Tim Brown looks back on the career and life of a player considered by many to be one of the best players of all time, if not the greatest, and whose unique presence made him one of the sport’s kings.
Video Transcript
Willie Mays left with him too.
Part of the game born for a man with speed, power and determined grace.
To many, he was the greatest player of all time.
He was, indeed, the greatest player they had ever seen. From his heft at the plate to his grace in center field, from the legacy he left behind to the uniform he wore, he was a giant in every respect.
He is gone.
And what remains in the mind are the mountains of numbers piled up over 22 years, first in New York, then in San Francisco and finally back to New York, and the moments lined up end-to-end that led to a glorious tally of 660 home runs, 3,200 and 83 hits and 338 stolen bases.
Batting average: .302, 2 MVPs, 24 All-Star games, 11 Gold Glove awards.
He was a World Series champion in 1954.
He was a Hall of Fame guy.
He could do it all and do it better than most people.
He was the king of baseball.
It’s the kind of thing that doesn’t show up more than once every generation or two.
He was born in the suburbs of Birmingham, Alabama, and grew up in Birmingham, influenced by his father, who played baseball for the local steel mills and the Birmingham Black Barons of the Negro American League.
Mays signed with the New York Giants in 1950, around the time Jackie Robinson entered the major leagues.
1951.
Mays was the National League Rookie of the Year at age 20 and won his first MVP award in two decades three years later after missing the better part of two seasons while serving in the Korean War.
Dude, that kid played every bit of the game.
He led the league in batting average, home runs, stolen bases and outs like a player filling up the box score in one game.
He played his whole career.
He loved the sport so much that he played stickball with boys on the streets of New York.
And for the better part of a generation, the gaming world loved him.
Hall of Famer Monte Irvin, complete with Mays;
I think anyone who saw him would say Willie Mays was the greatest player of all time.
Baseball Hall of Famer Sandy Koufax once said, “I can’t believe that Babe Ruth was a better baseball player than Willie Mays.”
Vin Scully said Mays was the greatest baseball player he ever saw.
And Willie would shrug and say, they pitched the ball, I hit it, he hit the ball.
I take it simply.
That’s what it is like for him.
Anyway, please rank them.
What about Ruth Cobb, Aaron Williams, Garrick Mantle and Robinson Bonds Mays?
There may be more, but maybe too many.
it doesn’t matter.
Mays was special.
Individual.
One of the few things that will be remembered forever in every sense of the word.
Giant.
