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The greatest baseball player all time
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00:05Hello, I'm Chris Fowler for SportsCentury.
00:07Edmonds Field, May 28, 1952.
00:11The next morning, Lily Mays reported of the U.S. Army.
00:14The Korean War was raging, and no one knew when he'd return.
00:18So the Brooklyn crowd, who should have hated him for leading the Giants to a pennant over
00:22the Dodgers just the year before, cheered his final at bat.
00:25When the game ended, all four umpires cut across the diamond to say goodbye to Willie.
00:31Then he disappeared into the clubhouse, while organist Gladys Gooding played, I'll See You
00:36in My Dreams.
00:37The Say Hey Kid was everybody's favorite.
00:45I remember my father taking me to the polo grounds.
00:49I remember sitting on my father's shoulders to see over the heads of the people in front
00:53of us.
00:54I remember what it felt like and smelled like.
00:56I remember my dad saying, there's Willie Mays.
01:00Look, there's Willie Mays.
01:03Willie Mays batting at .345, the National League batting champion, here's the guy that a lot
01:08of the people here this afternoon have come to see.
01:10When he roamed the outfield, he was the free spirit in the outfield.
01:15Willie was the wind-up toy whose batteries never died.
01:19He would do things that you really can't explain, you'd have to see him in a game situation.
01:25Going from first to third on a ground ball to shortstop.
01:28Scoring from second base on a sacrifice fly as a matter of routine.
01:33His territory was from foul line to foul line, just stay out of his way.
01:37And Fresco Thompson, the general manager for the Brooklyn Dodgers said, Willie Mays' glove, where
01:43triples go to die.
01:45Wow.
01:47And now, fans, this is Jimmy Dudley speaking to you again from the Mutual Radio booth.
01:52And today, we're all set to bring you the first game of the 1954 World Series.
01:56Game one of the 1954 World Series.
02:00Tied at two in the eighth, Cleveland had runners on first and second with nobody out.
02:05The pitcher was Don Little.
02:06The batter, of course, was Vic Wertz.
02:09The situation was important.
02:11And there was Mays out in center field.
02:14There's a wild drive, way back in center field, way back, back.
02:19Willie ran like a pass receiver, heading for the ball, and nobody thought he was going to catch the ball,
02:24nobody.
02:24As I'm running, I'm not worried about catching the ball.
02:28My biggest problem was, how am I going to get this ball back into the infield?
02:33If I didn't catch the ball, the guy on second is going to score.
02:36The guy on first is going to score.
02:38Way back, back, it is.
02:42The throw was way more impressive than the catch, and the catch was great.
02:48But the throw was an on-time great.
02:50It's the instinct.
02:52He knew the situation.
02:54He knew the game score.
02:55He knew the man on base.
02:56The amazing thing about the catch is not the catch.
03:00It's the presence of mind to make the catch and whirl and make the throw.
03:04It was essential, Willie.
03:05It was the impossible play that he made because of this tremendous talent he had for doing more than he
03:11was capable of doing.
03:12That catch was the defining moment of the 1954 Giants.
03:17It was the defining moment of the 1954 World Series.
03:20And it was the defining moment of Willie Mays publicly because now they had a reference point to say, do
03:26you remember when?
03:28If his catch proved historic, it was not necessarily his best.
03:32With the play against Brooklyn three years earlier, the rookie sensation provided a hint of things to come.
03:39There was a play in an afternoon game at the Polar Grounds, and Willie Cox was on third base, and
03:46Ferrello hit a ball into right center field.
03:49It was almost in right field.
03:51Here comes this kid, Mays, like a streak, makes a headlong catch.
03:56He was parallel with the ground when he caught the ball.
03:58Then, in an unbelievable move, he hit the ground, rolled over, his hat flew off, and he threw just blind.
04:07And Cox was out by three good strides.
04:10Charlie Dixon was the manager of the Dodgers, and they went in and asked him, the reporters asked him what
04:14he thought about that after the game.
04:15And Charlie said, I'd like to see the son of a do it again.
04:20He seemed to do it all the time.
04:2212 gold gloves, almost 2,000 RBI.
04:25The first player to hit 300 home runs and steal 300 bases.
04:30For 22 seasons, Willie's genius flashed from every aspect of the game.
04:35Willie was probably one of the most cerebral ball players that ever excelled at the game.
04:41He had everything figured out.
04:43He would know everything that every one of his pitchers was able to throw and likely to throw and win.
04:49So, he was getting a head start on every ball he went after.
04:54He could take his glove and move you this way and then all of a sudden put a hand up
04:57to stop you.
