R.I.P To The Legendary Baseball Icon The ‘Say, Hey Kid’ Willie Mays.
Willie Mays, the spirited center fielder whose brilliance at the plate, in the field and on the basepaths for the Giants led many to call him the greatest all-around player in baseball history, died on Tuesday in Palo Alto, Calif. He was 93.
Mays signing autographs at the Polo Grounds on Sept. 29, 1957, the day of the Giants’ last game before leaving New York for San Francisco.
Credit: The New York Times
Mays compiled extraordinary statistics in 22 National League seasons with the Giants in New York and San Francisco and a brief return to New York with the Mets, preceded by a time in the Negro leagues, from 1948-50. He hit 660 career home runs and had 3,293 hits and a .301 career batting average.
But he did more than personify the complete ballplayer. An exuberant style of play and an effervescent personality made Mays one of the game’s, and America’s, most charismatic figures, a name that even people far afield from the baseball world recognized instantly as a national treasure.
Mays waving to a San Francisco crowd in 2021 as the Giants honored him on the day after his 90th birthday.
Credit: D. Ross Cameron/Associated Press