Baseball great Willie Mays died peacefully Tuesday surrounded by his family in the Bay Area. Mays was beloved by fans for his dazzling play, his exuberant smile and for giving to the game’s next generation. Geoff Bennett takes a look at the Say Hey Kid’s legacy with Howard Bryant of ESPN.
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Geoff Bennett:
Finally tonight, we say goodbye to the Say Hey Kid.
Baseball great Willie Mays died peacefully surrounded by his family on Tuesday afternoon in the Bay Area, where he’s forever remembered as a star of the San Francisco Giants. He was 93 years old. We look back now on his legacy.
New York Giant.
But then, over time, he won them all over, because, even those though those were Hall of Fame players, Willie was the best of all of them.
Geoff Bennett:
Taking the Boys of the Bay to a World Series appearance in 1962 and an MVP season in 1965.
In 1972, Mays went back to where it all began, New York City, to play for the Mets. The aging superstar played less and less, but he helped elevate yet another team to the World Series in 1973, a series they would lose.
But when he retired that same year, he looked back on a storied career and knew he’d left nothing on the field.
Willie Mays:
The game of baseball has been great to me.
Geoff Bennett:
Others after him, even outside the world of sport, acknowledged the path he paved.
BARACK OBAMA, Former President of the United States: It’s because of Giants like Willie that someone like me could even think about running for president.
Former President Barack Obama honored Mays with the 2015 Presidential Medal of Freedom for his indelible mark on American sports and society.
For some more perspective on the legacy of Willie Mays, we’re joined by Howard Bryant, author and senior writer for ESPN.
Howard, thank you for being with us.
Howard Bryant, ESPN:
My pleasure.
Geoff Bennett:
What made Willie Mays the signature player of his day and ultimately the greatest all-around player of all time?
Howard Bryant:
Well, I think the first thing about him is the electricity.
I think it’s an interesting contrast to baseball today, where the game is essentially sold by math and science and numbers and launch angle and exit velocity and statistics. And William Mays was joy. He was electricity. He was emotion.
The people who talk about him with that sort of reverence, when they watched him play, he made you feel something. It was all about the projection of young kids wanting to be like him, the real idolizing of a hero who could do things on the baseball field that everyone wished they could do.
And then he also put up the huge numbers as well. But when you think about Willie Mays as a player, the thing that you think about most isn’t the 660 home runs of the 3,283 hits or any of those things. It’s the movement. It’s the catch. Even in black and white — people turn their turn their backs on things that are black and white these days, but, even then, you watch him run the bases, you watch him move, and that’s a ball player.
That makes you want to go to the ballpark. It brings back all the memories. He was representative of the golden age of New York baseball in the 1950s and baseball in general.
