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 WILLIE MAYS ...circa 1951 |
New book captures essence
of the great Willie Mays
of TheColumnists.com
Charles Einstein,
a renowned San Francisco sportswriter, wrote several books about
Willie Mays, including a Pulitzer Prize-nominated work called
“Willie’s Time.”
Einstein was related to Albert Einstein but not THAT Albert Einstein.
His brother Albert changed his name to Albert Brooks to avoid
confusion with the world’s smartest man and became well
known as an actor and comedian. Another brother became known
as a cable television kooky character--Super Dave Osborne.
All three of them were the sons of Harry
Einstein, who gained his fame in the 1930s and 1940s as a comedian
on the Eddie Cantor radio show called Parkyarkarkus. His death
was his most memorable moment. He collapsed into the lap of Milton
Berle at a Friar’s Club roast in New York. Berle screamed,
“Is there a doctor in the house?” and the audience
howled at what they thought was another show business shtick.
Charles Einstein often told one of the best journalistic stories
when describing his interviews with Mays, maybe the best player
of his time or all time, but never an easy interview.
“We spent several weeks together at his home interviewing
him about his career,” Einstein said. “I finally left
his place in Atherton (California) and told him I would be back
with the finished book in about six months.”
Proud as punch, Einstein knocked on the door of Willie’s
palatial mansion in the hills outside of San Francisco with the
first copy of the new book. Willie answered the door himself
and stared at Einstein.
“Who you?” he asked.
It didn’t have the lasting fame of the New Orleans chant,
“Who Dat?” for the Super Bowl champion Saints but it
was good for dozens of press box laughs when the Giants and Mets
would meet at Shea Stadium or Candlestick Park a couple of decades
ago.
Here’s hoping James S. Hirsch fares better with Willie after
he presents a copy of, “Willie Mays: The Life. The Legend”
(Scribner, $30) to the baseball immortal since the book is allegedly
authorized by Willie Mays.
The Say Hey Kid who exploded on the New York baseball scene with
the Giants in 1951 and would soon be the anchor act of the famed
Willie, Mickey (Mantle) and the Duke (Snider) centerfield triumvirate,will
be 79 in May. Sometimes that is reason enough to agree to an
authorized biography.
Hirsch does a splendid job over 628 pages of placing Mays in
perspective. He reveals much that is new about Willie’s
childhood and dysfunctional background in rural Alabama where
his father Willie Howard Mays Sr., known as Cat for his athletic
speed, taught the boy the game he grew to love.
Cat Mays worked as a segregated miner before he achieved the
accomplished position, in the definition of the rural black community,
of a Pullman porter, a distinguished job with clean clothes,
good tips and adventureous trips. All a black man had to do to
hold his job and succeed on the trains was to offer up enough,
“Yes sirs,” to the demanding travelers.
Jackie Robinson broke the color line in baseball with the Brooklyn
Dodgers in 1947. He was 28 years old. He was a married man with
a college education, an honorably discharged Army officer and
as sharp-tongued, even though he held it back for his first two
seasons, as his combative manager and later opponent, Leo Durocher.
Robinson never forgot the ignominies of his treatment throughout
his baseball career or in his afterlife. It may have contributed
to his early death at the age of 53.
Mays was two weeks past his 20th birthday when he joined the
New York Giants in May of 1951. He helped lead the Giants to
a comeback pennant (“The Giants win the pennant, the
Giants win the pennant, the Giants win the pennant,”
howled broadcaster Russ Hodges at the Bobby Thomson Shot Heard
Round the World, the ugliest words a Brooklyn fan ever heard)
and went on to superstardom after his return from service in
1954.
While Robinson bellowed about racial conditions in a segregated
America (though the Black Panthers in the 1960s would call him
an Uncle Tom), Mays played the role of grateful boy, happy to
be a game changer on the field and never one to offer opinions
about race, revolution or riots.
His life decision was to help change America’s culture with
his performance on the field and his conduct off the field. He
was the best the game ever saw and opened opportunities with
his play for succeeding generations of African American players.
He lived a clean life, never drinking or smoking, always played
hard, always entertained, always was a credit to his race, as
they said of Joe Louis, the human race.
Hirsch captures all of Willie’s life on and off the field
in this incredibly detailed and researched biography. Two moments
of the Mays file are covered clearly. They are my personal Willie
remembrances.
When he announced his retirement at Shea and said “Goodbye
to America,” it was as tearful as a ball player’s day
can get. Then he fell down chasing a fly ball in the 1973 World
Series against Oakland. It was as if the Statue of Liberty, the
Eiffel Tower, Mount Rushmore and the Washington Monument had
all collapsed together.
No book could ever really capture Willie Mays. He had to be seen
to be believed.
©2010 by Maury Allen. The Maury Allen caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. This column first posted Feb. 15, 2010.
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