In midsummer of 1951 I flew up to Montreal to interview George Ratterman, a quarterback who had jumped the National Football league in favor of Canadian football.  The story would appear in the November issue of Sport titled: “I’d Rather Play In Canada.”  About the same time, my boss on Sport, Ed Fitzgerald, rode a subway to the Polo Grounds to interview the rookie marvel of the New York Giants, Willie Mays.  He called his Mays story, “Amazin’ Willie Mays,” and it also would appear in the November issue.  Ed Fitzgerald, it turned out, did a lot better than I did, because after one year in Canada George Ratterman decided that he’d rather not play in Canada after all, and he jumped back to the United States.  But Amazin’ Willie Mays stayed just that way.  He was amazin’ as a rookie in 1951, he was amazin’ when he returned from the service in 1954 and, among other things, made that unforgettable back-to-the-plate World Series catch off Vic Wertz.  He was amazin’ all through the 1950s and ‘60s.  He remains amazin’ today at age 40, the most amazin’ of all the ballplayers of the last 25 years.
 

Ahh, 1951 was a good year, a very good year to learn the trade of magazine editing in the sports field, in sports, for heaven’s sake.  (Never in my wildest dreams as a kid did it ever occur to me that I might someday be earning a living from the passion of my youth.)  It was my first year on the magazine and there I was, making my debut in the company of two rookies named Mays and Mantle.  It is unberably depressing today to consider my accomplishments over the last 20 years alongside those of Mays and Mantle.  On the other hand, it warms me to think back to 1951, my first full year of gainful employment, to think back to baseball as it was being played in a year when Mays and Mantle were rookies. For 1951 was a super baseball year.  Stan Musial was playing and leading  the National League in hitting.  Ted Williams was playing, too, and hitting

Willie Mays is the top performer in baseball over the last 25 years.

.318 for the Red Sox.  Warren Spahn, my boyhood hero, was winning 22 games for the Braves.  It was also the year of the Yankees, the year of Reynolds, Raschi, Lopat, and Joe DiMaggio, struggling through his last hurrah.  Above all, it was the year of the Giants, and of the Bobby Thomson miracle.  That year, baseball was magnificent.

Over the years, baseball, of all the sports – baseball, the most consistently maligned of our contemporary sports – has had more colossal players than any other sport.  Some of the names are mentioned above.  Add to them the likes of Aaron, Clemente, Campanella, Jackie Robinson, Frank Robinson, Koufax, Berra, Feller.  All Hall of Famers, or soon to be.  And all of them paradaed majestically across the pitted landscape of the last quarter century.  All colossal players.  But of them all, we think Willie Mays – the one who was a rookie in 1951 and plays like a rookie today – has been, in the lifetime of this magazine, the most colossal of them all.

Mays’ manager today is Charlie Fox, and that wakes up an echo, too.  For late in the year of 1951, after a successful season in the low minors as a player-manager, Fox came to my cubicle and together we composed a story for this magazine called, “I Am A Class C Manager.”  Reading it recently, I was struck by two things.  One was the pieties of the day uttered by Fox, about keeping his players away from drink and other temptations, and how he liked to go to church on Sundays to set an example for the boys.  The tone was just right for the 1950s.  The other was a longshot observation made by Fox.  “What do I want to do now?” he wrote.  “Manage the Giants, of course.” So you must pay attention to Fox the Prophet when he chants these lines about Willie Mays: “If you live to be 199 years old, you won’t see anyone do so many things so well on a baseball field.”

One has to be careful discussing 40-year-old athletes, especially when those doing the discussing are over 40 themselves.  Milton Gross, for instance, who admits being over 40, wrote recently in the New York Post: “Mays . . . is an emotional experience.  He is the tie that bonds so many of us to our carefree days of the past.”  Writing in The Saturday Review last April, Peter Schrag strummed the same chord.  He described Mays moving “with the grace of memory, defying time, defying the inexorable erosion of fantasies, defying age itself.” Ah, yes, but that is very sentimental and you must understand that Willie Mays as our Top Performer of the 25 years in baseball is not a sentimental choice.  He is a logical choice, the only logical choice.  He has done everything any non-pitcher has ever done in this game.  He has always gotten perfect marks from his managers, and for those who weren’t privileged to manage him, for his performance in the key elements of the game – hitting, hitting with power, speed on the bases, strength and accuracy of arm.

The statistics take the measure of the ballplayer (up front in this issue our colleague, Allan Roth, handles the Mays statistical details with all of the Roth flair and erudition).  But statistics cannot begin to tell all.  The full measure of Willie Mays comes from that rare, rare mix – sheer excitement combined with pure perfection.  We can think of only two other ballplayers who possessed those twin treasures, Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth.

Excitement.  Perfection.  Everyone has his own favorite Willie Mays moment when both came into play – the clutch home run, the fantastic catch, the unbelievable throw.  I want to tell you mine.

It came in the 1964 All-Star game, which was played at Shea Stadium.  My three sons were with me.  They were then ages seven, eight, and ten.  All were Mickey Mantle fans and very, very skeptical of Willie Mays.

Okay, to the ninth inning their skepticism seemed justified.  Mays had done nothing special on the field except tie some kind of All-Star game record for putouts for an outfielder.  But he had also just missed making a couple of spectacular catches.  And, at bat, he had been held hitless.  In the bottom of the ninth, the National League trailing by one run (which made my sons happy since they were American League fans as well as Mantle rooters), Mays came up against Dick Radatz.  Six-five, 260 pounds, Dick Radatz was the Monster Man of the Red Sox and probably the best relief pitcher in baseball at the time.  He had come in the game in the seventh inning and retired six straight men, four on strikeouts.  Willie Mays was the first batter to face him in the ninth.

Right away, Radatz whipped over two quick strikes on Mays.  The third pitch was in tight and Mays danced back out of the way.  Willie fouled off the next pitch, then another, just reaching, just looking for a piece of the ball, trying to protect himself against the strikeout, waiting for the good pitch.

Somehow, Willie managed to work the count to 3-and-2, fouling off eight pitches in all.  And, suddenly, you knew who was going to win this duel.  Dick Radatz finally threw one a fraction outside and Mays was springing to first base.

It is unorthodox baseball for a runner to try and steal with his team a run behind in the ninth inning and nobody out.  But Willie has always said, “When I see a base out there, I just want to get it.”

On Radatz’ first pitch, Willie Mays was off.  He slid into second base well ahead of the tag.

Now Orlando Cepeda was the batter and Radatz was bothered by Mays, afraid that Willie might try to steal third.  Seeing Radatz’ discomfort, second baseman Bobby Richardson moved in to close the bag.  It was a mistake.  Cepeda blooped a fly into short rightfield, toward the line.  Richardson could not get to it.  Willie as into third when first baseman Joe Pepitone retrieved the ball.  He was off the base, just looking, just feeling his way, his remarkable baseball instincts at play.  And Pepitone, nervous about the possibility of Mays breaking for home, threw to the plate.  He threw badly.  Willie was off, flying down the baseline, slashing into home plate with the tying run.

Later in the inning, the inevitable happened.  Radatz got Ken Boyer to pop up and intentionally walked John Edwards to set up a double play.  Hank Aaron struck out and Johnny Callison came up and Callison won the game for the National League with a home run.  But by then, we already knew who would win.  And we also knew who had really won it for the National League.  And my sons left the ballpark with a clearer appreciation of this remarkable man, Willie Mays.

We all have a clearer appreciation for Willie Mays today.

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