04:57Or move you this way and put up a hand to stop you, and then hit the ball right to
05:00you.
05:01It's like he knew where they were going to hit the ball.
05:02I didn't need a book.
05:04I had it up in my mind what I had to do, what he's done, how he's going to pitch.
05:09I knew all that.
05:10Many, many times a pitcher would release the ball, and he could see the flight of the ball.
05:14And if he thought it was going to bounce in the dirt, he would take off before the ball actually
05:19went into the dirt.
05:19Willie had an inventive way of playing baseball.
05:23Just stretching it, stretching baseball a little bit beyond its limits.
05:27He did it in every way.
05:29He had a little fancy basket catch that he made, and that was part of his trademark.
05:33Willie explained very carefully why it made sense to him.
05:38Because if you catch the ball like this, now you have to bring it all the way around like this
05:44in order to throw.
05:46But if you catch it here, you're halfway back with that throw already.
05:49He was a five-point player.
05:51He could hit with power.
05:53He could hit for average.
05:54He had a great arm.
05:55He was an outstanding fielder and had great running speed.
05:58To watch him take off like a big-ass bird from first base on a steal or something, he got
06:04great jumps.
06:06There was a lot of Cobb in him on the base pass, and I always thought that really defined for
06:11my generation
06:12the way the game should be played in terms of aggressiveness and toughness and a little nastiness.
06:18Drysdale said you got to knock him down, then you throw him sliders.
06:21I think the first time I tried that, I got two strikes on him and I buzzed him.
06:24He ended up hitting a double.
06:26Then the next pitch was a wild pitch.
06:27He rounded third, kept coming home.
06:30I'm covering home.
06:32He comes in, spikes high, starts to slide and drops and slides around me and says,
06:38I could have gotten you, kid.
06:40Just remember that when you come high and inside.
06:43Probably the best ball player I've ever seen.
06:46You take everything into consideration.
06:49It seemed like Willie never made a mistake.
06:50The ball sounded a little different than it did off any other back.
06:54I never hit a ball in St. Louis when I was managing the Giants.
06:57And they hit the light tower behind the scoreboard.
06:59And they came down to me and he said, Skipper, I hit that ball so hard it scared me.
07:03There was one at bat, Mays hit a home run off of me and it hit the scoreboard.
07:07You know, I think he hit it with one hand.
07:09I'm not sure.
07:10And he had one attribute that people didn't realize.
07:12He could catch anybody's fastball from the mound bare handed.
07:17So he would bet you whatever you wanted to bet that you could stand on the mound, throw as hard
07:21as you wanted to and he would catch it bare handed.
07:24Mays!
07:25Mays!
07:26Mays' originality and strength of character were reassuring in a world teetering on the edge of integration.
07:32We're talking to a nation that still hasn't made up its mind about a lot of things in terms of
07:36race and particularly whether it's going to accept Afro-American heroes.
07:41Willie Mays made it easy for them.
07:44This was a guy who not only derived so much enjoyment from playing the game, but people derived that similar
07:51type of enjoyment from watching him play.
07:53Jackie Robinson integrated the game with baseball, just racially.
07:58But Willie Mays came along and he integrated the game stylistically.
08:02He was that generation of black athletes after Robinson who are now free, who are just free to play ball.
08:10But nobody was going to throw black cats at you.
08:12In fact, they were going to reward you for it because that's precisely what the game needed.
08:17He wasn't a polished professional. He was a kid playing baseball, man.
08:21He was out there every day and it looked like he was having the best time of anybody in the
08:24ballpark.
08:25You could identify with Willie. He was doing what you would like to do yourself if you could.
08:30Photographers would follow him and they'd find him after a game playing stickball in the streets of Harlem with teenagers.
08:36Willie was awesome.
08:40To Cad Calloway. This is a guy whose creases had edges you could cut your finger on.
08:46And two-toned shoes.
08:48Willie was slick. Willie was sharp.
08:50Willie had tapered pants. He used to take them to the tailor.
08:53He had the perfect uniform.
08:56We had eye black to be like Willie Mays.
08:58We wore wristbands to be like Willie Mays.
09:01We used to try to have our hats fly off our heads as we'd run around the bases.
09:05Willie had charisma like no one else. And plus he had the name Willie.
09:10I mean just the way he walked. The way he caught the ball. Everything was his own style.
09:15The one thing that struck me about Willie Mays as a catcher sitting behind him was that he had his
09:22nails buffed.
09:23And I'd never seen a man with buff nails.
09:27In the 1950s, New York was the center of the baseball universe.
