Setting the record straight on Mays
Somehow what should have been a final triumph was twisted.
TOP OF THE FIRST
Baseball: The most dangerous sport for kids
I don’t watch a lot of soccer, though Fubo hasn’t figured this out. My streaming service, which supposedly customizes listings based on my viewing habits, is pushing the Summer of Soccer.
But when I have watched soccer, I don’t recall the announcers ever warning kids not to play too much soccer — and be sure to play other sports. There’s no warning that comes with telecasts of basketball, hockey, golf, tennis, swimming, football, skiing, track and field, indoor and outdoor lacrosse, team handball (although I have watched it once), or water polo.
Only during baseball telecasts do announcers warn that participating too much in the sport can be a drawback, that it can lead to burn-out and injury. And that you must learn skills from other sports.
John Smoltz has been doing this for years, though he backed off a bit until the recent plethora — or was it a passel? — of arm injuries this spring in MLB.
But over the past couple of seasons, I have noticed each game that Eduardo Perez and Karl Ravech work for ESPN seems to contain a one-inning-plus sermon on the evils of playing too much baseball.
I think Smoltz is sincere. That is not how they did it when he was growing up in Michigan. But then again, I had a friend who grew up in Michigan a generation or so before Smoltz. My friend described his summers when he was 11 to 13 as “one continuous baseball game.” Yeah, back in the day, kids played a lot more baseball than you did growing up.
As for Perez and Ravech, I don’t want to say that they are insincere in their beliefs. But I think there’s a reason they got religion.
Besides MLB games, one of the other event figures heavily into their workload: The Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania.
The LLWS has to be one of ESPN's most valuable properties. The World Wide Leader in Sports pays next-to-nothing for the right fees — ESPN made a deal worth $7.5 million a year in 2016, and the deal was extended through 2030. As far as I can tell, there has been no raise.
Kids playing baseball beyond summer was not much of a thing until the early 2000s, though it was commonplace with most other sports. I became aware of the issue with baseball in 2005 when a friend started talking about starting a site that covered youth sports.
Message boards on the Internet were big at the time. And it was easy to see that people associated with Little League were incensed that other brands of baseball were available to kids.
They warned of the potential for injury with a schedule beyond the 12-game, six weeks that Little League traditionally offers. At the same time, many Little Leagues were starting to offer fall baseball.
Participation in all youth sports in the United States has been falling, and Little League has been shrinking by about 3% a year since the mid-1990s.
Little League is a big organization. The latest figures I can find show it takes in more than $20 million a year — and that is just the folks in Williamsport. Your local league probably takes in between $600,000 and $1 million. There’s nothing wrong with this. I am just pointing out that this is a big organization that has an incentive to protect the nest.
And with fewer kids playing, I think there is more than just concern for player safety behind Little League’s warnings.
Sure, arm injuries for kid pitchers have gone up since the 1990s. And I think year-round baseball is part of that. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that playing beyond 12 games in six weeks will lead to elbow surgery (especially for all those kids who don’t pitch.)
And playing with a travel ball baseball team does not necessarily preclude you from playing another sport.
Finally, it is true, you could gain skills from playing other sports.
Soccer, for instance, could help with footwork, although anyone who saw Shea Hillenbrand, a high school soccer star, play first base might debate you on that.
HEART OF THE ORDER
Mays helped win the game
Why wasn’t that the story of Game 2 of the 1973 World Series?
Of all the things Willie Mays did on a baseball field, perhaps the most amazing was this: He drove in the go-ahead run in a dramatic, extra-inning World Series win and was disparaged for it.
In Game 2 of the 1973 World Series, Mays came to the plate with two out in the 12th inning. He singled to drive in Bud Harrelson with a single that gave the Mets a 7-6 lead over the Oakland A’s. The Mets scored three more runs that inning, after an errors by second baseman Mike Andrews, and won 10-7.
That was the last hit and RBI of Mays’ career. Now it would seem to me that the obvious storyline would be that a player who was 42 years, 5 months, 9 days came through in the clutch and delivered the game-winning RBI1 in an exciting, extra-inning World Series game.
That’s what it should been.
The game was shown on NBC and an hour or so later on the network’s Sunday evening news, there was Mays. Yes, they showed him getting the winning hit. But he stumbled out of the box, which they showed. Then they showed him slipping on the base paths and in the outfield, allowing a fly ball to drop.
Willie Mays’ performance somehow morphed from a veteran-comes-through-in-the-clutch into a cautionary tale of a player who stayed in the sport too long.
And that has been the dominant narrative about that game ever since.
When Willie Mays passed away on June 18, the New York Times wrote about how the great player had humbled himself on that October afternoon.
Balderdash! If this seems like maybe it has stuck in my craw for 51 years, it’s only because it has. Enough!
First, does anybody think Willie Mays was so infirm and frail at age 42 that he could not run more than a few steps without falling?
Did anyone see the video of the diving catch on the warning track he made in an old-timers game when he was in his 50s?
Stumble by stumble
The A’s entered Game 2 leading 1-0. They led the game until the sixth when the Mets scored four runs to take a 6-3 lead.
The A’s got one back in the seventh when Reggie Jackson doubled to drive in Bert Campenaris to make it 6-4.
