Willie Mays

I talk to my 10 year old a lot about what things were like when I was a kid. I’m sure it’s overwhelming, but, you never really know what message will get through, right?

The thing is that I’m an adult trying to describe childhood, so if I claim something cool or fun, I don’t sound like a kid sounds when they describe something cool or fun.

This was how it was when I was a kid and my dad would explain things. It was hard to imagine him as a kid, looking through a kid’s eyes, experiencing things that way. And I think the key word here is explain. To really get a feel for what something was like, there’s got to be a quality beyond mere explanation, because explanation implies a certain translation of thought, and how can you possibly avoid that? And the answer is that sometimes, not very often, but sometimes you say something, and no elaboration is needed, no explanation, just the simplest of statements.

From my dad’s voice to my ears, there are two words above all others that allow me to imagine him as a kid himself:

Willie Mays.

Many people feel that Willie Mays was the greatest baseball player of them all. I have long since been convinced. He could do everything, and all of those things better than anyone else, and he also lasted longer than almost anyone else.

Willie Mays played in the Negro Leagues in 1948… and in the 1973 World Series. So many years, and his nickname never stopped being the Say Hey Kid.

I imagine this entire generation of young Americans growing up on baseball and one day thinking, gosh, I sure love Willie Mays. Even if he wasn’t on the team they loved. And for so many of them, he was the first man they did not know personally that they ever thought about with such deep admiration. And, for so many, so certainly, the first Black man.

For all that Jackie Robinson did, he was already a grown man, 28 years old, when he first walked onto Ebbets Field in 1947. He opened so many doors through earning respect: the kind of respect grown men extend to other grown men.

Willie Mays set foot in the Polo Grounds the month he turned 20. He was a young man, yes: but he was and will forever be a kid. And the opportunity had been opened up for someone like him to be not merely respected, not merely admired, but to be loved, and by an entire generation.

It’s not that it happened often. But when my dad would mention Willie Mays… and for that matter, over the years when I’ve heard other people say his name the same way… it was like they were talking about a mythical beautiful river valley, the sight of which was so breathtaking that the mere name explained everything. In my mind it’s an encapsulation of more than just a childhood wonder with baseball. Baseball was both this faraway land you read about in the papers and also this place you could visit by walking down to the park. And I can write so many many more words to explain this, but somehow it all consolidates in two words:

Willie Mays.

I have increasingly reembraced baseball over the last couple of years, and it has coincided with my son being at the age I was when baseball became Very Important to me. This isn’t coincidence.

There are other things which could serve such functions, but for me, baseball functions as a lingua franca, not just in the sense that it’s something which can be shared, but in the sense that it’s something which can be shared between him and the kid in me. Baseball is, after all, a game, and games are for kids.

My wife’s stepfather grew up on a farm in rural DeWitt County in the 1920s. At some point they got a radio, which means they got KMOX, which means that he was a lifelong Cardinals fan.

My grandfather was born with a condition where his arm was pinned behind his back. At age 12 or so, he was sent by himself on a train from Centralia to Chicago, where his shoulder was operated on. While he was there he was taken to Wrigley Field, which means that he was a lifelong Cubs fan.

How important was this fandom? My dad specifically remembers my grandfather climbing up to the roof to install a high powered antenna specifically to pick up WGN.

We don’t have photographs of them as boys growing up in downstate Illinois. We have minimal stories, weird abstractions, notions of depression era hardship… very difficult things to relate to, especially for a 10 year old in 2024.

But relating to the idea of them being lifelong fans of a team? Of baseball? That’s an opportunity to catch a fleeting glimpse of what it was like for them to be kids. What more tremendous glimpse could we get?

This is why I don’t need statistics or rankings to appreciate the greatness of Willie Mays. I consume statistics. I fret over rankings. But I need neither. I have that enduring sense of wonder I can hear in the voices of grown men when they say his name.

The word “baseball” means so very many things all at once. The game, the game that’s on TV tonight, the diamond at the park, the often infuriating decisions of MLB… this mad menagerie of things wonderful and exasperating, this most American of things.

The name Willie Mays is shorthand for all of those things most beautiful about the game without thinking about all the rest.

The power, the speed, the agility, the grace, yes to all of those things.

The childlike wonder, though: Willie was all of those things but he was still the Say Hey Kid. He was us, we were him. He is still us, we are still him.

He was, and is, the greatest.

Willie Mays.