WILLIE MAYS IS HURTING THE GIANTS!
“His speed has slowed down, his stamina has slowed down – when you’re 40 years old, something’s gotta go,” says Ron Hunt about Willie.  For the team’s sake, many feel what must go is the Giants’ still heavy dependence on Mays.

The summer sun beat down hard on the dry infield at Shea Stadium.  The Giants were going through the motions of batting practice before a day game against the Mets after losing two night games.  San Francisco coach Wes Westrum short-armed the ball to the hitter, first baseman Willie McCovey, and the big slugger grounded a few balls weakly through the right side of the infield before leaving the batting cage.

“Too damn hot,” McCovey said.  Then he walked to the dugout, reached for a towel, sat back and wiped his sweaty forehead.  “Too damn hot.” At that instant, Willie Mays lay asleep on the training table in the cool San Francisco clubhouse under the stands at Shea Stadium.  Trainer Leo Hughes, who administers to Mays like a mother hen, stood nearby watching the clock.  In five minutes he would gently awaken Mays, rub his shoulders, arms and back, and send him out to do battle with the Mets.  Mays doesn’t often play Day games after night games.  When it happens, it’s usually in New York. "I gotta play here,” Mays said.  “There’s a lot of people out there come to see me."

At 40, Mays is no longer  the player he once was.

Willie Mays is 40 years old.  It isn’t easy pushing his body for day games after night games.  But he does it for his old fans in New York.

“His speed has slowed down, his stamina has slowed down – when you’re 40 years old, something’s gotta go,” said Ron Hunt, the second baseman of the Montreal Expos and a teammate of Mays on the Giants the previous three seasons.  “He still swings the bat and he still plays center field good, but on those days when he is really tired he is just an ordinary ball player.”

Mays plays tired a lot.  He is making $160,000 a year on a two-year contract and he knows he owes it to the Giants, to owner Horace Stoneham and to the fans to show himself as much as he can.

“That’s what he does,” said a veteran San Francisco writer.  “He just shows himself.  He’s an altogether different player in New York than he is in Cincinnati and Pittsburgh.”

As Mays closes in on Babe Ruth’s career home run record and adds to his over-3000 hit total every time he gets a base hit, the nagging thought persists: Willie Mays is hurting the Giants.

Impossible, you say.  Unthinkable.  Heresy.  Perhaps, but consider a few facts first.

The Giants have not won a pennant since 1962 and with Mays, McCovey and Juan Marichal in their lineup all of that time, it seems inconceivable that they wouldn’t have done better.  They made second place their home and Mays usually faltered in the September stretch.  Usually no one man wins or loses a pennant by himself, but an over reliance on Mays may very well have cost the Giants one or more flags.

“Every year I was with them,” recalls Ray Sadecki, the Mets’ lefthander, “we finished second.  Maybe it’s because we looked to Mays so much and expected him to win it for us.  The guy’s a great player but it still takes 25 guys to win.  I think the Mets proved that in 1969.  I think maybe the Giants depended too much on Mays and when he didn’t win it for them, they couldn’t win.”

In the past three or four years, Mays has become more and more conscious of the home run.  He says he doesn’t think he has a chance to catch Ruth.  He says Hank Aaron might.  But Mays is a man of enormous pride, and one of the reasons he signed a two year contract with the Giants at the start of the 1971 season was to insure his financial stability even if his average drops.  A man’s average drops when he begins to swing from his heels all the time.

Sadecki was asked if he thought Mays was hurting the Giants by shooting for the home run record.

“If there was a man on second and nobody out,” said Sadecki, “and the hitter didn’t try and move him over, you’d feel like he hurt his club.  When it’s Willie Mays and he goes for a home run and pops up, what can you say?”

By going for home runs, by playing harder than in New York than in other cities, by experiencing the privileges of super stardom, Mays has hurt the Giants.  Despite his greatness, they have won the pennant only three times since he joined them in 1951.  Ironically, maybe his greatness is the reason.

“The first time I played right field for the Giants and Willie Mays was in center field,” remembers Dave Marshall, now an outfielder with the Mets, “I turned to look at him and I was in awe of him.  I couldn’t believe I was in the same outfield with the great Willie Mays.  When you’re playing out there, you come to depend on him very strongly.  Hell, after a while I wouldn’t take a step without checking with Willie.”

Mays had a fine year last season with a .291 average, 28 homers and 83 RBIs in 139 games.  It was 22 more games than he had played the year before.  However, the Giants finished a sorry third in 1970.

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