Maybe I'm just too used to consuming embarrassing gossip stories about pro-athletes firing guns at strip clubs, but James Hirsch's account of Willie Mays' life (Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend), was so decidedly unjuicy that it almost put me to sleep at first. William Howard Mays: a happy and polite tyke, full of rambunctiousness and energy, devoid of sass and gloom, with a loving family around him, and the grinning sun from the Raisin Bran box constantly following him around. As a youth he blossomed into not only a once-in-a-lifetime kind of athlete, but an acute and diligent student of the game, who was only interested in perfecting his skills, while he wasn't helping the elderly find matching socks during power outtages.
Being the sucker for all things Giants that I am, I was much more drawn in by the baseball stuff. I never saw Mays play, and Hirsch definitely has a gift for making me feel like I had experienced the parts of his career I've only heard about. I knew Mays was on deck when Bobby Thomson hit the shot heard 'round the world, but had no idea that he was so absolutely terrified that he might have to come up with the pennant on the line, that he prayed to God to not let it happen. Hirsch does an stellar job of framing moments like these.
But the most interesting part, and most disturbing to my orange and black sense of pride, was reading about how Mays was first received when the team moved to San Francisco. The interesting and disturbing part? San Francisco fans didn't like him. Read that again. They didn't like Willie Mays. No, not until 1962, when the 11-year veteran brought the first pennant to San Francisco after playing there for four years.
Willie Mays: The one thing you would think San Francisco baseball fans would be proud to hang their hat on, and they are. But it wasn't always that way. We resented Mays for being New York's superstar. Giants fans more readily embraced Orlando Cepeda, and Willie McCovey, two San Francisco originals. In the late 50's and early 60's, we didn't know what we know now: That in the 50,000 year history of baseball, there are exactly two people -maybe three or four if you're feeling frisky- who you can call the greatest ever and be taken seriously. And San Francisco had one of them. But because San Francisco fans are San Francisco fans, what did we do when he got here? We held it against him that he played in and was loved by another city. We called him selfish because he didn't like to bunt. We panicked every time his average fell under .300. We gave the 1959 team MVP to Sam Jones, who, to be sure, was a 20 game winner, but Mays gave us .313/.381/.583 and:31 home runs and 104 RBI's. Team bests in every offensive category except runs scored. Hard to think that not receiving the Giants MVP that year was anything less than bitterness for not delivering us the pennant.
It kind of makes me want to slink underneath an orange plastic Candlestick seat and hide underneath the swirling bay winds to contemplate the tragedy of not even being able to appreciate our best player. But it also kind of makes sense and fits into our larger history: San Francisco baseball fans letting our impatience and sense of entitlement get the best of us.
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