The first two people I thought about Tuesday when Willie Mays died were my father and Ken Henderson.

My dad started taking me to Giants games in the mid-1960s, trekking across the San Mateo Bridge from our home in Hayward. There were doubleheaders in those days, and rather than sit through 18 innings of baseball with a 7-year-old, we’d usually get there with Game 1 in progress.

One problem. It was about that time that Mays, who seldom took days off, would sit out the the second game in favor of Henderson, a capable pro who played 16 years in the big leagues with his only detriment in my kindergarten mind being that he wasn’t Willie Mays.

Willie Mays. It’s always both. They go together. He wasn’t Willie, because there was McCovey. He wasn’t Mays because, well, he just wasn’t. He was Willie Mays.

If I ever saw Willie Mays in his prime, I don’t remember it, although I do recall him getting low-bridged by the Dodgers’ Don Drysdale more than once in person. Not that Mays ever stared out at the mound or was looking to fight. It’s just the way things were.

My dad claimed to have been at the game at Candlestick Park in 1963 when Juan Marichal and Warren Spahn dueled until Willie Mays won it with a home run in the bottom of the 16th. There were 15,921 people there that night and probably 70,000 that said they were there. I never had the heart to ask whether it was true.

I do remember my dad scoring seats to the 1967 All-Star Game in Anaheim. We had relatives who got us tickets. Wish I still had the stub, because I remember being stunned my dad paid $8 per ticket to sit several rows behind the American League dugout and thinking it was a fortune.

Casey Stengel sat two rows in front of us, and his handlers were shooing fans away. My dad said, ‘C’mon Case, remember the old Oakland Oaks?’ And Stengel, who managed the Oaks in 1946, stopped in his tracks, shook his hand, said, ‘Hell yeah!’ and signed the stub that I lost before I was 11.

Mays, remarkably, didn’t start that game, but he pinch hit for Lou Brock and wound up going 0 for 4 in a game the National League won, 2-1, against the American League in 16 innings. I took all of his outs personally. All-Star Games were serious business then. Roberto Clemente went 0 for 6 in the Southern California twilight. So did Hank Aaron.

A baseball nerd in those days, I read everything I could get my hands on about everyone, but especially Mays. I came to realize I’d never seen him when he was at the height of his powers, and mourned his departure to the New York Mets in 1972 at age 41 in exchange for a reliever named Charlie Williams.

...continued

©2024 MediaNews Group, Inc. Visit at mercurynews.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.