With BMitch & Doc off Wednesday observing Juneteenth, they did not get a chance to remember the great Willie Mays, who passed away Tuesday at the age of 93.
But it was worth the wait for both, especially Doc, who was in high school at the end of Mays’ career in the early 1970s and saw a glimpse of the Say Hey Kid’s late prime while hearing from his family about how great Mays was.
“My old man and his crew, my uncles, they’re all Giants fans from that era, so I was a Dodgers fan because that was my rivalry with them; they’re all sitting around, slapping bones, playing cards…it brought back so many good memories of them, because it was all about baseball,” Doc, who was born in southern California right around the time the Dodgers and Giants went west, said. “In our community, it was everything, and he was so dynamic, Michael Jordan-esque. I always like to say, when you were growing up, who were you in the backyard? I was like Willie Mays, and this guy here…GOATed.”
“We lost a great one; I knew he was a great player, but I read up on him, and in 24 years, he made 24 All-Star games,” BMitch marveled. “He was drafted right out of high school, played in the Negro Leagues, and then he immediately gets to the Majors and hits 20 home runs his rookie year. We could sit up here and talk about people that we want to make the greatest, but I don't know how many people had a better feat than that, and he hit .301 with 3,293 hits and 660 home runs for his career. The dude did everything; World Series champion, MVP, Rookie of the Year – if it could have been done, Willie Mays did it.”
Gregg Giannotti on our sibling station WFAN said Wednesday that ‘when you first started learning about baseball, Willie Mays was one of the first few guys you learned about’ – and while that may be true for children of late Generation X/early Millenials like Gio, especially in New York and California, younger generations are, naturally, further detached from greats of the 1960s like Mays.
So, to BMitch, if there’s anything to take out of Mays’ passing, it’s that hopefully, the younger crowd will see, learn, and appreciate how good he was.
“A lot of young people who are listening to us right now, this is the first damn time they heard the name Willie Mays,” BMitch lamented. “We get into arguments about who is the best, and a lot of times, people don’t even know who the guy was. People don’t look beyond what they just know, and sometimes it’s okay to take a walk down memory lane and figure out why someone you may look up to became who they were. In this day and age, people can know anything they want to know, so if you were anywhere close to a baseball field and you hadn't heard about him, then it's a disgrace.”
Luckily, Doc is here to school us all.
“I saw him on my black and white TV, he beat my team – and that was a rivalry game, like Dallas-Washington for me, and they had Juan Marichal and Willie McCovey and others,” Doc remembered.
“The dude hit four home runs in one game. After the first one, you pitched to him again, but after the second one, why the third and fourth? Shouldn’t you not throw the ball to him anymore?” BMitch wondered back.
“But the Giants and the Mets both retired his number – he was the ultimate player.”
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