In the top of the ninth, Rusty Staub singled. Staub was the Mets’ best hitter of that era. But he was no burner on the bases and his throwing shoulder was so badly injured that he couldn’t throw overhand. The Mets claimed he had one good throw in that shoulder. (He didn’t, and they knew it.) He would toss the ball in from right field underhanded.
So Mets manager Yogi Berra inserted Mays as a pinch runner, and to help bolster the defense. The move didn’t pay off.
One out later, John Milner singled. Mays wanted to get to third, but his footwork was off-kilter as he was coming into second. He missed the bag, stumbled and went back to second.
“I don’t know how it happened that I missed the bag,” Mays was quoted by United Press International as saying. “I guess it was trying to do two things at the same time — watch the ball and touch the bag.”
The next two batters made outs, so the Mays’ base-running faux pax was something of a moot point.
Berra put Mays in center in the bottom of the ninth. Leadoff hitter Deron Johnson lofted a fly ball to center. Mays lost his footing and fell, then tried to reach out and grab the ball barehanded.
“I didn’t see it. That’s all” Mays told UPI. “The sun was murder out there.”
He wasn’t the only player to have trouble that day. NBC announcer Curt Gowdy said on the highlight film described the conditions as “turning every flyball into an adventure.”
A Willie Mays Moment
Bud Harrelson led off the 12th with a double. That brought pitcher Tug McGraw to the plate in an obvious bunting situation.
A’s third baseman Sal Bando charged in. McGraw said the Mets knew the A’s did that a lot. McGraw popped a bunt right over Bando’s head.
“I adjusted,” McGraw said.
Two outs later, Mays hit a single up the middle and stumble coming out the batter’s box.
A’s second baseman Andrews’ two errors and the Mets scored three more runs.
In the bottom of the 12th inning, Reggie Jackson hit a fly ball to the wall that a younger Mays might have caught. It went for a triple, and Oakland managed to get back one run.
Red got it right
It was not Mays’ finest game. But in the end, he redeemed himself. And sports journalists usually love redemption stories.
Had Cleon Jones, Tommy Agee, or Wayne Garrett had a similar game and come up with a key hit, surely the story would have been about redemption.
Why wasn’t it with Mays? Perhaps because he had been electrifying so often that his awkward moments attracted attention.
The redemption angle didn’t escape everyone, though. Here’s how Red Smith opened his column for the New York Times:
OAKLAND, Calif. — When Willie got the hit, Ray Sadecki and Harry Parker were watching television in the clubhouse of the New York Mets. For a moment, there was silence. Then Sadecki, who had pitched an inning and a third, turned to Parker, who had pitched one inning. “He had to get the hit,” Sadecki said. “This game was invented for Willie Mays a hundred years ago.”
Still, the storyline that won out was Mays as a pathetic figure, the “Say Hey Kid” as “Stayed Too Long Old Man.” The winning hit? It was an afterthought at best.
For years, if you saw a clip of Willie Mays playing outfield in a World Series game it was from that game.
The Catch that Mays made in the 1954 World Series, that kept the game tied and allowed the Giants to win the game and go on sweep of the heavily favored Cleveland Indians?
The great World Series catch I remember seeing throughout the 1970s and 1980s was Ron Swoboda’s diving grab in the 1969 World Series.
I don’t remember seeing a video of Mays’ 1954 catch until maybe the late 1980s or early 1990s.
I read about Mays’ catch, of course. I saw a still picture of it many times.
I think when the Giants made it back to the World Series in 1989 for the first time in 27 years someone from one of the networks dug the footage up. I don't think there’s any video of the 1954 World Series TV broadcast. Someone had to find the clip in Lew Fonseca’s 1954 Series highlight film.
But Mays did stay too long, right?
I think Mays quit at the right time.
In 1971, his age 40 season, Mays led the National League in walks (112) and on-base percentage (4.25) and was fifth in WAR (6.3), he was fourth in on-base and slugging (.907) He had an OPS-plus of 158, meaning he was almost 60% better than the average hitter in the NL that year.
It was one of the greatest age 40 seasons any player has ever had.
The next year, Mays got off to a slow start and in May, the cash-strapped Giants did the unthinkable and traded Mays to the Mets for Charlie Williams and $50,000.
Mays did well with the Mets as a reserve. In 69 games he slashed .267 /.402 /.446. He led the team in OPS-plus with 145. He was still 45% better than the average NL hitter. Mays had no reason to think he was done.
He thought he had at least one good year in him. And he was paid top-dollar in the days before free agency — $165,000 a year — to find out.
In 1973, age caught up with him. He batted .211/.303/.344, and for the first time since he broke into the NL, he had an OPS-plus below 100. In September, he announced he was retiring.
In these cases, I always think of when Magic Johnson came out of retirement.
My late friend Mike Tulumello asked Suns coach and former NBA All-Star Paul Westphal if Magic was risking his legacy by doing so.
“That’s stuff sportswriters care about,” Westphal shot back. “You are not a player so, you don’t understand. Players want to play. As long as they can. If he thinks he can still play, he should play. I think it’s great.”
Mays’ single gave the Mets a lead they never relinquished, so it would be considered the winning run.
You must be a fairly young guy. “The Catch” by Mays in 1954 was shown often on TV in the 1950s, 60s and certainly when he was traded to the Mets in 1972 and prior to and during the 1973 World Series.