Say Hey

Willie Mays. He helped destroy my dreams in the 1954 World Series when he ran down that drive by Vic Wertz in the Polo Grounds. Cleveland was my team. My mother was born in Lorraine, Ohio. Of course, there were more villains than Willie. Dusty Rhodes got clutch hit after clutch hit. But Willie’s catch was what little boys dreamed of, and it was why when we moved to Houston in 1963, I had to get out to Colt Stadium when the Giants came to town. I needed to see Willie, live. And I did.

Now Willie is gone along with so many of his contemporaries, and that’s sad. But that’s life and that’s baseball, and at least I got to see him play. And it occurs to me that I never knew baseball as anything other than an integrated sport. So, even though Willie was a pioneer, to me he was just a player. And that’s probably as it should be. But I guess it’s also why later on I found segregation to be so inexplicable. I never could figure out why it might have been a bad thing to have guys like Willie Mays playing the game. It made no sense.

But he did it, and he helped pave the way for others, and eventually Willie received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from the first black man to be president. And that seems a nice step up and away from the days when an entire section of the country went to war for the right to own black people and have them work in their fields. Progress. Significant progress. The sort of progress that made it possible for a young boy to see a man catch a ball like it had never been caught before and all he could see was the catch and the man who made it and barely think twice as to what color he was. So, say hey Willie!

Part 28, Living in America: An Old Man’s Journey into His Past