Deep Right Field– Now at Principle Gallery
“If somebody came up and hit .450, stole 100 bases, and performed a miracle in the field every day, I’d still look you right in the eye and tell you that Willie was better. He could do the five things you have to do to be a superstar: hit, hit with power, run, throw and field. And he had the other magic ingredient that turns a superstar into a super-superstar. Charisma.”
-Leo Durocher
Willie Mays, the Say-Hey Kid, died yesterday at the age of 93. Growing up in the 60’s as a baseball fan, Willie was the gold standard at a time filled with legendary players. Like Durocher said above, he could do everything, often winning games without getting a hit. Such were his tools.
And more than that, he made it look effortless. Everything he did had a sense of inevitability. Sure, you knew he was going to make that crazy catch in the field. or that he was going to hit that home run. Or that he was going to steal that base or score from second on a sacrifice flyball.
He made the game look so easy, making the extraordinary ordinary. People came to expect it.
I think Clete Boyer, who played against Willie, put it best:
“I hit the ball and said to myself, ‘What’s the condition of the outfield? By that, I was measuring how far it would roll when it hit and whether I’d get a double out of it or a triple. And then, running toward first base, i said ‘ Oh hell, He’s out there’. And without even looking, I slowed down. And when I looked up, he was lobbing the ball back to the infield after the catch. And none of those San Francisco fans even gave him a cheer, outside of what you’d normally hear for any put-out. i guess they expected it same way I did.”
Just grateful to have seen him play. Thank, Willie, for inhabiting the imaginations of so many kids like me. The Say-Hey Kid was one-of-a-kind.
Here’s a song from The Treniers that celebrates the greatness of the young Willie in 1954.
Redtree Times 