You Said Hey

 I don't do requests.

I thought I made this clear. 

But then again, polite suggestions for topics that may have missed my usually zeitgeist-driven view of the world should not go without some kind of recognition. A good friend and constant reader wondered why I hadn't gotten around to saying something about Willie Mays.

The Say Hey Kid went to the big ballpark in the sky on June 18, rounding the bases for the last time at the age of ninety-three. Willie was by most every measure one of the greatest to ever play the game. Over a career that lasted twenty-three years. In his rookie year, he hit twenty home runs and helped his team, the New York Giants win their first pennant in fourteen years. He was named National League Rookie of the year for his efforts. 

The next year, he only played in thirty-four games before reporting for the Army induction center after being drafted. He played baseball on the Army Wheels team, playing one hundred eighty games before a foot injury sidelined him for the rest of his two year hitch. The day after he was discharged in 1954, he reported to the Giants' spring training camp. 

1954 was his second full season in the majors. All he did was help the Giants win a World Series and the Most Valuable Player for the National League. By most accounts, Willie just got better. Home runs. Stolen bases. Amazing catches. At the end of the 1973 season when he retired after playing his last two years with the New York Mets, he had hit six hundred sixty home runs and stolen three hundred thirty-nine bases. 

Along the way, he helped bring baseball to California, When the Giants moved from New York to San Francisco, crowds flocked to see him. So much so that nowadays when Bay Area fans want to catch a Giants game they pull up to the park located at 24 Willie Mays Plaza. 

So, why did it take me so long to get around to eulogizing this all-time great? Maybe because I never had the relationship that some did, having myself grown up in the baseball void of Colorado. I was more familiar with the cultural phenomenon that was Willie Mays. He even showed up in an episode of Bewitched. There was no ESPN. No Baseball Tonight. Willie was a force of nature as far as I was concerned, but the realities of that force were never made apparent to me. 

Until now. Willie Mays stomped on the Terra, specifically its base paths. He paved the way for generations who came after him. And he did it all for the love of the game. His salary in his twenty-first year as a major leaguer was $165,000. In 2024, the Major League minimum rookie salary is $740,000. Yeah, I know, inflation blah blah blah. Willie Mays was a great player and an even better bargain.