09:32It was also home to three distinguished center fielders, each with the following more passionate than the next.
09:38No city ever had three major league teams in the same town, in the modern area.
09:43And now in this capital baseball palace, here comes the capital ball players, Willie, Mickey and the Duke.
09:51It's more than a song. Willie, Mickey and the Duke was a way of life.
09:55You could get into a fist fight over whether it was Mays or Mantle or Snyder.
10:00I think even more than the dispute among people as to which one was the best is how proud New
10:06Yorkers were that we had the three best.
10:08That no other city had even anyone in the top three.
10:11We were playing over in the polar grounds and I walked up by the batting cage.
10:15And that particular year I had a little better batting average than Willie.
10:19And I said, Willie, I got you by eight points.
10:22And he said, yeah, but I got two more home runs than you got.
10:25I remember being at a banquet and they were all there.
10:29And Mickey Mantle got up and said that the best center fielder played for the Giants.
10:36New York embraced Willie. Even Dodger and Yankee fans conceded that he was not a bad baseball player.
10:43He could do no wrong as long as he was in New York.
10:56Alabama was the most complete form of segregation to exist on the globe outside of Johannesburg, South Africa.
11:03That was the world of Willie Mays.
11:07You go downtown to a little bus station, you see signs saying white waiting, color waiting.
11:14It was a tremendous amount of fear.
11:16It was two worlds, one white and another one being black.
11:22It was a world we were born into and we sort of knew our places.
11:26And Willie grew up in that world and I thought, I think he fit in well.
11:30Born May 6th, 1931 in Westfield, Alabama, Willie Howard Mays shows signs of athletic greatness upon delivery.
11:40When Willie was born, the doctor took one look at his hands and he said, I never saw hands like
11:48that.
11:48Because he had no wrists.
11:51He had huge hands and they just came down from a forearm and then sprang into five fingers.
11:57His mother and father both were athletes. His mother was very close to being a world class track athlete.
12:03The father was very, very close to Willie.
12:05He said Willie started walking like almost six months old.
12:07And what he had done to test out Willie, he put him between two chairs, okay.
12:12And they put a baseball on one and he said, get the ball, chase the ball, just to make Willie
12:17move and grab the ball.
12:18My mother remarried and she had 11 kids. My father had two.
12:24My mother died at a very young age, 34. And my father and I lived together.
12:29I think that was really where I began to understand about sports.
12:33We lived close by the ballpark and I used to play in the field with my father and everything.
12:39It would be wrong to say that he grew up in a dire poverty. He didn't.
12:43His father worked for Tennessee Coal, Iron and Steel.
12:48His father could pick up the little change by playing semi-pro ball.
12:52I was very fortunate to understand the game at a very early age.
12:57My father would often talk to me about baseball, but I learned the game.
13:01I think most of all on my own by playing with, I guess, older people.
13:06I learned the game very quickly.
13:08But baseball was just his summer game. In his teens, he was a star for all seasons.
13:14He was all counting on our basketball team, our leading scorer in high school.
13:19He was a quarterback for Fairfax Industrial School in Alabama, an all black school.
13:25I said, how far can you throw a jump pass?
13:28He said, about 60 yards.
13:30And he said, Donald, that was my best sport.
13:33But nobody would have me because you could not have a black quarterback.
13:38So on the authority of Willie Mays, Willie was a better football player than a baseball player.
13:45Forsaking the dreams of the NFL, Mays signed a play for the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro Leagues in
13:511948.
13:52He was just 16.
13:54I had to stay in school, so I played Saturday and Sunday when school was in.
13:58When school was out, I would go on the road with them.
14:01Piper Davis, he was a manager.
14:03He talked to my father, made sure that I had money on the road,
14:07make sure that I didn't spend the money.
14:09Whatever I got, I had to send home.
14:11He was like a second father to me when I was coming along.
14:15Fly ball, pretty deep fly ball, hit the center field.
14:19Willie caught the ball.
14:20I had my man tag up and go home.
14:21The ball was waiting for him.
14:24I said, after this season, somebody got signed Willie.
14:28When you look over in the right field stand, which is where whites would have to sit at black ball
14:33games,
14:34there'd be a lot of white fans.
14:35And they started coming when Willie Mays started playing.
14:37I think he was very comfortable with his race in the South.
14:43He was a star in the Negro community, and I think that's where he felt his kinship.
14:48I don't think he was terribly concerned about integration.
14:52You know, perhaps it was a shame.
14:54Three years after Jackie Robinson broke the racial barrier, the New York Giants were smart enough to spot Willie's exceptional
15:02talent, signing him in 1950.
