Willie Mays-May 9, 2015

I published a version of this article several years ago. It seems an appropriate time to publish it here.

May 9, 2015

Time is the one commodity we should value most, the one resource we should most protect.? In the end, it’s all that we have.

It is May 9, 2015, the day they dedicate Willie Mays Ballpark in Atherton, California.? The ceremony is scheduled for 11:00 a.m.

It’s a typical Bay Area morning.? The sky, which started out gray and gloomy, burst open in a blast of bright blue that now highlights the vast stretch of green that reaches from home plate to the horizon.? It’s warm and cool, a feeling familiar to San Franciscans.? A slight breeze trails in from right field.? It’s a perfect day for a ballgame, if you’re a kid.

I’m standing just in front of home plate, the famous and powerful of this sleepy suburb of Silicon Valley milling around me.? In the center, the center of everyone’s attention, the center of everyone’s field of view, is Willie Mays.? Bent over with the years, he stands silently as fan after fan, acolyte after acolyte steps up to greet him.

Yet, time is the resource we treat with the greatest disdain.? We use it up more quickly, more inevitably, than any other resource.

The images gray and grainy, like some half-forgotten thought, the slender young athlete, his feet a flailing blur, runs deeper, ever deeper into the slate-colored field.

The Polo Grounds has a cavernous depth in center field, the perfect playground for the fastest feet Major League Baseball would ever know.

The athlete seems to run forever.? Faster and faster he speeds, never looking back, never slowing down.

He outruns the glaring black and white of the past.? He outruns the ball and the field and the invisible wind.? He seems to outrun time itself.

For the record, the date is September 29, 1954.? It’s the first game of the 1954 World Series.? The athlete, of course, is Willie Mays.

His eyes to the heavens, his hands lift in a brief second of supplication as the ball falls into his glove.

With the beautiful athleticism of a ballet star, he spins, powerfully pirouetting above the ground, his right arm suddenly, violently beating the air.? The ball explodes from his hand in a nearly invisible blur.? With the velocity of a cannon shot, it blasts back to the infield.

This moment will become legend, living on decades after the Polo Grounds has been gathered to the dust.? It is reborn each time new eyes stare intently at the gray and grainy image.

?There is no such thing as ‘quality’ time.? There is only time.

The date was June 16, 1967.? It was a typical midsummer night in Candlestick Park.? An arctic breeze blew in over the centerfield fence, stinging the eyes and making them water.? From the top row of the upper deck, the field was a distant splotch of green melting into the San Francisco night.? At six years of age, it was to be my only visit to Candlestick, and that only because we had discount tickets, traveling with a church group.

?The San Francisco Giants were hosting the St. Louis Cardinals that evening.? The field was littered with Hall-of-Famers.? Orlando Cepeda.? Lou Brock.? Willie McCovey and Bob Gibson were there, though they didn't play.? Single season home run champ Roger Maris hit third for the St. Louis Cardinals that night.

?But, the center of everyone's attention, the center of everyone's gaze, was Willie Mays.

?When Willie came to bat in the first inning, my dad bummed a pair of binoculars from one of the guys in our party.? He held it up for my brother and me to see.

?"Look down there," he said.? "See that man coming to bat?? I want you to be able to tell your grandkids you got to see Willie Mays play baseball.? I want you to tell them you got to see the greatest ballplayer who ever lived play live."

?But, time is our one truly non-renewable resource.? When we use it up, it’s gone.

?“I don’t think anyone, now, would disagree.? He was the greatest ballplayer of them all.”

?The speaker is Jon Miller, Hall-of-Fame baseball broadcaster.? His is one of a long line of voices praising Willie Mays.

?As the bright sun warms the air in Atherton, the town’s Mayor, the President of the San Francisco Giants, City Council Members, and a line of others stand at the dais just in front of the mound at Willie Mays Ballpark, saying, again and again, that he was the greatest of them all.

?No one ran like Willie Mays.? No one hit like Willie Mays.? No one defended the endless depths of centerfield in the Polo Grounds and Candlestick Park, with anything like the speed and style of Willie Mays.

?They retell the story of that glorious catch in the 1954 World Series.? They tell stories of seeing Willie hit spectacular, miraculous home runs.

?The ceremony runs on for nearly an hour.? No one has enough time to tell all the tales of Mays’ greatness.

?We can’t remake time.

?There would be no miracle home runs on that cold night in June of 1967.? Willie Mays got a lone single in five at bats.

?1967 was the year of the Cardinals.? They scored four runs in the first inning and never looked back.? They would play from ahead all the way through the World Series that season.

?We create time, the chronology, in the stories we tell. But we experience time in bits and pieces, the eternal and eternally fleeting moment.

?Bob Hellman, Sr. and I were taught the same set of values when we were boys.? Taught never to be too forward, never to force our way into a situation.? We stand quietly to the side, also serving who only stand and wait, as the many fans of Willie Mays greet him.

?The ceremony is only minutes away.? Bob’s son, Bob Hellman, Jr., the man who made this day happen, calls his dad over to meet Willie Mays.? I wander over with him, lingering just a few feet away.? Finally, as the two-minute call is made for the start of the ceremony, I step up to Willie Mays.

?I gently take his arm and guide it up to my hand so we can shake hands.? I have to.? Willie Mays, whose vision was so precise he could pick up 660 pitches well enough to turn them into home runs, is, for all intents and purposes, blind.

?He stares quietly down at the ground as I greet him.? I speak loudly and distinctly.? But, it is clear he can barely hear me.

?Like so many before me, I tell Willie of the one time I saw him play live.? I tell him what my father said.? As we finish talking, he asks for a chair.? His voice rasps barely above a hoarse whisper.

?Willie Mays walks the five feet to his chair.? He shuffles slowly, painfully slowly.? His steps tiny and uncertain, it seems to take long minutes for him to reach his seat.

?It’s shocking to see.

?Can this broken shell have once really been the “Say Hey Kid?”

?Can these slow shuffling feet have once so easily covered the endless expanse of centerfield in the Polo Grounds?

?Can these crooked hands reaching uncertainly to a small wooden chair have once wielded the most powerful bat in baseball?

?If time can catch up to Willie Mays, what hope have we mere mortals?

?The breeze from right field suddenly picks up a chill and I find myself uncomfortably close to tears.

?It is painful to see the greatest ballplayer of them all diminished to this.

?It’s not painful because Willie reminds me of a childhood that was long ago lost to time.

?It’s not painful because Willie reminds us all of the passing years.

?It’s painful because it’s Willie Mays.? I can’t explain it any better than that.

?Time

?The ceremony ended, the invocation prayed, the National Anthem sung, a disembodied voice calls out “Play Ball!”? Two-dozen ten-year-old boys run with the exuberance of youth and life onto Homer Field at Willie Mays Ballpark.? And they play ball.