Willie Mays, who played for the Giants and helped extend baseball’s golden age in New York City into the late 1950s when he wasn’t playing stickball on the streets of Harlem with neighborhood kids, died Tuesday at age 93, making him baseball’s oldest living Hall of Fame inductee.
Known affectionately as the “Say Hey Kid,” Mays joined the Giants at the start of the 1951 season and played 22 seasons in the major leagues, still considered by many to be the greatest all-around player in baseball history. All but his final two seasons with the Giants he played in either New York or San Francisco. After the 1957 season, the team relocated to San Francisco.
He joined the Mets in May 1972 at age 41, finished his playing career in Flushing, and retired after the Mets lost seven straight games to the Athletics in the 1973 World Series.
The Mets fulfilled a promise made to Mays by then-owner Joan Whitney Payson by retiring his No. 24, previously worn by players such as Rickey Henderson and Robinson Cano, in a ceremony in August 2022. The Giants retired Mays’ number 50 years ago, making him the 15th player in major league history to have his uniform number retired by multiple teams.
Though the image of a debilitated Mays collapsing while chasing a fly ball in center field during Game 2 of the World Series at the Oakland Coliseum will never be forgotten, he left baseball as a two-time National League MVP with 3,283 career hits, 660 home runs and two 50-home run seasons. At the time of his retirement, he was third in major league history in home runs, behind Babe Ruth (714) and his later contemporary Hank Aaron, who hit 755.
Mays, a 12-time Gold Glove winner, popularized the basket catch and famously sprung out from under the cap while flying around the baseline, and was selected to the National League All-Star team 24 times, tied with Aaron and Stan Musial for the most selections made by any player in the history of the game. From 1960-62, the All-Star Game was held twice each season.
“They invented the All-Star Game because of Willie Mays,” Ted Williams said.
Mays was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1979, becoming only the ninth player to be inducted in his first year of eligibility. Mays received 94.7 percent of the vote, the fourth-highest percentage of votes ever received by a player in baseball history at the time, behind only Ty Cobb (98.2), Babe Ruth (95.1) and Honus Wagner (95.1).
However, 23 of the 432 members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America did not vote for Mays, leading future Post columnist Dick Young to write, “If Jesus Christ showed up with an old baseball glove, some of you still wouldn’t vote for him. He dropped the cross three times, right?”
Willie Howard Mays was born in Westfield, Alabama on May 6, 1931. His father played for the all-black team at the local steel mill where he worked, and Mays’ mother was a standout athlete in high school.
Even before he graduated from high school, Mays was playing for a minor league team in the Negro Southern League. Within a year, he was playing for the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro Major League Baseball. On the day he graduated from high school in 1950, Mays signed with the Giants for $6,000 and after batting .353 with Trenton, he batted .477 in 35 games for the Minneapolis affiliate the following season. By late May of that 1951 season, Mays had made it to the major leagues. He had just turned 20 years old.
“Leo Durocher was the manager, and he brought Willie over to me and said, ‘This is Willie Mays, and he’s your new roommate,'” Giants outfielder and first baseman and Hall of Famer Monte Irvin said. “I could tell right away that this young man had natural talent. He had really big hands, great power and speed, and he caught everything that was hit his way. He’s arguably the greatest center fielder of all time.
“Anyone who saw him will tell you Willie Mays was the greatest player of all time.”
“Mays can help our team just by being on the bus with us,” rival National League manager Charlie Grimm said.
But that was yet to come. Just a few weeks after Mays arrived in New York, another precocious rookie center fielder, 19-year-old Mickey Mantle, made his debut for the Yankees. And so began the debate not only about who was the best center fielder in New York, but who was the best young player in baseball. Like Mantle, Mays struggled at first, hitting just one home run in his first 25 at-bats.
But he played in 121 games that season, batting .274 with 20 home runs, won the National League Rookie of the Year award, and helped the Tigers come from 13¹/₂ games behind in mid-August to win the National League championship in a dramatic three-game playoff victory over the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Mays was in the on-deck circle at the Polo Grounds that October afternoon when Bobby Thomson smashed a three-run homer in the bottom of the ninth inning known as “the shot that rang ’round the world” to lead the Giants to their first World Series since 1936.
In the 1951 World Series, the Giants lost in six games to Mantle’s Yankees, who had won the Fall Classic for the fifth consecutive year. Playing right field in Game 2 of the series, Mantle tore ligaments in his knee when he stepped on a drain while chasing a ball hit by Mays in the outfield at Yankee Stadium.
The debate over whether Mays or Mantle was the better all-around player ostensibly ended that afternoon when Mantle collapsed to the ground.
Mays was drafted into the Army during the Korean War and missed part of the 1952 season and all of the following season, but returned with a red-hot 1954.
