Backroads and Ballplayers #59

Stories of the famous and not-so-famous men and women from the days when baseball was "Arkansas' Game." Always free and always short enough to finish in one cup of coffee.

Willie Mays 5-6-1931 — 6-18-2024

I spent the weekend at our lake house. It is the kind of place a guy who always needs “To be doing something,” goes to do nothing. I accidentally do a lot of thinking about important things at the lake. Is that the same duck I saw yesterday? I may fish for a while this afternoon. No…too hot.

The last few days I thought a lot about Willie Mays. Everything else will be on hold while I try to pay tribute to the greatest baseball player of my generation.

Losing Willie

I met a guy named Willie Mays twice, both times at a baseball card show where he signed autographs for about ten bucks. I don’t count those encounters as “meeting Willie Mays.” Mays loved baseball. He lived for it and he lived in it. He represented the game when he had to, but he was the real “Sey Hey Kid” only at a ballpark.

At those card shows, he was at work. Being Willie Mays for $10 a signature was not fun for him, and it was obvious. If you expected that wide grin and glorious laugh, you would be disappointed.

Perhaps most of the folks in those lines didn’t have their expected experience. Willie was digging a ditch that never seemed to end. He had his head down, the pen in his hand, and he worked as fast as he could. He wanted to be finished, but he had to write “Willie Mays” a thousand times before he could be the real Willie Mays again.

I grew up in the Mays, Mantle, and Aaron generation. We caught a glimpse of Ted Williams and the last few years of Stan Musial. We saw a few games on the TV Game of the Week, where the Yankees usually played, and Diz made us smile. There were baseball magazines on racks with Look, Life, and Post, and a source of all we wanted to know called the Sporting News landed in our mailboxes each week.

Those baseball-themed publications would sometimes feel obligated to have a photo of Mays and Mantle on the cover with a headline that read, “Who is Better Mantle or Mays.” Of course, I already knew it was Mantle until high school when I had to work hard to avoid the obvious conclusion that it was really Mays.

The Legacy of Willie Mays

Willie Mays had some impressive numbers. He is the only player in baseball history with more than 300 home runs, 300 stolen bases, 3,000 hits, and a lifetime .300 batting average.

From 1954—1966, he won two MVP awards (‘53 and ‘65). He was in the top 10 in the voting 13 of the other years. He was selected for 24 (of course) All-Star Games. He ranks among the lifetime leaders in almost every statistical category, but those numbers do not tell the Willie Mays story.

My first thoughts of Willie Mays are not numbers, but images. He did not do any one thing better than anyone in baseball history. He was not the best hitter, not the best baserunner, nor the best defensive player, but he was among the best in all those things and perhaps the most exciting player to ever play the game…AND he made the catch!

The date was Sept. 29, 1954, Game One of the World Series. It was the eighth inning at the Polo Grounds, an antique of a ballpark on Coogan’s Bluff. The game was tied 2—2 when Vic Wertz came to bat with Larry Doby at second base. Wertz who was three-for-three at that point in the game launched a towering drive to the no-mans-land in deep center field.

Mays turned and ran toward the deepest part of the ballpark. He glanced over his right shoulder before reaching above his head on his glove side and cradling the ball like an egg falling into his hand. “The Throw,” followed with a spin move to his left and an unbelievable throw that stopped Doby at third. Doby failed to score, and a fellow named Dusty Rhodes won the game for the Giants with a walk-off homer in the 10th inning.

At some point, sitting on the deck at our lake house, I realized the things that set Mays apart were those images. I decided to share some of my favorites.

Images of the “Say Hay Kid.”

“Willie Mays going after a fly ball was cotton candy and a carousel and fireworks and a big band playing all at once. His athletic genius was in how every moment expressed sheer delight. When you watched Mays play center field, you smiled.”

—Joe Posnanski The Baseball 100

Greatest Living Player

Perhaps there is no greater tribute to Willie Mays than the now revived discussion of “who is baseball’s greatest living player.” Over coffee last week, my drinking buddy and I decided that no one would rise to that level in the current candidates. Does the position go unfilled? I wanted it to be Greg Maddux, but he spent so much of his career posting “high-average” numbers, that I couldn’t make it work.

Based on numbers alone, Barry Bonds is a possibility, as is A-Rod, and Roger Clemens. Any suggestion that one of these guys would ascend to that position would not be widely popular.

Bill James has tried to take the fun out of many baseball arguments by applying not-so-simple math to historic player rankings. By the way, I like James’ work, and there are plenty of his ideas out there.

The favorite of these all-time player rankings seems to be Career WAR. (Wins Above Replacement) Explained here if you are brave enough to want to see the math: Link

All-Time Career WAR Leaders among Living Players:

Barry Bonds          182.6
Roger Clemens      139.2
Alex Rodriguez     117.6
Rickey Henderson 111.1
Mike Schmidt        106.9
Greg Maddux        106.6
Albert Pujols         101.4
Randy Johnson      101.1
Carl Yastrzemski      96.5
Cal Ripken               95.9

The math doesn’t lie, right? Okay, for those of you thinking “What about Shohei Ohtani?