15:05Mays batted .353 with Class B Trenton.
15:08The following year, they put him with Minneapolis.
15:11Willie got on the phone with Leo DeRocha.
15:14DeRocha said, I want you to come up to the major leagues to play center field for me.
15:18Willie said, I can't do that.
15:19He says, I can't hit that kind of pitching.
15:21What?
15:22DeRocha says, what are you hitting now?
15:24He said, .477.
15:26He says, do you think you can hit .270 for me?
15:29And they said, yeah, I could do that.
15:31He said, well, then get up here.
15:32He was in Philadelphia, and we were just finishing batting practice.
15:38And he walked on the field, and Leo said, let him have the last five minutes.
15:42And Willie went in, he popped one up, hit a ground ball, hit a foul ball.
15:47And then he hit a rocket that hit the upper deck in left field.
15:52And then he hit a rocket that hit the upper deck in center field.
15:56Then he hit a rocket that hit the scoreboard in right field.
16:00And everything stopped.
16:02He hit five balls in the upper deck.
16:04That probably was the moment I realized he was something special.
16:09Leo came to me and said, Molly, I think we got something here.
16:13He said, I'll work with him, and you'll work with him.
16:16I said, I think he'll make us some money.
16:17I said, I think you're right, Leo.
16:20But big league pitching, especially the curveball, wasn't batting practice.
16:24And Mays sputtered.
16:25Hitless in his first three games, the edgy 20-year-old
16:29sought counsel from left fielder Monty Irvin, a veteran of the Negro Leagues.
16:33They ruined him with a musk.
16:35Continued to nosedive, garnering just one hit, a homer, in his first 26 at-bats.
16:42Finally, he broke.
16:43Willie Mays has gone hitless.
16:46But I know this, that Leo believed in him and kept his arm around him.
16:51So did many of his teammates in a time-honored dugout tradition.
16:56Willie races over, reaches up, and catches a ball in his bare hand.
17:00And comes into the dugout, waiting for the plaudits of his teammates.
17:04They're stone-dead silent.
17:06So he walks down the length of the dugout and looks in, and in his high squeaky voice,
17:10he says to DeRocha,
17:12Leo, Leo, I just made a great catch.
17:14And DeRocha looks up and says,
17:17Willie, I didn't see it. Do it again next inning.
17:19He was the baby on the ball club.
17:22They played a lot of jokes on him.
17:24And you gotta remember also, we're talking 1951,
17:28and blacks were still treated in baseball very paternalistically.
17:33And Leo, who went out of his way to protect Willie from a variety of things,
17:38did not do him any favors.
17:40He spoiled him.
17:41He prevented him from having to face things for himself,
17:44issues that you faced growing up, and growing up as a war player.
17:49The Say Hey Kid image was both real and manufactured.
17:54It was what Willie then could hide behind,
17:56to not display his true depth and true intelligence,
18:01a created image that he began to live.
18:04In a way, I think DeRocha gave fans a false impression of Willie.
18:10He gave the impression that this was in fact a child man.
18:14I don't see Willie as ever having been childlike in the slightest.
18:18He was athletically mature, and in many ways socially mature.
18:23And suddenly the Giants say, look at this man-child.
18:26They say, gee, we can't leave him alone in the big shoe.
18:28And they're making preparations.
18:30They're watching where he lives.
18:31They're watching what he does.
18:32And he doesn't care what time is the game final.
18:35That's when you want me there.
18:35I'll go there.
18:36That's all he's concerned with.
18:39DeRocha's strategy paid off.
18:40Mays finished the season hitting 274,
18:44playing a key role as the Giants mounted the greatest comeback in National League history.
18:49He began to pick it up and became the rookie of the year.
18:52If Leo hadn't supported him there in those early games,
18:57Willie might have had a different career.
18:59You never know.
19:00After that very bleak start, he got his game together.
19:04And the Giants rode his back throughout the summer of 1951
19:10and on to the eventual pennant playoff with the Dodgers.
19:14In the deciding playoff game, Mays was on deck with the Giants trailing 4-2 in the ninth.
19:21I was so scared, and my fear wasn't hitting.
19:26My fear was, well, they're going to walk Bobby, and Leo's going to pinch it for me.
19:31Back to throw.
19:32That's the last night.
19:33I can't be, I believe.
19:35The Giants won the pellets.
19:37The Giants won the pellets.
19:39The Giants won the pellets.
19:40The Giants won the pellets.
19:41The Giants won the pellets.
19:42Oh!
19:44Mays served most of the next two seasons as a Korean War draftee.
