Everyone else called it “The Catch,” because nobody could believe anyone could’ve tracked that ball down. Willie Mays knew different. He’d made that catch plenty, on the sandlots of Alabama, in Birmingham of the Negro Leagues, in Minneapolis at Triple-A. That’s what Mays would tell you whenever you asked about “The Catch.”
“I call it The Throw,” he told me one day, years ago, as he would tell anyone who brought it up. “It was the throw that saved a run. It was the throw that I’m not sure a lot of people could have made.”
In a baseball lifetime defined by the splendid and the spectacular, this was the moment that allowed the world to marvel at the unique talent Willie Mays brought to a baseball diamond, and allows it still. This is the way you can understand Willie Mays — who died Tuesday at age 93 of heart failure — no matter if you were born in 1927 or 1967 or 2007.
“The Catch” is forever. And of course, in Willie’s beautiful baseball mind, it was only the preliminary.
This was late in the afternoon of Sept. 29, 1954, Game 1 of the World Series at the Polo Grounds, the wonderful old ramshackle yard tucked between Eighth Avenue, 159th Street and the Harlem River Drive. Coogan’s Bluff. It was the eighth inning of a 2-2 game, Cleveland had two runners on and one out against Don Liddle.
Up stepped Vic Wertz, the Cleveland slugger who would collect four hits that day. And now he launched one high and deep toward the deepest part of center field. Mays turned and sprinted. His cap, which often flew off his head, remarkably stayed put; his number, 24, was visible for all to see.
Standing on second base, Larry Doby could hardly believe that Mays was going to run under the ball, but in case that happened, he figured he might be able to tag and dash home from second if he caught it. Mays knew that, of course. And so when the ball improbably, impossibly, plopped into his glove, he somehow stopped on a dime and, as the cap finally fell from his head, he wheeled and made a perfect throw to second.
Doby only made it to third. He never did score, and so Dusty Rhodes would be able to win the game in the 10th off Bob Lemon.
“Willie Mays could beat you in more ways than any ballplayer who ever lived,” said Leo Durocher, who was the Giants’ manager that day, and who’d been teammates with Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, among many others, as a player. “There wasn’t a thing he couldn’t do on a ballfield. He was a joy to manage.”
It was Durocher who helped fuel the legend. Mays went hitless in his first 12 at-bats in the major leagues in 1951, and was weeping on a stool in the Giants’ clubhouse.
“I don’t belong here,” Mays said. “I can’t play here. I can’t help you, Mr. Leo.”
To which Durocher replied: “You’re the best center fielder I’ve ever seen. As long as I’m here, you’re going to play center field. Tomorrow, next week, next month. As long as Leo Durocher is manager of this team you will be on this club because you’re the best ballplayer I have ever seen.”
The next day, in his 13th at-bat, Mays hit a home run against Warren Spahn. By October he helped fuel the Giants’ miracle comeback against the Dodgers, and was standing on deck when Bobby Thomson hit the “Shot Heard Round the World.” By then, he was already a fixture in his Harlem neighborhood, playing stickball with kids after coming home from work.
And by ’54, after losing two seasons to the Army, Mays fully emerged as what he would be across the next 19 years, stretching all the way to one more World Series, as a ’73 Met, winning Game 2 with the final hit in his final at-bat. That ’54 season he hit .345 with 41 homers, 110 RBIs and 13 triples. The next year he was even better: 51 homers, 127 RBIs.
And then … he was gone, shipped to California, his talents hidden on the West Coast. His visits back east would invariably fill Shea Stadium. And when he was traded back home, in May 1972, he celebrated the news in the only way he knew how: hitting a game-winning home run.
A year later, with much of the magic stripped from his legs, he famously whispered into a microphone at Shea: “Willie, say good-bye to America.” In retirement, in repose, few baseball players made other baseball players blush and stammer. They’d all seen “The Catch.” They’d all heard about The Throw. They knew well The Legend.
Willie never really said goodbye to America until his great heart finally stopped beating Tuesday. And as long as we can still see him running after Vic Wertz’s blast, as long as that’s just a few clicks on a smart phone away, we’ll never have to. Some things really are forever.
