Remembering the life of Willie Mays
New York Giants' Willie Mays during baseball spring training in 1972. Credit: AP
The nation has been mourning the death of Willie Mays. The outpouring of testaments and memories seems to have no end.
Mays was that kind of ballplayer and that kind of personality. In any field of endeavor, the loss of greatness hits a little harder.
But in mourning Mays, it also seems we’re really mourning more than Mays, such was the arc of his long and remarkable life.
We mourn the passing of genuine greatness, yes, but we also mourn the departure of someone who came close to achieving the eternal human quest — perfection. And we mourn our own long-vanished youth and our ability to do things that for us are no longer possible.
Mays made it look so easy. But making it look easy is hard work indeed. We fetishize athletes we call naturals. Perhaps we’re drawn to the concept because the possibility that someone is a natural means we could be, too. Having to work hard to get to the top is not as attractive a proposition. But the truth is that Mays worked really hard.
Some performers seem great only when judged in the context of their time. Mays would have been a star at any time. But when you do look at his time, you find a context that adds layers to what he was able to do.
Willie Mays’ roots were in a time when men wore white shirts and ties to ballgames played by other men whose skin was white. Like his contemporaries, he began his professional career in the Negro Leagues.
He was 17, not yet a high school junior at Fairfield Industrial High School in Alabama, when he made his debut in 1948 with the Birmingham Black Barons. The Birmingham commissioner of public safety at the time was a former minor league radio broadcaster named Bull Connor, who virulently opposed integration and closed dozens of public parks rather than obey a federal court order to desegregate them. Connor later used fire hoses and attack dogs against civil rights marchers.
That was the crucible in which Mays forged his path. By 1951, he was playing centerfield for the New York Giants. Even though he was in the majors, when the Giants were on the road he often was forced to spend his nights in hotels for Black people while his teammates slept at whites-only establishments often much closer to the stadiums in which they played.
What Mays accomplished — not just his baseball achievements but the enthusiasm he brought to the game — must be viewed against that backdrop. It was culturally important that his excellence came in baseball. It wasn’t just another sport, it was the national sport, a sport that had long denied his race a place in it. Hitting a baseball, it’s often said, is the most difficult feat in sports, an equal test of brain and brawn. And Mays aced it, as he did so many baseball exams.
He quickly became an early version of a phenomenon we know well now — the athlete who transcends sport and becomes a cultural icon. That was also to the nation’s credit. He landed numerous endorsements, was on the cover of Time Magazine, and three songs were recorded about him in 1954 alone. One was arranged by a young Quincy Jones.
Mays lived until 93, just long enough to see his Negro Leagues stats accepted as part of his official numbers by Major League Baseball. Two days after he died, MLB staged its first game at Rickwood Field in Birmingham, where Mays made his 1948 debut. It had been long planned as a Negro Leagues tribute, but Willie’s passing turned it into something more: the oldest surviving professional baseball field in America paying tribute to the man who had been called the greatest living ballplayer.
Sometimes, we mourn. Sometimes, we celebrate. Sometimes, we do both.
Columnist Michael Dobie's opinions are his own.
Michael Dobie is a member of the Newsday editorial board.