19:48And upon his return in 1954, he began playing his best baseball.
19:53But by 1956, his twin father figures, DeRocher and Irvin, were no longer with the team.
20:00Alone and unprotected, Mays faced life as a black superstar in a country divided by race.
20:06When Willie was young, he was being criticized for not being militant enough on racial questions.
20:12I don't think Mays was as aware of his times and his place.
20:18He was not someone who was giving a lot of thought to this world or to the history or to
20:22the situation.
20:24Mays was who he was.
20:25He was a great ball player.
20:26And to ask him to have been more, I think, was beyond what he was necessarily qualified to do.
20:31He's not dumb.
20:33He's not unaware.
20:34He's not interested in the rest of the world.
20:37He wasn't a militant.
20:38He wasn't an anti-militant.
20:40He didn't want to negotiate.
20:41He wanted to play baseball.
20:42That's all he wanted to do.
20:49The landscape of New York baseball was severely altered.
20:53There are friends of mine who believe that the decay of Western civilization began with the Dodgers and Giants moving
20:59to the West Coast.
21:00And just as Athens lost some of its monuments, we lost Willie Mays.
21:07When he was asked to leave with the Giants to go to San Francisco, he was shocked, practically destroyed.
21:16I know it bothered Willie even though he didn't publicly say so.
21:18It had to.
21:19Because in New York, Willie was the Giants.
21:21And he got to San Francisco.
21:22He was just another ball player.
21:25The so-called rivalry between San Francisco and New York is entirely on the part of San Francisco.
21:32So when Willie came out here with all the reputation and adulation he had acquired in New York, it was
21:38almost resented.
21:40The fans of San Francisco considered him New York's Willie Mays.
21:44He never was adopted the way he was by the fans of New York.
21:49I think the advanced publicity was you think you've seen great baseball players.
21:54Well, you haven't seen anything until you've seen Willie Mays.
21:56Now that in small doses is fine, but it actually was irritating.
22:01Irritating to the sensibilities of knowledgeable baseball fans.
22:05You know, we'll decide how good he is once we see him play.
22:07There is no...
22:10That's idiotic.
22:11What do you mean?
22:12Who are these people?
22:15The city with a tradition to match San Francisco.
22:18And the tradition was that there was no such thing as a black ball player, but especially a black ball
22:24player who was being rated above DiMaggio.
22:27Joe DiMaggio had grown up in San Francisco and the Pacific Coast League team had been very popular since the
22:33turn of the century.
22:34Here's Willie coming in with all the startling ability that he had, and they made it a little tough for
22:40him.
22:41Even the field of play seemed against Mays.
22:43The polo ground's short left and right field porches were replaced by a stadium harboring the foulest weather in the
22:50majors.
22:51No question about it, I think Cal State Park hurt Willie Mays an awful lot.
22:55It blew continuously from left to right.
22:58I always wondered how many home runs Willie Mays may have hit had he played in some of those ballparks
23:03that maybe would have favored a right-hand hitter.
23:06If Mays had been playing the same ballpark that Hank Garrett had been playing, then Mays would have broken that
23:13record many times, I think.
23:15Easily.
23:16When Mays received few plaudits for hitting a career-best 347 in his inaugural season, he should have gotten the
23:23hint.
23:24He would never satisfy the fans in San Francisco.
23:27But Willie encountered a far more serious rejection.
23:31When he got there, he encountered something he had never encountered in New York, and that was racism.
23:37The house that Willie wanted to buy, neighbors started protesting, and the first week that Mays lived there, a brick
23:42was thrown through the window.
23:45Almost immediately, he had competition out in San Francisco with Cepeda and McCovey, and there may have been the sense
23:50that, well, what do we need New York's hero when we have our own?
23:54Orlando was very outgoing.
23:56He was single at that time.
23:58He was in the top nightclubs dancing, and, you know, very visible, and Mays was not.
24:04I was at the right place at the right time.
24:07I was very fortunate to be able to start doing well.
24:10I was very surprised that Willie resented me.
24:14He never gave any outward signs of being hurt or anything like that, but he became a little recluse.
24:21A lot of baseball writers thought that he was kind of snobbish, but he wasn't.
24:26Willie Mays was a very bashful man when he came west.
24:29And Willie was introverted his whole career.
24:31People thought, you know, he was sullen or, of course, he didn't like people, but that wasn't the case.
24:35He stayed to himself.
24:36And what happens then is that Willie goes into a little bit of a shell.
24:40But suddenly, he's this eternal child playing baseball, and look at the way I can play this game.
