It was one of those warm, early spring days, the kind that makes you glad to be alive. I was 12, and it was the first day of Little League practice. The song wouldn’t be written for another 14 years, but the sentiment in the chorus of John Fogerty’s “Centerfield”—“I’m ready to play, today. Look at me, I can be… centerfield”—coursed through me.
I ran down long fly balls, slid across grass to cut off bouncing line drives, and rocketed throws to home plate. I was centerfield. And in my imagination, I was also Willie Mays.
Mays died in June at 93, and memories of my love for the game as a child are intertwined with my affection for him. He was my hero. When I was in college and long past my interest in the sport, I took a creative writing class and wrote a short story whose protagonist was named Willie.
So what did I love about Mays? I think it was the joy with which he played.
Our elementary school library included a generous selection of sports biographies, and I devoured them. Ty Cobb, Hank Aaron, Stan Musial, Joe DiMaggio, Jackie Robinson, and of course, Willie Mays. In retrospect, Wilt Chamberlain’s autobiography probably should have been off-limits to a young reader; the sexual exploits he recounted were bewildering (intimidating?) to my innocent mind.
They called Mays the “Say Hey Kid,” a reference to his habit of beginning conversations with the colloquial “Say, hey…” in his distinctive high-pitched voice. Those biographies, as I think back, employed an amused, paternalistic tone, as if to evoke a collective chuckle at this colorful character, a perennial boy in a world of men. Yes, racist.
Mays wasn’t Muhammad Ali or even Bill Russell when it came to race issues, but he was mindful of the problems, having played his first couple of years in the Negro leagues.
Among the remembrances that followed his death, I read about an incident in 1964 in which his team’s manager was quoted saying that Black men couldn’t succeed as team captains (although the manager allowed that Mays was the exception).
Mays and other Black players from the team gathered in a hotel room to discuss their response to the quote, with some arguing for boycotting the remaining several weeks of play. Mays urged his teammates to wait, arguing fans would turn on the men, ultimately hurting the cause, and he expressed his confidence that the manager would be fired at the end of the year, and he was.
Mays was extolled for his “natural talent,” a subtle form of racism—the Black player brings physical prowess to the game, the white player has honed his skills. The same subtle comparisons were made between basketball players Michael Jordan and Larry Bird.
Mays was traded to the New York Mets in 1972 (my hometown team!). In a game for his new team, even on the downward trajectory of his game, he did things like get on base on a walk, steal second, take a big lead to draw over the shortstop, thereby creating a hole for the batter to hit through. Brilliant.
There’s a great documentary about him—Say Hey, Wille Mays! (2022). Over the credits, he is asked about breaking a catcher’s leg while sliding into home. And he broke the same player’s leg a couple of years later. “Son of a bitch was blocking the plate,” he explains with a grin.
So what did I love about Mays? I think it was the joy with which he played. He understood showmanship, using his trademark “basket catch,” glove held at his waist instead of over his head. “I could make a difficult play look easy and an easy play look difficult,” he once said.
The spring day in 1971 that saw me galloping centerfield like a young colt marked, sadly, the demise of my baseball days.
My peers and I were in the “B” league, but the manager of a “major” league level within Little League needed to have two 12-year-olds on his team to meet the requirements.
He was scouting my group, saw me channeling Willie and signed me up. But the 14-year-old pitchers threw faster, my need for corrective lenses began emerging, and my baseball dreams died.
Some other time I’ll tell you about my now legendary turn-around jump shot. Unstoppable.
Tom Groening is editor of The Working Waterfront. He may be contacted at tgroening@islandinstitute.org.