He led the National League in batting average, hit 41 home runs and was named MVP for the first time. Mays’ breakout season saw him lead the Giants to a championship and a four-game winning streak over the Indians. In Game 1 of that series, Mays made the most iconic defensive play of his career, known as “The Catch.”
In the top of the eighth inning, with the Indians on first and second and no outs, Cleveland first baseman Vic Wertz hit a ball into deep center field. Mays turned away from the infield and ran deep into the Polo Grounds, catching the ball over his shoulder some 450 feet from home plate. Mays quickly turned and threw the ball back toward the infield, but he lost his balance and did a pirouette, taking his hat off.
“I’ve accomplished it all,” Mays would say.
Many believed it was Mays’ greatest catch ever, but the centerfielder declined to say for sure.
“I don’t compare,” he said. “I just catch them.”
That afternoon, in the bottom of the 10th inning, Mays walked and stole second base. After an intentional walk, pinch-hitter Dusty Rhodes hit a three-run homer and the Giants completed a surprise sweep with a 5-2 victory. It was the Giants’ last world championship in New York.
From 1954 through 1963, Mays’ batting average only dipped below .300 once (.296 in 1956). His highest batting averages were .347 in 1958, his first year with the Giants in San Francisco, and .345 in 1954, when he led the league.
In 1955, Mays led the league with 51 home runs. The following season, he hit 36 home runs and stole 40 bases, becoming just the second member of the 30-30 club. In 1957, the first year the award was awarded, Mays won his first Gold Glove. He, Roberto Clemente, Al Kaline, Andruw Jones and Ken Griffey Jr. are the only outfielders to win the Gold Glove ten or more times. That season, Mays became just the fourth player in major league history to join the 20-20-20 club (doubles, triples and home runs), something no one had done since 1941.
“I can’t believe that Babe Ruth was a better player than Willie Mays,” Sandy Koufax said. “Ruth is to baseball what Arnold Palmer is to golf. He moved the game. But I can’t believe that he could run as well as Mays, or that he was a better outfielder.”
The Giants headed west for the 1958 season, but if Mays had trouble adjusting, it didn’t show. He posted a career-best batting average (.347) and competed for the batting title with Richie Ashburn until the final day of the season, when the Phillies center fielder was just three hits away from catching him. He also hit 29 home runs, drove in 96 RBIs, and led the league in stolen bases (31). This was the third of four consecutive seasons in which he led the league in stolen bases.
“They throw the ball, I hit it,” Mays once said. “They hit the ball, I catch it.”
In 1959, Mays recorded his eighth straight season with 100 or more RBIs, and in 1962 he led the Giants to the only World Series appearance of his career. The team lost to the Yankees in seven games. Mays batted just .250 with one RBI in that series, continuing his slump in World Series appearances. Despite his greatness, he batted just .239 with no home runs and six RBIs in 20 World Series games across four Fall Classics.
In 1963, Mays ended one of the most famous pitching duels in major league history, hitting a home run off Milwaukee’s Warren Spahn in the bottom of the 16th inning to give the Giants a 1-0 win over the Braves. Starting pitchers Spahn and Juan Marichal each pitched 15 scoreless innings.
Mays won his second MVP award in 1965, a season in which he hit 52 home runs (one of which was his 500th) and batted .317 with 112 RBIs. That season, he also served as arbitrator in one of the ugliest brawls in baseball history, involving Marichal and Dodgers catcher John Roseboro.
A top-five finisher in MVP voting nine times, Mays played in 150 or more games in 13 consecutive seasons from 1954 to 1966. With 37 home runs in 1966, the 35-year-old Mays had 542 career home runs, but he never hit more than 28 home runs in a season after that and hit just 118 in his final seven seasons.
Mays hit his 660th and final home run on August 17, 1973, while with the Mets. He had only hit six home runs in 66 games that season. Mays had been traded to the Mets the previous season for pitcher Charlie Williams for $50,000, and homered in his Mets debut in a win over the Giants.
But aside from that first home run, his return to New York after so many years was anything but stellar. Mays was the oldest fielder in baseball for his final two seasons, most notably in the 1973 World Series, when he helped the Mets win with a crucial single in Game 2, but he also had all sorts of problems in the outfield that was once his personal playground.
He left baseball as one of just two players to reach 3,000 career hits and 500 home runs — the other being Aaron — a list that also includes Eddie Murray, Rafael Palmeiro, Alex Rodriguez and Albert Pujols.
“I think I was the best baseball player I’ve ever seen,” Mays said. “I think I was born to play baseball. I really was.”
In 2015, Mays was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama.
“I’m very proud of this award,” Mays said upon receiving it. “I’ve been so fortunate in my life to receive an award just for playing baseball. This is unlike anything else I’ve ever received in baseball.”
Mays, whose wife, Mae, died in 2013, is survived by a son, Michael, from his first marriage. Mays was also godfather to Barry Bonds, the son of baseball’s all-time home run leader and former Giants teammate, Bobby Bonds.
