Quotes about Willie Mays
"There are 499 Major League ballplayers. Then there's Willie Mays."
Maury Allen - SABR collector; 1964
"[Ruth] never played a night game, he never hit against fireball relief
pitching (relief pitchers in his day were worn-out old starters), he never
traveled cross-country for a night game and played a game the next day,
he never performed before millions of television viewers, he never had
to run on artificial turf. It is the changes in the game, the modern
factors that have made the game more difficult, that bring Babe in here
as number three, behind Mays and Aaron. His feats were heroic.
So were theirs. They simply did them under tougher conditions."
Maury Allen - On why he ranked Babe Ruth #3,
after Willy Mays #1 and Hank Aaron #2, in Baseball's 100: A Personal
Ranking
"There have been only two authentic geniuses in the world, Willie Mays
and Willie Shakespeare."
Tallulah Bankhead - The Baseball Card Engagement
Book, 1987
"Isn't Willie Mays wonderful?"
Ethel Barrymore - From an interview
on her seventy-fifth birthday, 1954, quoted in Arnold Hano's Willie
Mays
"In 1951 Marilyn Monroe was a starlet, Bobby Orr a baby, Hubert Humphrey
a comer--and Willie Mays very nearly the same phenomenon he was last week.
In harsh heat and foggy chill, and under the intense scrutiny such a situation
demanded, he chased after his 3,000th hit--and seemed to blossom rather
than wilt under the pressure."
Roy Blount, Jr. - Writing in Sports
Illustrated, July 27, 1970
Willie Mays--"The good guy's pal in one of those Western movies."
Bob Addie - One of many descriptions of "What
they look like out of their baseball uniforms," from his Sporting News
column, April 20, 1968
"It was a good play, but I gotta see him do it again."
Charlie Dressen - Brooklyn Dodger manager,
after Willie Mays made a running catch, turned
360 degrees, and threw out a runner at the plate, widely quoted
"Do you think you could hit half that for me?"
Leo Durocher - On calling up Willie Mays from
the minors. Mays was reluctant to face major-league pitching.
Leo asked him what he was batting in Minneapolis, and Mays said .477.
From Willie Mays by Arnold Hano.
"He was the best I ever had, with the possible exception of Mays.
At that he was even faster than Willie."
Leo Durocher - On outfielder Pete Reiser (early
in Willie's career), widely quoted
"If somebody came up and hit .450, stole 100 bases and performed a miracle
in the field every day I'd still look you in the eye and say Willie was
better. He could do the five things you have to do to be a superstar:
hit, hit with power, run, throw and field. And he had that other
magic ingredient that
turns a superstar into a super superstar. He lit up the room when he
came in. He was a joy to be around."
Leo Durocher - Quoted in Peter Beilenson's
Grand
Slams and Fumbles
"Joe Louis, Jascha Heifetz, Sammy Davis, and Nashua rolled into one."
Leo Durocher - Describing Willie Mays, quoted
in Out of My League by George Plimpton
"It was his solemn duty to catch a ball that wasn't in the stands."
Monte Irvin - On Willie Mays, May 6, 1981
"The only man who could have caught it hit it."
Bob Stevens - The San Fransico Chronicle
writer's line on a Willie Mays hit, quoted by Tom Callahan in the Washington
Post, October 22, 1989
"It came down in Utica. I know. I was managing there at
the time."
Lefty Gomez - On a Willie Mays homer hit off
the great Warren Spahn
"It's possible at this rate that even Willie Mays will be forgotten,
in 2,000 years."
George Jessel - On the baseball "immortality"
of Willie Mays, quoted in Arnold Hano's Willie Mays
"I can't believe that Babe Ruth was a better ballplayer than Willie
Mays. Ruth is probably to baseball what Arnold Palmer is to golf.
He got the game moving. But I can't believe he could run as well
as Mays, and I can't believe he was any better an outfielder."
Sandy Koufax - From the Los Angeles Times
"The last time Willie Mays dropped a pop fly he had a rattle in one
hand and a bonnet on his head."
Jim Murray - June 1964
"That Mays is fantastic. Watch him. Everything he does has
the mark of a perfect ball player. Even when he's just catching ball
thrown in from the field. He's the best center fielder I ever saw,
barring none. He's a great retriever. The minute his glove
touches the ball, it's out of his hands and on the way either to the infield
or the plate. I've never seen a man get the ball back into play so
fast."
Stan Hack - As manager of the Cubs, quoted
in The Sporting News, April 13, 1955
"Look, Mays just lost his halo."
Anonymous Press Box Comment - In 1954, when
a reporter saw a shining object lying next to Mays in the outifeld.
Mays had achieved a certain supremacy that season and the line put things
into perspective.
"Just so-so in center field."
