Shut up!” insisted Willie Mays, the baseball legend who died last Tuesday at age 93. “Just shut up!”
It was the summer of 1964, and Mays had convened all of the Black and Latino players on the San Francisco Giants in a hotel room in Pittsburgh. A newspaper column had quoted their manager, Alvin Dark, making racist comments about their intellectual and cultural deficiencies. Some of Mays’ teammates, including star Orlando Cepeda, were threatening to boycott games. They wanted Dark fired.
Mays squashed the uprising. First, he explained, the Giants would probably fire Dark after the season, anyway. Second, if they lost the manager in mid-season, it would harm their chase for the pennant. Finally, if Dark got fired, “every place you go, some son of a bitch with a microphone or a camera or a pad and pencil’ll be asking you why you quit on your manager.
Mays reminded his teammates that earlier that season, when Dark appointed him team captain, the media had accused the manager of deflecting from another controversial interview about his views on race. It had put Mays in an impossible position: he deserved the captaincy based on his status, but critics could say that he got it because he was Black. That sour experience flavored his response to this crisis.
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Made by History
HISTORY
MADE BY HISTORY
How Willie Mays Handled Being a Black Superstar in a Racist Era
7 MINUTE READ
New York Giants Outfielder Willie Mays
March 1955: Willie Mays of the New York Giants.Bettmann Archive/Getty Images
BY ARAM GOUDSOUZIAN / MADE BY HISTORY
JUNE 25, 2024 8:00 AM EDT
“Shut up!” insisted Willie Mays, the baseball legend who died last Tuesday at age 93. “Just shut up!”
It was the summer of 1964, and Mays had convened all of the Black and Latino players on the San Francisco Giants in a hotel room in Pittsburgh. A newspaper column had quoted their manager, Alvin Dark, making racist comments about their intellectual and cultural deficiencies. Some of Mays’ teammates, including star Orlando Cepeda, were threatening to boycott games. They wanted Dark fired.
Mays squashed the uprising. First, he explained, the Giants would probably fire Dark after the season, anyway. Second, if they lost the manager in mid-season, it would harm their chase for the pennant. Finally, if Dark got fired, “every place you go, some son of a bitch with a microphone or a camera or a pad and pencil’ll be asking you why you quit on your manager.”
Mays reminded his teammates that earlier that season, when Dark appointed him team captain, the media had accused the manager of deflecting from another controversial interview about his views on race. It had put Mays in an impossible position: he deserved the captaincy based on his status, but critics could say that he got it because he was Black. That sour experience flavored his response to this crisis.
“Don’t let the rednecks make a hero out of him,” Mays told his teammates.
Read More: Remembering How Willie Mays Inspired
The episode reflected the burdens that he carried. Mays was part of the pioneer generation of Black ballplayers that followed Jackie Robinson into Major League Baseball, although unlike Robinson, he was no crusader. While he tried to sidestep politics, he was a Black athlete in the era of the civil rights movement. He was thrust into racial controversy, whether he liked it or not.
Raised in Jim Crow Alabama, Mays began his career in the Negro Leagues, with the Birmingham Black Barons. When he joined the New York Giants in 1951, baseball fans marveled at how he ran, caught, and threw with power and grace. He soon won Rookie of the Year. In 1954, he was named Most Valuable Player while leading the Giants to a World
