Willie Mays was baseball itself, playing the game with both a child’s enthusiasm and virtuoso’s flair
Giants center fielder Willie Mays signs autographs at an exhibition baseball game in Oakland, Calif., in March 1952. Mays, the electrifying “Say Hey Kid” whose singular combination of talent, drive and exuberance made him one of baseball’s greatest and most beloved players, has died. He was 93. Willie Mays was life itself. He was baseball itself, how it was supposed to be played, and seen, and felt, a children’s game as done by an adult with a child’s enthusiasm and virtuoso’s flair.
And we wanted to be Willie Mays, the Say Hey Kid who had become a myth prior to moving west from New York with the Giants. And we were a Giants house . He not only was the greatest baseball player, he was the greatest home run hitter of all time. If he worked in those launching pads in which Aaron did, he’d hit 800 homers. I’m convinced. And I don’t believe he ever took the same stance two at-bats in a row.
And yet, after moving from New York, where he was a deity, he never totally won over San Francisco, which befriended Willie McCovey and Orlando Cepeda. What the hell. Willie, Zeus everywhere else, just kept playing the kid’s game.
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