Well say hey Willie Mays, what’s in your suitcase fulla wonders
Big city doctor fix me up and make me right
He said poppin’ the devil’s pills will take you straight to hell, boy
The reaper man, he just walked thru the door
He said sonny won’t you step outside so we can settle on your soul.
Willie Mays is not a toker, but he always knows what’s goin’ on.
“One-Armed Steve” Widespread Panic
The oldest-living member of the hallowed Major League Baseball Hall of Fame, William Howard Mays ,Jr., passed away last Tuesday – fittingly enough, smack-dab in the middle of a series of professional games being played at historic Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Ala., to honor the legacy of the Negro Baseball Leagues.
The very same ballpark where a teenaged Say Hey Kid began his memorable and record-setting professional career and that now has a giant image of him, forever looming down upon the action from beyond the centerfield wall.
At times I talk of GOATs in this column, and while I never saw him play in person, #24 certainly deserves a seat at the table. He roamed stadium outfields like a tiger hunting down prey. But instead of gazelles and gnus, Mays stalked baseballs – 7,112 of them – a record number of putouts by an outfielder that still stands today and pairs quite nicely with his 12 Golden Gloves, including the first one ever awarded, and his collection of gaudy offensive stats.
Although Mays peaked before I existed, I was blessed enough to watch Kirby Puckett play live, lots, and consider him to be the best centerfielder of my era. Like Willie, Kirby could do it all.
Minnesotans, despite their intense love of the North Stars and Vikings, scarcely attended any of the regular season Twins games back during the late 1980s (when I called Minneapolis home), and cheap/free tickets abounded. Despite the fact that they won a couple World Series during those times, the Twins never seemed to sell out the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodump. Maybe because it was the worst baseball stadium, ever?
Not only did I get to watch Puckett the fireplug (all 5’7″ 230lbs. of him), hit, run, steal bases and rob homers on the reg but also plenty of other All Stars – Rickey Henderson, Tony Gwynn, Nolan Ryan, Don Mattingly, Wade Boggs and the like – rolled through town, weekly.
And then there was Deion Sanders or Coach Prime, as he goes by now. Fresh outta Florida State, before the NFL and wearing the famed pinstripes of the NY Yankees. Their owner, George Steinbrenner, loved gimmicks, so he snatched up the fleet-footed phenom in the MLB Draft, more outta publicity than any other reason, I believe, and stuck him down in the minor leagues
He did manage to get called up for a quick cup of coffee in the Majors that summer, and one of those games happened to be versus the Twins in the Metrodump, so me and some of my Yankee-fan friends showed up. As usual, hardly anyone was at the ballpark, so we found some prime seats, located a few rows behind the third base dugout and sat there with our feet propped up upon the empty seats in front of us for all nine innings.
Deion was decked out in full regalia – lotsa wristbands, earrings, gold chains and sporting a long and slick hairstyle fulla Geri Curl. Late in the game he struts out to the batters box and hits a laser-like shot over the centerfield hefty bag for his first big league big fly.
What transpired next can only be described as the slowest homerun trot in the history of the sport. I mean, Ray Charles coulda moonwalked the 360 feet quicker than Deion jogged ‘em that night.
As he headed towards third base in what could best be described at this point as a crawl, my friend Michelle stood up and yelled, “Nice one, Primetime,” in her best Brooklyn brogue. Well, he winked and flashed her that million-dollar smile before heading for home plate, and it was obvious that a bright star was born that night. Who knew he’d still be relevant 35 years later?