24:44And people are looking at another guy.
24:47Gone were the friendly pepper games with DeRocher and Irvin.
24:51One of the last links to New York, Mays was cast by the local press as the elder statesman.
24:57I think some of the fun went out of it in part because he had become a grizzled veteran.
25:03I remember he started playing pro ball at the highest level available to him at the age of 17.
25:08And a lot of the flair and a lot of the verve and a lot of those delightful mannerisms were
25:13gone.
25:13I remember Willie staying in his hotel room, ordering room service, and going to the ballpark.
25:22It was baseball and nothing else.
25:25I don't know of any player on the Giants in those years who could be described as Willie's closest friend.
25:32After they both retired, McCovey and Mays are virtually neighbors.
25:37And McCovey told me once, he said, I never hear from Mays.
25:40Adding to Willie's isolation was the tough Marine Corps style of Giants manager Bill Rigney who had taken over for
25:47DeRocher in 1956.
25:49Rigney didn't have that bedside manner with Willie that Leo had and there might have been a little problem there.
25:55It was just a different relationship.
25:57Willie had lost the manager who doted on him.
26:00Rigney didn't do that. Rigney had kids in his lineup.
26:03He had to dote on them.
26:06I couldn't be Leo to him because it was only that relationship was his and alone.
26:11But in 1962, Mays experienced a renaissance as the Giants battled for the pennant.
26:17On September 12th though, he collapsed in the dugout, missing three critical games.
26:22He played with such intensity that he would get tired.
26:27And you know, he just collapsed.
26:31We were playing a series in Cincinnati, real hot.
26:35And he was so exhausted that at home play, it looked like he wanted to almost lay down.
26:40He almost collapsed.
26:41We put him in the hospital after the game.
26:43We were definitely concerned about his health.
26:46I think that those who knew him best felt that with this kind of stress that physical problems were inevitable.
26:55I think that they were definitely a result of emotional problems.
27:00Rumors swirled that his physical problems stemmed from a marriage that was under a cloud almost before it started, six
27:07years earlier in New York.
27:09Willie didn't tell anybody he was marrying Marguerite.
27:11Willie Mays comes into the locker room and says, guys, I got married.
27:14And everybody says, gee, this is terrific, Willie, sensational.
27:17Ah, congratulations.
27:19Yeah, I think you know her.
27:21I married Marguerite.
27:22And then there's kind of a silence.
27:24And when he walked away, one guy said, who's going to tell him?
27:28Willie married her.
27:29He was still young, 25.
27:31His good friend, Lonnie Irvin, said, Willie, she's not the girl for you.
27:34You know, I don't think you should marry her.
27:36But Willie was smitten by her.
27:38I think that was his first really true love.
27:40He was married to a gal who the United States men couldn't print the money as fast as she could
27:45spend it.
27:46He travels.
27:47He hears stories about how she's running around, how she's drinking.
27:49He hears the names of people that she's drinking with.
27:52The papers insist that he smacked her around a little bit.
27:55And it got worse and worse and worse.
27:57And he had no one to talk to about it.
27:59And so it ate at him.
28:00My mom isn't the kind of person that anybody would necessarily feel sorry for.
28:05She was from a bigger city, more socially prepared than he was.
28:08So if anybody, you know, I would be concerned about going through that whole thing, it would be him.
28:14In late 1962, Mays revealed that he and Marguerite had separated.
28:19There would be an ugly divorce proceeding that included a custody battle for their four year old son.
28:24I guess he fell in love with Marguerite and Emerita.
28:28Later on, he said he was sorry.
28:30I believe that he believed in the concept of romantic love.
28:33And so he threw himself into this thing.
28:35A big house.
28:37This is my woman.
28:38We're going to have a child.
28:39I'm sure he wanted to do more in terms of our relationship.
28:43You know, the great demands on his time.
28:46I don't know how that works.
28:47Those are tough choices between a son and a, you know, a world.
28:56May's divorce in 63 left a deep and visceral cut.
29:00Willie lost his wife, his son, his fortune, and what was left of his celebrated innocence.
29:08He was very unto himself.
29:11He didn't want the world to worry about him.
29:13It was his problem.
29:15He would take care of it.
29:16You never heard him ever mention anything about his marriage in the clubhouse or financial problems he had.
29:22It just seemed to me that no matter what was going on in his private life,
29:26once he put the uniform on the said Giants, boy, it was another world.
29:31It was his world now.
29:32At 31, May...
29:37...freeze the opposition with his back.
29:39On the final day of the 1962 season, he hit a homer that forced a playoff against Los Angeles.