He is 573rd, just ahead of Paul ONeil.

Want to pick one? Please share.

Lost Story: Willie Visits Arkansas in 1955

In 1954, after playing just 34 games in the two previous seasons due to military service, Willie Mays was the best player in baseball. He led the league in batting average and triples. Mays hit 41 home runs, drove in 110, and had there been an OPS he would have had the best mark in the big leagues.

According to BaseballReference.com, the Giants doubled his salary to $25,000 for 1955. While that salary seems like per diem money today, combined with $11,000+ for his World Series share, Mays probably thought he was doing okay.

When the 1955 season ended without the extra World Series check, Mays joined a collection of Black major leaguers barnstorming around the country playing an accompanying team of Negro League All-Stars. He was in good company. Also on the traveling big-leaguers team were Hank Aaron, Monte Irvin, Ernie Banks, Don Newcomb, and Jim Gilliam.

October 10, found the traveling all-stars in Little Rock, Arkansas, at what was then called Travelers Field. (Later Ray Winder) Attendance was estimated as somewhere between 2,500 and 3,000. Admission seemed to average somewhere around a dollar.

My friend Joe Whitehead was there. He saw Mays homer in his first at-bat, and although he witnessed Hank Aaron going four for four, his teen-age focus was on Jim Gilliam smoking a cigarette while playing second base. Apparently, the major leaguers prevailed 11—5.

My friends Caleb Hartwick and Jim Rasco helped me verify that the teams played in Pine Bluff four days later to a much smaller crowd. According to witnesses, Mays made a spectacular over-the-shoulder catch in the Pine Bluff game. Really?

There is sufficient evidence that as autumn moved into questionable weather in the South the traveling barnstormers moved toward Arizona and California. Attendance improved, but in November, the PCL was still playing their regular season schedule. The entire project puzzles me. How could a party of 25 or so divide a $2000 gate? Where did they spend the night? How did they travel, pay umpires, rent ballparks, and eat?

The next fall, my friend Dr. Billy Higgins saw a similar team, including Mays, play in Fort Smith, Arkansas. Was barnstorming a money-making idea or was it part of the Negro League culture?

Perhaps the former Negro Leaguers who had found a spot in major league baseball used barnstorming to provide opportunities for men of color to play after the Negro Leagues began to cease operations?

More on the game played in Little Rock in 1955. Link to Backroads and Ballplayers #46.

Lost Story: Carl Boles, not Willie

Center Point, Arkansas, is the birthplace of a major leaguer. Carl Theodore Boles was born there on October 31, 1934. Boles lived on the family farm in the small Howard County community until his early teens when his father moved the family to Kansas City looking for work.

As a teen, Boles became a high school sports star at R. T. Coles High School. He gave college football a brief trial before baseball scouts spotted him in the Ban Johnson baseball league.

Boles signed with the New York Giants in 1954 and took the scenic route through the Giants’ minor league organization before an excellent year at Class AA El Paso caught the attention of San Francisco’s major league decision-makers. On August 2, 1962, Carl Boles became the 160th Arkansas-born major leaguer.

The 1962 San Francisco Giants attracted a lot of attention as they fought their California rivals the Los Angeles Dodgers for a pennant that was undecided until a three-game playoff settled the issue.

When the Giants returned home after winning the last game in LA, the crowd swarmed reserve outfielder Carl Boles when the team’s plane landed in San Francisco. Boles had hit .375 after being promoted to the Giants in August, but the attention was not because they thought Boles was the next Willie Mays, but because they thought he WAS Willie Mays.

Carl Boles played in 19 games for the Giants. He had hit .337 at El Paso before the call-up. He was 27 years old, a good outfielder, with speed and power. He was definitely in the Giants’ long-range plans, but those 19 games would be Carl Boles’ entire major league career.

Boles was about Mays’ size and build and on road trips teammates made sure he was one of the first players off the team bus. Fans rushed to Boles with pen in hand, while the real Willie Mays walked by unnoticed.

In an interview with Sports Radio Service, Boles recalled, “I’m signing more autographs than the veterans. The only thing is, after I sign my name they get mad at me. Even newspaper reporters come up to me and start to interview me. They’ll say ‘Willie, about that hit…’ And when I say ‘I’m not Willie, some of them get mad.”

When Mays was released from a short hospital stay in early September the nationally distributed wire service photo of Mays’ return to the Giants was actually Carl Boles.

Although it looked like Boles was headed back to the big club in 1963, a broken ankle cost him the entire 1963 season and the Giants looked elsewhere. By 1966, Boles had found a spot in the outfield of the Kintetsu Buffaloes in the Japan Pacific League. Boles became a star in Japan where he hit 117 home runs over a six-year career.

Called upon in 2012 for a series of interviews with former teammates of Willie Mays, Boles recalled his two months in San Francisco, “You talk to Willie Mays for 5 minutes and I guarantee you he’ll bring up something you’ve never thought of about the game.”

Carl Boles passed away in 2022. He is buried in Center Point, Arkansas.

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