to go in the season, the Giants trailed the Dodgers by one game. Mays hit his 47th home runs of the season in the eight inning to give the Giants a 2-1 victory over the expansion Astros. A few innings later, the Cardinals' Gene Oliver hit a ninth-inning homer to defeat the Dodgers. That forced (like 11 years earlier) the Giants and Dodgers into a tie for the National League pennant, to be decided in a best-of-three playoff series.
In Game 1 of that series, Mays hit a two-run shot off of Sandy Kofax to lead the Giants to a 6-4 victory. In Game 2, the Dodgers won 8-7.
In the thrid game, Los Angeles took a 4-2 lead into the ninth inning, but the Dodgers relievers issued four walks and the Giants scored four times to win the pennant.
The Yankees defeated the Giants in the World Series, winning Game 7 when Bobby Richardson caught a line drive off the bat of McCovey. Surprisingly, neither Mays nor Mantle did much in the Series.
MAYS AND THE MVP
Willie Mays was the best player in the National League in the late '50s and the early '60s, but only won MVP honors in 1954 and 1965. He did finish second and third a few times. I think he should have won two or three more times.
1958 N.L. MVP Vote
1. Ernie Banks -- .313, 47 HR for Chicago shortstop -- 283 votes 2. Willie Mays -- .347, 29 HR, 31 SB in first year out west -- 185 votes
1960 N.L. MVP Vote
1. Dick Groat -- .325 for Pittsburgh shortstop -- 276 votes 2. Don Hoak -- .282 for Pittsburgh thrid baseman -- 162 votes 3. Willie Mays -- .319, 29 HR, 25 SB -- 155 votes
Mays lost MVPs to three different shortstops. This was when outfielders in the National League included Hank Aaron, Frank Robinson, and Roberto Clemente. Before then, no one had ever seen a shortstop hit almost 50 home runs, or another steal more than 100 bases. Maybe seeing Mays, Aaron, Robinson, and Clemente at the same time cancelled out their greatness in the minds of the voters.
The other factor for lack of votes, of course, was that Mays never really put together that one, signature season. Think about it. Babe Ruth had his 1927. Ted Williams had 1941, Mickey Mantle had 1956, Sammy Sosa had 1998, Barry Bonds had 2001. Willie never had a bad season, but did one season stand out apart from any of his others. He didn't have partial seasons due to injuries, or spectacular ones that stood out from the the rest.
Also, unlike Mantle's Yankees, the Giants became bridesmaids. The Giants finished second place in 1956, 1966, 1967, 1968, and 1970.
In 1956, for example, (Mays' second and final MVP season) the Giants went on a late-season 14-game winning streak and were 87-59 with 16 games to play. They had a four-game lead on September 20, but lost the pennant to the Dodgers.
Both Mantle and Mays were born in 1931. Both were rookies in 1956. Following the 1965 season, they played the same number of games. Mantle walked about 500 more times than Mays, giving him a much higher on-base percentage. But Mickey also struck out a lot more than Willie, about 500 times more. Mays had 276 stolen bases at the time, to Mantle's 145. Mantle, however, had a better sucess rate stealing bases and grounded into far fewer double plays than Willie.
Willie went through his career in good health. Mantle was basically done at 34 years of age by the time that 1965 season was finished. Mantle had osteomyelitis, a bone disease, in one leg, even before he reached the majors. His Yankee career had been upset by serious injuries to both knees and one shoulder, a broken foot, and countless severe muscle tears.
Mantle won the Triple Crown in 1956, reaching numbers that not even Mays could touch:
Mantle's 1956 Campaign -- .353 (Mays' best was .347), .464 on-base percentage (Mays' best, .425), and a .705 slugging percentage (Mays' best, .667). In that season, Mantle hit 52 home runs and drove in 130 runs. Mays never drove in more than 127 runs in a season.
Of course, Mantle had all those first-place finishes, as well. Mantle's Yankees won 12 pennants in his first 14 seasons. Mantle not only played in many World Series, he dominated them, setting several Series records.
Mays played in 20 World Series games and batted only .239, without a single home run in his 71 at-bats.
Personally, I like Mickey Mantle a lot better than I do Willie Mays, but that wasn't the question. The question was not who I like better. The question was who was the better player, setting your biases aside.
Even though I'm giving Mantle a lot of credit, it is not that clear-cut, however. Mantle played his entire career at Yankee Stadium, which helped him. Willie played from 1960 to 1972 in Candlestick Park in San Francisco, which hurt him. Mantle lost time to injury, but Mays lost two seasons in the army.
Mantle did little following that 1956 season. In his last three seasons, he batted just .254 to bring his career average below .300. He did hit another 63 home runs, to push him just past Jimmy Foxx on the all-time list and gave him a career mark of 536.
Willie, on the other hand, kick Mantle's ass at the back end of his career. Mays also had 62 additional stolen bases in his late 30s. Mays only batted .274 in his last 3,200 at-bats, which pushed his lifetime average down to .302.
The finishing kick in Mays' career would have been more impressive, but Hank Aaron had an even more dramatic late-career flourish and wound up breaking Ruth's home run record. Aaron didn't catch Mays until June 1972, when they both had 648. Even though Barry Bonds upped everyone's performance even further at a later age, it does not take away what Willie Mays did.
A CLOSER LOOK AT MAYS'S STATS
When Mickey Mantle (.593) and Willie Mays (.576) finished the 1965 season, their lifetime slugging percentage were topped only by Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Lou Gehrig, and Jimmy Foxx. When Mays retired, he was seventh on the all-time list. Following the 1994 season, Mays was still seventh all-time in that list.
Following the 2004 season, Mays was 22nd in slugging, trailing such guys as Jim Thome, Larry Walker, Albert Belle, and Juan Gonzalez. Excuse me while I throw up...
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Mays was the ideal player for fans, managers, teammates, and boys looking for heros. He gave the symbol of eternal youth, a man who played baseball because it was fun and gave people who watched him the same feeling and fun that sport is all about. Fans who remembered seeing pictures or footage of an adult Mays playing stickball in the Harlem streets had trouble seeing Mays in the 1973 World Series falling down chasing a fly ball. Mays should have never grown old or had his abilities diminish. After all, he was Willie Mays. Like I said, he spoiled everyone for so many years.
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