Anonymous Press Box Comment - The New York
Daily News, assessing the talents of the NYG's "latest phenom," Willie
Mays, after his major-league debut, May 26, 1951
"It would be as pointless as waiting for the coming of a second Willie
Mays."
Jack Olsen - Sports Illustrated, 1966
"I don't think anyone in or out of sports could ever seriously accuse
Willie Mays of offending white sensitivities. But when he was in
California, whites refused to sell him a house in their community.
They loved his talent, but they didn't want him for a neighbor."
Jackie Robinson - I Never Had it Made
WE WHO ARE ABOUT TO CRY SALUTE YOU
Sign - At Shea Stadium for Willie Mays' farewell.
Also noted that night:
A GIANT AMONG METS
BYE, WILLY, WE HATE TO SEE YOU GO
THANKS FOR THE EXCITEMENT THROUGH THE YEARS
SHALOM.
"He was something like 0 for 21 the first time I saw him. His
first major league hit was a home run off me--and I'll never forgive myself.
We might have gotten rid of Willie forever if I'd only struck him out."
Warren Spahn - On Willie Mays
"Willie Mays seems to be swinging bad."
Warren Spahn - The Milwaukee Braves pitcher,
just before a game in which Mays hit four home runs, April 28, 1961
"Gentleman, for the first sixty feet, that was one helluva pitch."
Warren Spahn - Commenting on the pitch that
Willie Mays hit over the roof at the Polo Ground for his first major league
hit
"That was the finest catch I have ever seen and the finest catch I ever
hope to see."
Branch Rickey - The Pittsburgh Pirates general
manager in 1951, in his 48th year of baseball, to Willie Mays after he
chased a long drive to dead center in Forbes Field, reached the warning
track, saw the ball hook right at the last instant, and, with no time to
reach across his body, made the catch bare-handed
"When people ask me who's the best player I ever saw, I say Willie Mays.
I don't even hesitate."
Don Zimmer - July 1998
"He was the best baserunner in the league, even though they didn't steal
a lot of bases back then,"
Don Zimmer - July 1998
"Running while looking backward, he ran faster than anyone else running
forward. He didn't need any coach, he looked back at the ball while
running full speed. It was amazing."
Don Zimmer - July 1998
"Outstanding arm. He may not have had as great of a strength in
his throwing arm as Clemente, even though Clemente played right. But he
was an outstanding thrower."
Don Zimmer - July 1998
"Mays was the best all-around baseball player I ever saw. I really
think Willie could've been an all-star at almost any position on the field.
I'm not sure about pitcher or catcher. But the others, I really think
he could've been an all-star. He played center field like he was
a shortstop.''
Vin Scully - April 1999
"One thing I do that's fun for me in my job is I like to ask people
in baseball who the best players they've ever seen. Almost anyone
who played in that era of the late '50s and '60s, every one of them says
Willie Mays.''
Dave Dombrowksi - Marlins general manager,
April 1999
"I never ever compared myself to DiMaggio. There's only one guy
you could mentioned in same breath and that was Willie Mays. I never thought
I was ever as good."
Ted Williams - April 1999
"I've seen him make 20 catches better than that one."
Alvin Dark - On Mays' famous catch in the
1954 World Series
"There's no way you can coach instincts like that. He would break
for home from third before a wild pitch even reached the catcher.
He'd run from first to third while looking over his shoulder at the outfielder
so he could draw the throw so the guy who hit the ball could move to second.''
Curt Simmons - April 1999
"We talk about five-tool players. He was a five-tool player at
the top of his game in every area."
Ed Wade - Phillies general manager, April
1999
"As the ball left the bat, I said to myself two things. The first
thing I said was, 'Hello, double.' The second thing I said was, 'Oh,
(bleep). He's out there.' "
Clete Boyer - Explaining his thought process
after he crushed a line drive to deep right center in the 1962 World Series
"Mays is the only ballplayer I ever saw who could helped a club just
by riding on the bus with it."
Charlie Grimm - Milwaukee Braves manager,
widely quoted
"Any old-timers who ever saw him play, if they're honest, they would
say he's the greatest."
Alvin Dark - April 1999
"I played with Willie in winter ball, in Japan and in the big leagues.
I've never seen anyone as intense who had as much talent. Guys would try
to score and he'd throw their butts out at the plate. Some of his
catches are still famous. He hit 660 homers and won a batting title.
Not many people did what he did. He was a slugger with speed, ran
headlong into fences and never, ever got hurt.
Felipe Alou - Expos manager, July 1999
Quotes by Willie Mays
". . . baseball is a fun game. When the game began to be a 'job',
that bothered me. That's why I quit, when it began to be work.
In baseball, at a certain age, you have to get out. You can't go
back. There is nothing to go back to."