29:48Here's one.
29:50Here's the pitch.
29:51A line block to center.
29:52This could be at May's leading.
29:55The Giants have won.
29:56The Giants have won.
30:01The Giants have gone crazy now.
30:04The Giants have gone crazy now.
30:14Coming back from Los Angeles.
30:15It was comparable to B.J. Day.
30:17Everyone was a hero.
30:18But Willie was the hero of heroes.
30:20And I think probably at that point, May's realized, hey, that's not bad.
30:24In 1965, May's won his second MVP award after hitting 52 home runs.
30:31In the history of baseball, no one has ever hit 50 or more home runs twice, 10 years apart, except
30:38Willie May's.
30:38Two and O deliveries.
30:40May sends another one.
30:41Tell it.
30:41Bye-bye, baby.
30:42Willie Mays.
30:43That tied a record.
30:44Four home runs in a game.
30:46Tell it.
30:47Bye-bye, baby.
30:48Number 512 for Willie Mays.
30:51May's hit it on the left.
30:55Willie Mays.
31:07Willie Mays.
31:08And Herman knew Willie was having a tough time financially.
31:12But at that time, Herman Franks took him under his arm.
31:16In spite of his burdens, Mays found a way to excel.
31:20By the end of the 60s, he was named player of the decade.
31:24And by 1971, he had a new role on the team.
31:28That year was the hottest year that I played.
31:31Because I had played so long and so much that every time I got a day off, I couldn't go
31:37home.
31:37I had to stay here, go in the bullpen, make sure that the guy positioned himself, make
31:44sure that the center fielder positioned himself in the way that I felt that he should be done.
31:49That's rewarding, but that's hard.
31:52Even in the end, when his skills were eroding, and the best thing he could do for the Giants
31:56was get on base, not push runners around or hit home runs, he learned how to walk.
32:00He led the league in walks, led the league in on base percentage, which he'd never done
32:04in his career.
32:04In 1971, he started out like gangbusters.
32:08And through June, he was hitting over 300.
32:11He'd set a national league record for runs scored.
32:14And then all of a sudden, he just went downhill.
32:17With Mays struggling in the outfield, manager Charlie Fox brought him in to play first base,
32:22where Willie was not at home.
32:25Well, he just had so much pride.
32:28You know, you could see it in his performance on the field and see it in the clubhouse that
32:33he didn't have that smile on his face or the jolly Willie Mays that he was in the years before
32:40that.
32:40I think he played at such a high standard of performance for himself that this was a machine that was
32:46likely to break down.
32:47The hardest thing for a ball player to do is to look natural and graceful and unmindful of the obligations
32:55of performing before a crowd.
32:57What's more difficult than something you were once great at and you know what to do and you can't do
33:03it?
33:03It has to be the worst thing in the world.
33:07It's the worst thing in the world.
33:14In May of 1972, the Giants traded Mays to the Mets.
33:19For New Yorkers, it was a chance to see their hero again.
33:22For Willie, who returned with his second wife, May, it was a chance to reignite an old flame.
33:28First game back, as the fates would have it, the opponent is the San Francisco Giants,
33:32the team that didn't want him.
33:34And with the score tied 4-4, Willie comes up, hits a solo home run,
33:39it sticks as the margin, and it's as if God had said,
33:42we owe you this one, Willie.
33:44But May's strikes of thunder were rare.
33:47Two weeks before the Mets won the 1973 pennant,
33:50the scarred 42-year-old warrior stood before a full house at Shea Stadium.
33:55Ladies and gentlemen, Willie Mays!
34:02I never feel that I would ever quit baseball.
34:05But as you know, it always comes a time for someone to get out.
34:09The kids over here, the way they are playing, tells me one thing.
34:15Willie, say goodbye to America. Thank you very much.
34:23There's a time that you gotta quit, you know, when you know it, and I guess Willie knew it to
34:28himself.
34:29The day before the World Series, Willie came down the runway, and as he came up into the dugout,
34:34there were probably 100 media members waiting for him.
34:37Okay, Willie, what's it like to be back?
34:39And he looked around and he said, I just want to get it over.
34:45There's a smash in the left banner, Willie Mays over, and it can fly.
34:49Willie Mays stumbling again as he did on the bases.
34:53To see the great Willie Mays have trouble with two fly balls in one game probably never happened before in
34:59his long career.
35:01It was embarrassing to see him out there. I mean, you felt for the man.
35:04This is the thing that I think all sports fans in all areas hate to see.
35:09He is a great one playing in his last years having this kind of trouble.
35:14Willie's tank was on empty when he hit New York.
