Willie Mays is widely considered to be the greatest baseball player of all time. The 'Say Hey Kid' had incomparable skills and an infectious smile. He dazzled on the field and off.
Willie Mays is widely considered the best baseball player in history. His speed, his hitting and overall understanding of the game. He's shown here at the 2004 Baseball Hall of Fame induction ceremonies in Cooperstown, N.Y.
Fans are already remembering the incomparable skill and infectious joy the player nicknamed"The Say Hey Kid" brought to ballparks across the country.Somehow, the name Willie Mays never was enough. Talk to those who watched him play...those who heard about what he did...and it was alwaysWhat he did, as a ballplayer, was everything. In the trade, the best all-around players are called five-tool players. Mays mastered all five.Number one – Hitting.
He made the catch over his head. Legendary announcer Jack Brickhouse called the action, saying the catch"must've been an optical illusion to a lot of people.", he explained there was no magic involved. Just practical thinking the moment Wertz hit the ball. "Tom Seaver played in the majors for about 20 years," Hirsch said, adding,"The only player who ever approached him was Willie Mays. Willie understood the game in a way that no one else did. He was smarter than anyone else. He studied the game. He tried to understand all the nuances in an era before we had computerized fan graphs that told you where every hitter hit the ball, depending on what pitch was thrown.
He grinned and laughed. He caught fly balls with his glove at his waist – the famed basket catch. When he ran, his baseball cap came off. By design. "He was told by his elders that if you want to survive in a white man's world, you had to keep your head down and your mouth shut," says Hirsch."And he kept those words to heart his entire life."Jackie Robinson, who broke Major League Baseball's color barrier in 1947, criticized Mays for being a prominent black athlete during the volatile 1960s who didn't use his platform to speak out publicly on civil rights.
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