Willie Mays’s philosophy was simple: They throw the ball, I hit the ball

Around nine o’clock in the morning, a tap would come at his window. Outside his house in St Nicholas Place in Harlem milled a group of grinning boys. They carried mop-handles and a pink bouncing ball, all the equipment they needed. The street and the parked cars would provide the rest. What they wanted was to play stickball, and he was only too eager to join them. He’d play for an hour, morning or evening, as his job allowed. Soon he was crouching, swinging the stick, just an ordinary man in a Polo shirt and trousers. But when he made contact he whacked the ball so hard that it went for three or four sewers, or three or four city blocks. Because, after all, he was Willie Mays, then the star of the New York Giants.