A story:
Willie Mays came into the 1969 season with 587 home runs and prepared for his run at 600, a mark that only Babe Ruth had assailed at that time. Though Father Time had at last begun making some inroads on the then 38-year-old Say Hey Kid, he had cleared 20 home runs in 1968, the Year of the Pitcher, and was expected to fly past 600 and perhaps begin building the foundation for a later assault on 700, and Ruth beyond.
But nagging injuries kept the iridescent player off the field throughout the year, and the splendor wasn’t quite the same for the man who had dominated the game for nearly two decades. In September, as the end of the year approached, Mays was stuck on 599, the milestone refused to crumble, and the specter of another off-season of waiting loomed in the mind.
My father, the greatest Giants’ fan I ever knew, had a late September trip planned to San Diego — whether work or Kiwanis took him there, I can’t recall — and it coincided with the Giants’ final trip to meet the Pads. Generally, my Dad was a fan who could spot the dark clouds in any bright summer sky, but he went to that game brimming with confidence. He had been to four games that summer and, against all mathematical probability, had witnessed four of Mays’ 12 home runs! He was certain to witness the historic event.
Arriving at what was then called San Diego Stadium, Dad took a scorecard and wrote a note for Lon Simmons and Russ Hodges, who had been agonizing over every fly ball off Mays’ bat for weeks. “The wait is over,” he proudly announced. Mays was going to hit #600 that day and they should prepare to call the great moment. As he stood to beckon an usher to take his note up to the press box, the starting lineups were announced. Alas, there was no Mays playing that day. Dejected and disgusted, he waved the usher away again and plopped in his seat. He would witness no history that day.
But in the 7th inning of a 2-2 game, Mays was called upon to pinch hit for a young George Foster, who had come in to play LF and was appearing in just the sixth game of his career. Mays rose to the moment, belting a game-winning #600, and my father leapt to his feet, thrilled to witness the historic occasion, though irritated that he had foregone his chance at calling it.
That story was told often in my childhood home, and the note he wrote sat around the house for many years — somewhere along the way it was lost. And now, Mays has been lost as well. Like my father, and Lon and Russ, he is — painfully, shockingly, irrevocably — lost to us.
Nobody seemed more alive playing the game of baseball than Mays. And no player brought the game to life more than Mays, who played with such dazzling clarity and joy and imagination and style. So it seems unimaginable that “alive” is no longer a word we can associate with the great brown-eyed handsome man, who has rounded third and headed for home for the final time.
He was inimitable — though he certainly had his imitators. Bobby Bonds used to wear a batting helmet too small for his head, so it would fly off when he was careening around 1b, the way Mays’ used to do. Gary Matthews eschewed artifice — he would simply fling his helmet from his head manually when rounding 1b and heading for extra bases.
It’s especially painful that the loss of Mays comes on Juneteenth, a date dedicated to witnessing and celebrating African-American history — the history to which he is now consigned. And that it comes on the eve of the Rickwood Field game meant to honor Negro League history — and Mays’ part in it. The game will now take a dual meaning, honoring both the legacy of the players who were not allowed to participate in MLB and built their own dazzling version of the game themselves, and honoring the legacy of the greatest ever to dazzle. Nobody played the game like Mays. No one ever did, no one ever will. And now he’s gone, our great bridge to the past — the past of Giants fans, of Negro league fans, of baseball fans. Our past irrevocably falls away and all we have left is memories of the splendor that was.
Goodbye, Willie. The great game in heaven will now have to make way for its brightest new star.
As an old English major, I tend to process my emotions through literature, and this morning, I’m feeling distinctly in a Samuel Beckett mood:
I must go on. I can’t go on. I’ll go on.
And so I go on with my oh so minor lines…
HITTER of the NIGHT: Dario Reynoso (ACLG), 2 for 3, HR (1), 2 R, 3 RBI, BB, K
PITCHER of the NIGHT: Jack Choate (Eug), 5.0 IP, 2 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 1 BB, 4 K, 1 HR
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