35:17And everything he did to help bring that really wretched Mets team all the way to the World Series was
35:23remarkable, but it reflected strength.
35:25And you saw Willie Mays literally at his knees pleading for an out call to be turned into a safe
35:31call.
35:32And you knew it was time for this man to retire.
35:34And not only that, it was past the time for him to retire.
35:37And I think that's always going to be the example of people hanging on a little bit longer than they
35:42should have.
35:43Not everyone can leave baseball with the panache of Ted Williams, hitting a home run in your home ballpark and
35:50walking away.
35:52But it was not a favor to Willie Mays to have him play in a way that people would have
35:57that as their last memory of it.
35:58But that fades. And what abides and endures is the picture of the young Mays in center field.
36:05Mays stayed on with the Mets as a part-time coach, but the pull of his glorious past was too
36:11strong.
36:12He told me the pain was so great. He said he'd come to the stadium and put on his uniform.
36:19About the third or fourth inning, he wanted to play so badly, hurt him so badly, he'd go to dugout
36:24change and leave.
36:26They made him a public relations man, and that wasn't Willie Mays.
36:29I think Willie Mays could have managed. He knew the game. He knew how to play the game. He'd played
36:34it better than anybody else. But nobody offered it to him.
36:38In 1979, Commissioner Bowie Kuhn delivered an ultimatum to Mays. Give up his part-time job at Bally's Casino or
36:46give up baseball.
36:47In need of money, Willie chose the better paying position and was suspended indefinitely. The episode was just another bitter
36:54pill and what Mays perceives is a fading legacy.
36:57I think Willie definitely has the feeling that he's underappreciated, and I think it hurts him.
37:03He tends to withdraw to start with, so I think that that just makes it even worse.
37:07Willie is bitter because he's not looked upon as the top player.
37:12Joe DiMaggio sort of took a little bit of that away from him.
37:15Ted Wibes has taken a little bit of that. Aaron has started to take some of that away from him.
37:19He feels like he's not getting his justice for what he accomplished and what he did in baseball.
37:24Willie is a very self-satisfied man. He's got a lovely wife. May is a very charming lady.
37:33He's got a happy life, and he's doing the things he likes to do, but he's so introspective and so
37:40difficult.
37:41If he's got problems, well, give you all the help that you want. All you have to do is ask
37:49him.
37:49He has very traditional values and ideals that are from that era.
37:54He very much believes in being stand-up.
37:57Not because you're supposed to or not because, you know, it's going to further your career or put more money
38:04in your pocket,
38:05but because he believes in those things.
38:07Maybe there's something authentic in being cranky and saying, I've given you plenty.
38:11If you want me to have an act, if you want me to meet you halfway, why should I? There
38:16are a million of you.
38:17Think of what effort that requires for me always to meet you halfway when there are so many of you.
38:23That's not fair.
38:23No one really knows Willie Mays. The public doesn't. The press doesn't. He's as much a mystery as DiMaggio was.
38:31He wanted to emulate DiMaggio on the field, and he wanted to emulate him off the field.
38:36DiMaggio was revered for protecting his privacy and doing things his own way, and Mays got a lot of flack.
38:43DiMaggio was voted in 1969 as the greatest living ball player, and I asked him his opinion on who the
38:50greatest player that he had ever seen was.
38:55And unhesitatingly, he answered Willie Mays.
38:59660 home runs, 24 All-Star games, the greatest player of all time, Willie Mays.
39:11I know in my own feeling, in my own heart, I was thinking, whoa, man, he's got to understand how
39:18much these people really, really love him.
39:22Willie Mays' legacy will go on forever.
39:25Willie Mays, at his best, not only could do everything, he made you smile watching him do it.
39:31He reminded you of why it's such a great game. He was like a little kid playing ball at the
39:38highest possible level of a grown man's skill.
39:42Forever, Willie Mays will be the young kid with the smile and giants across here.
39:47Willie Mays will be the maker of impossible catches, the stealer of impossible bases, the collector of impossible hits, the
39:55winner of impossible victories.
39:56And that legacy will never fade.
40:04Willie Mays often expressed his genius in ways the fans couldn't see.
40:09He would sometimes intentionally miss a pitch that he liked early in the game, so that the pitcher might serve
40:15it up again when the game was on the line.
40:17Another ploy was to occasionally pull up at first base when he could have easily stretched the hit into a
40:23double.
40:23The reason? Willie McCovey was up next.
40:26And Mays didn't want the pitcher to have the option of walking the feared slugger.
40:31For SportsCentury, I'm Chris Fowler.
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