RiP
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Very sad. Have been listening to this podcast, where Wille got his start.
Road to Rickwood : NPR
Was wondering what was up when I saw this
“My heart will be with all of you.” Willie Mays won’t be at MLB Rickwood Field tribute - Alabama Daily News (aldailynews.com)
Willie was such a nice man. He was a customer in the private banking group at the bank that I worked at in San Francisco in the late1980s so I would talk to him every time that he would come in. I went to lots of Giants games back then. My boss’s boss was golfing buddies with the owner of the Giants and he never wanted to go to any of the night games, so he gave me the tickets and the parking pass and the passes to the stadium club. Fun times.
I had no idea he was still alive, 93, we should all be so lucky, RIP to a legend.
I had no idea he was still alive, 93, we should all be so lucky, RIP to a legend.
Same.
I wish I’d gotten to see him play live. What a ballplayer. Rest easy…
- Jeff
Just yesterday there was a story about he would not be able to attend the game that’s coming I believe Thursday night commemorating the Negro leagues.
What’s really sad is it for a whole lot of years MLB wouldn’t have anything to do with him because he had an affiliation with a casino. And now that MLB has fully embraced gambling on baseball they invite him to a big celebration of where he started.
Hank Aaron
Babe Ruth
Willie Mays
Those were the top three home run hitters before baseball embraced steroids.
He should still be number 3 on the list.
Sleep well Willie.
My dad’s favorite player ever and he got to see him once.
He said this one would take awhile to get over. Sniff.
Willie’s playing days were long over before I became interested in baseball, but as a kid in the mid-late 70’s you knew who he was and why he was so great. Rest easy Mr. Mays.
Simply one of the best all around baseball players that ever lived. He’s the gold standard for a five tool player.
Also seemed like a really nice guy.
I remember this almost like yesterday. Two of all time greats, Willie and Mickey, battling in Homerun Derby at “Wrigley†(really in LA). We kids then would go out and do the whiffle ball equivalent. Those were thr days.
https://youtu.be/…?si=GR7Nn-MGZ8EziL4T
I watched a lot of those reruns. I wish MLB would do something similar today.
] Dave Flemming was in the visitors’ radio booth at Wrigley Field the moment the report of Willie Mays’ passing was made public.
Here’s what it sounded like on our airwaves as he passed on the news to Giants fans everywhere.
CHICAGO — San Francisco Giants ace Logan Webb was walking up the steps in the visiting dugout in the sixth inning Tuesday night when the Chicago Cubs announced the passing of Willie Mays to the near-sellout crowd at Wrigley Field.
Webb’s manager, Bob Melvin, had heard the news just prior to the first pitch. There was no time to make an announcement to the team. But word had filtered through the Giants dugout. Many players knew. Most of the coaching staff knew. Webb did not. His mind had been sequestered into a pitching duel against the Cubs’ Justin Steele.
Before Webb could throw a pitch in the sixth inning, he had to process the news that the Giants had lost their icon of icons, the 93-year-old man widely regarded as the greatest all-around player in baseball history, the legendary player that Webb first met as a newly drafted 17-year-old reporting to his first instructional league, and as fate would have it, the treasured figure that the Giants have spent nearly a year planning to celebrate on Thursday, when they oppose the St. Louis Cardinals at Rickwood Field, where a teenaged Mays once played for the Birmingham Black Barons.
Willie Mays has been on everyone’s minds this week. Now Thursday’s tribute to the Negro Leagues will become a celebration of his life.
In the moment, though, Webb had a game to pitch. And he could not take his eyes off the image of Mays on the Wrigley Field scoreboard.
“I took my hat off and I was looking at the scoreboard and just thinking about him,†Webb said. “I looked at the umpire and I was like, ‘I think you need to stop the clock.’ I needed to take a moment to think about it and be prideful for the jersey I was wearing, the hat I was wearing, knowing Willie did the same.â€
Today’s print WaPo paper pleasantly surprised me with a centered, above the fold black and white pic of a young Willie Mays scoring with a head first slide into home plate and a front page obit column. I’m pretty sure only us old farts get the paper in paper form and I am fairly certain all of us felt the tug of this remembrance just a bit more closely than most. Yep, may he RIP and greet the keeper of the gates with a Say Hey!
Saw him hit a homer way back when in Candlestick. Kinda sad he had to play on that crappy astroturf for so long, not to mention the crappy cold, windy weather at the stick. Definitely not a hitters park, so amazing the numbers he was still able to put up. Willie and the McCovey were quite the pair.
And I thought I was the only one who played whiffle ball HR derby. Today’s paper included a Say Hey Kid piece from Thomas Boswell. The paper was gracious enough to allow sharing.
https://wapo.st/3XqBMU3
Thanks for posting the interview with Reggie, that was fascinating. I always thought of him as a generation younger than Mays, which he almost was–15 years younger. So it was interesting to hear that he suffered racism at that level, and disappointing I guess. I appreciate his honesty, you can see the emotions are still raw.
The telling part was when Reggie said “if I’d said or done what I wanted to, at the time, you would’ve found me up in an oak tree”
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