Willie Mays and Willie McCovey had lunch together last week, and they were just part of the crowd.
Bill Rigney, the Giants' manager when they came to San Francisco 40 years ago, was turning 80 and the two Hall of Famers were among those who turned out to celebrate with Rig at Moose's Restaurant.
“There aren't a whole lot of people living who would bring out Mays and McCovey,” observed Tony LaRussa in his remarks. Of course, there aren't a whole lot who could lure the former A's and current Cardinals' manager to a luncheon this close to spring training.
But nobody seemed to have any trouble coming out for Rigney.
“I don't know why I'm here, Bill,” said Mays in his unmistakable high-pitched chirp. “Being that I'm almost dead and you're alive.”
Mays, who will be 67 in May, is very much alive, and very much aware of what Rigney meant to him.
“It was my pleasure to come here and honor you,” said Mays. “Because you have honored me – by playing baseball.”
Larry Jansen, who won 23 games for the 1951 pennant-winning New York Giants and later was a pitching coach in San Francisco, came all the way from Oregon just to have lunch with his former teammate.
Former Warriors owner Franklin Mieuli was there, as was legendary San Francisco bass player Vernon Alley. It was Alley who introduced Rigney to his wife, Paula, more than 50 years ago.
“If it wasn't for me, none of you would be here,” said Alley, pointing to Rigney's son, Bill Jr., and granddaughter, Maggie Pond.
The day was, naturally, heavy on nostalgia, as Rigney's playing and managerial careers were recalled.
McCovey, whose most famous major-league game might well be his first, spoke of that July day in 1959, when the Giants called him up from the minors and threw him into a pennant race.
“I had been up all night trying to get here,” said McCovey. “Rig asked me how I felt, and I said, ‘Fine, I slept great.’
“Rig said, ‘That's good because you're in there today and you're hitting third. You know who usually hits there?’ ”
McCovey did not have to be told he was assuming Mays’ spot in the order. “I went 4-for-4 and made him look like a genius.”
Then McCovey paused and looked sheepishly at the man he would call his
father figure. “We won't talk about the next year, when I got him
fired.”
Rigney resurfaced as manager of the California Angels, who gave him
probably his favorite memories. In 1962, Rigney took that second-year expansion
team, with characters like Bo Belinsky, Dean Chance and Albie Pearson --
all 5-foot-5 inches of him -- and threw a real scare into the mighty Yankees.
Rigney has been dubbed baseball's oral historian, and some of his best
anecdotes come from that wacky group of Angels. He didn't have time
to tell them all, so some of them were told for him.
Sports Illustrated writer Ron Fimrite recalled one of the best, when Rigney was roused from his hotel bed in Boston by a fire alarm.
“Rigney was down on the sidewalk in his pajamas watching the fire along with the other hotel guests,” said Fimrite. “Then he noticed a handful of his players standing nearby, wearing jackets and ties. Before Rig could say anything, (pitcher) Art Fowler asked him, ‘I'll bet you'd like to know if we were coming in, or going out.’ ”
LaRussa spoke of the times Rigney, by then an assistant to club president Sandy Alderson, would throw an arm around LaRussa's shoulder and offer him counseling when it was most needed. “We had something special with the A's,” said LaRussa. “And when I think about the A's, I think about Walter Haas, and I think about Bill Rigney. They're tied for first.”
Walter's widow, Evie, nodded her approval.
When it came time for Rigney to speak, he spent so much time thanking the 40-odd guests, he didn't leave much time to talk about himself.
“All the years that have gone by,” he said. “It turns out, it's all been worth it.”
He had special words for Mays and McCovey. “They brought such a presence to the game,” said Rigney. “They brought the game of baseball to another level. . . . When I would walk in the clubhouse and write Mays and McCovey in the lineup, I knew we had a chance to win that day.”
And they knew they had a superb manager, or at least one who was enough of a strategist to acknowledge where he was vulnerable.
“One day he told me Leon Wagner was playing left field,” said Mays. (For the uninitiated, Wagner, one of the most colorful of Giants in his day, loved to hit the baseball, but didn't much care about catching it.) Mays said Rigney told him, “ ‘Leon's going to be playing on the line. You've got everything else.’ ”
And so it went. Story after story. Giants broadcaster Lon Simmons, who hosted the affair, acknowledged the possible danger in too much talk of the good old days. However, he was careful to add, “Sometimes it's good to live in the past, when you have a past like Bill Rigney's.”