- From an Atlanta Constitution interview,
October 12, 1974
"Baseball is a game, yes. It is also a business. But what
it most truly is is disguised combat. For all it's gentility, its
almost leisurely pace, baseball is violence under wraps."
- Willie Mays by Arnold Hano
"Baseball players are no different than other performers. We're
all actors, when you come right down to it, so I always thought I had to
put a little acting into the game--you know, make it a little more interesting
for the fans. So, whenever a ball was hit to center field, I'd try
to time it right and get under the ball just in time to make the catch.
It always made the play look a little more spectacular."
- From a June 1974 television interview
"Don't get me wrong, I like to hit. But there's nothing like getting
out there in the outfield, running after a ball and throwing somebody out
trying to take that extra base. That's real fun."
- Quoted in The Sporting News, April
20, 1955
"Everytime I look at my pocketbook, I see Jackie Robinson."
- Widely quoted
"I don't compare 'em, I just catch 'em."
- When asked if his most recent miraculous
catch was his best
"I like to play happy. Baseball is a fun game, and I love it."
- Quoted in The Sporting News, July
25, 1970
"I look at the kids over here, and the way they're playing and the way
they are fighting for themselves, and that says one thing for me: 'Willie,
it's time to say good-bye to America'."
- Gesturing towards the Mets bench, on his
farewell day as a Met in Shea Stadium, 1973
"I remeber the last season I played. I went home after a ballgame
one day, lay down on my bed, and tears came to my eyes. How can you
explain that? It's like crying for your mother after she's gone.
You cry because you love her. I cried, I guess, because I loved baseball
and I knew I had to eave it."
- SABR collector
"I think I was the best baseball player I ever saw."
- Newsweek, February 5, 1979
"If you can do that--if you run, hit, run the bases, hit with power,
field, throw and do all the other things that are part of the game--then
you're a good ballplayer."
- Quoted in The Sporting News, July
25, 1970
"It's not hard. When I'm not hitting, I don't hit nobody.
But when I'm hitting, I hit anybody."
- Quoted by Edward F. Murphy in the New
York Times, April 25, 1976
"Sure, they were fine, but I think the biggest home run this year was
by [astronaut Alan B.] Shepard."
- Asked for a reaction to his four home runs
in a game in Milwaukee, quoted in Baseball Digest,
July 1961
"They throw the ball, I hit it; they hit the ball, I catch it."
- His formula for baseball success, quoted
among other places, in the novel Taxi Dancer by Joe T. Heywood,
1987
"When you catch a ball high, head high or higher and have to make a
throw afterwards, what do you do? You have to bring the ball down
before you can get it away. But when you catch the ball as
I do you are in position to get rid of it right now without any delay."
- On making his famous "basket" catches, quoted
by Sec Taylor of the Des Moines Register in Baseball Digest,
September 1964
"I read about Ted Williams and Stan Musial, but DiMaggio was my hero
because he was an all- around player. When I saw him in person, I
knew I could never play the way he did because he was much bigger with
longer legs. I had to develop my own style, but he was still my hero."
- In a 1999 interview
"Good thing nobody got that picture."
- On the time in the 1951 World Series, when
an aging DiMaggio homered against Mays' New York Giants and Mays stood
in center and quietly clapped into his glove.
"I know the way he runs."
- When asked how he knew that Hank Aaron had
missed second base while returning to first after Mays caught a fly ball
deep in the gap. Instead of doubling Hank Aaron off at first, Mays threw
to second and told the second baseman to step on the bag. Aaron was
called out on the appeal.
"I could see the ball real good today and I got stronger as we went
along."
- After his four homerun game against the
Milwaukee Braves
"To tell the truth, I don't think I would have hit anything. You
see, I started to think about it when it was announced over the public
address and I know I'd be pressing, trying to go for another."
- After being asked about almost getting a
fifth at-bat in his four homer game against Milwaukee.
"Sure, this was my best game and it was my biggest thrill in baseball,
too. The biggest day before this? What difference does it make?"
- After being asked if his four homer game
was his best game, and what his best game was before that one
"I can't stress the feeling that I have for this man. All I can
say is that I have lost a dear father. All the things you heard about
Leo, how evil he was. . . . He never treated me any way but perfect.
So much has happened to me with Leo Durocher, I can't put it into words."
- Speaking about Leo Durocher at Durocher's
funeral, October 11, 1991
"I bet I lost 200 home runs in that place. The wind would just
come in and knock them down. You'd think they were gone and then
the ball just dropped. You know, the wind was so bad, what we would
do was stick our gloves on the side of the fence and the wind would just
hold them there."
- On Candlestick Park, April 1999
"I don't want to go and look at somebody I knew and idolized, it would
be too sad."
- On being asked if he would attend the funeral
of Joe DiMaggio, March 1999