The Legend of Willie, Mickey & the Duke

By Howard Burman

During the 1950s, they played centerfield in New York ballparks only a few miles apart. The comparisons were inevitable. From Brooklyn soda fountains to Queens street corners to Manhattan boardrooms, the argument raged: who was the greatest—Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, or Duke Snider?

The trajectories of their lives were similar. They were born into the game and taught by their baseball-playing fathers at an early age. All three dreamed of baseball greatness—dreams that came at a cost. When they signed to play professional baseball, they were each hyped to become the greatest players in the game. The pressure to live up to these expectations took a heavy toll on them.

The story of Willie, Mickey & the Duke is the story of three superb athletes who became baseball legends--what it did for them and what it did to them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 7, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669854357

Howard Burman

Barbara Zajak hasn’t been in a casino in three years. She is a housewife and mother of two daughters. She lives in a Detroit suburb with her husband, John. Howard Burman has more than twenty full-length produced plays to his credit and five previously published novels. He earned a Ph.D. in dramatic literature from The Ohio State University and is a Fulbright Scholar. He lives in Felton, California and Leissigen, Switzerland.

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Copyright © 2022 by Howard Burman.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 11/03/2022

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CONTENTS

Author’s Note

Preface

Introduction

ARCADIA

Chapter 1     Baseball Dreams

Chapter 2     Family Matters

Chapter 3     A Dream Deferred

Chapter 4     Three-Sport Stars

Chapter 5     Organized Ball

Chapter 6     The Major Leagues Come Calling

Chapter 7     First Steps

UTOPIA

Chapter 8     The Hype

Chapter 9     Struggles

Chapter 10   The Army Wants You, Willie, but Not You, Mickey

Chapter 11   On Their Way

Chapter 12   Deaths in the Families

Chapter 13   Dodgers, Yankees Flourish; Giants Struggle

Chapter 14   Willie’s Back

Chapter 15   Of Love and Marriage

Chapter 16   This Was Next Year

Chapter 17   Off Days2

Chapter 18   No Doubts

Chapter 19   Brickbats and Orchids

Chapter 20   Lifestyles

Chapter 21   Fame: A Dangerous Drug

Chapter 22   Media Darlings

Chapter 23   California, Here We Come

Chapter 24   First Seasons in California

Chapter 25   Racism

Chapter 26   The New Decade

Chapter 27   Duke Nears the End

Chapter 28   Bandages and Whirlpools

Chapter 29   The Copa Fight

Chapter 30   Knowing When to Quit

VALHALLA

Chapter 31   Now What?

Chapter 32   Hall of Fame

Chapter 33   Tax Cheats

Chapter 34   Red Juice and Greenies

Chapter 35   Booze

Chapter 36   Banned

Chapter 37   The Men They Were

Chapter 38   On Each Other

Chapter 39   The Duke is Gone

Chapter 40   The Tragic Hero

Chapter 41   Willie Now

Chapter 42   Wobbles and Deceptions

Chapter 43   The Joke

Author’s Note

This book is a work of faction, a portmanteau of fact and fiction.

Many words have been written by and about Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, and Duke Snider. Wherever possible, I have used those words, which have been carefully attributed to their sources. But in some cases, I have created dialogue or scenes that are consistent with what we know to be factual. These dramatizations do not come at the expense of the truth.

For example, in his autobiography, Snider wrote of the day at spring training when he realized his career was almost over: I was left behind when the Dodgers played games in other parts of Florida. My factionalized account might have read:

Duke is in his room at the Dodgers’ spring training facility, Dodgertown, in Vero Beach, Florida. He has finished shaving and is gathering his gear to go out to the field when, at 8:30, the phone rings. It’s Buzzie Bavasi.

Duke, I need you to head over to the minor league field.

Aren’t we playing the Mets over at St. Pete? Duke asks, surprise evident in his voice.

I’d like you to stay behind. Get some at-bats with Spokane. The game starts at 9, so you’ll need to hustle.

I don’t understand.

We won’t need you today against the Mets. Better to get some work done on the minor league field.

Message sent. Message received.

I haven’t made up stories about Willie, Mickey, and Duke. I have taken the stories that have been reported either by the men themselves or by others—reporters, columnists, biographers, family, teammates, friends, fans—and set them in dramatic scenes, much like one would encounter in a film or a novel.

Consider these factionalized accounts as springboards for the imagination.

Preface

Remember, kid, there’s heroes and there’s legends. Heroes get remembered, but legends never die.

—David Evans, The Sandlot

Tears roll off Willie’s cheeks. Members of the audience shoot quizzical looks at tablemates and friends in the crowd. They never expected to see Willie like this. Not with so much meaning, so much passion. So emotional. Throughout the room, napkins and handkerchiefs dab at the corners of moist eyes. Servers and busboys stand in rapt silence.

The hushed ballroom is packed. Hardly surprising. Willie, Mickey, and the Duke are being honored here this night. What baseball fan wouldn’t want to see such baseball royalty all in one place?

It is the first time they have appeared together in public since the 1956 All-Star Game, when Mickey started for the American League and homered off Warren Spahn. Willie and Duke were reserves for the National League.

Twenty-two years later, they assemble at the New York Sheraton Hotel, where the Baseball Writers Association of America is announcing its new award—The Willie, Mickey, and the Duke Award.

Willie pauses for a moment to compose himself. People ask me all the time how I want to be remembered, he says. Most of the time, I say what they want to hear: That winning two MVP Awards was great—but I know there’s a new MVP Award every year. Hitting 660 home runs was great—but someday, somebody will hit more. But this, this award, this is a special way to be remembered. It means the three of us will always be here together, forever, even after we’re gone. I’ve seen awards named for others like Hank and Roberto, but I never thought one would be named for me. I have always doubted that I was ever really loved.

Many in the room are stunned. Did Willie really think we didn’t love him? Our Willie? That can’t possibly be. Here he is, this beloved living legend, questioning his place in the baseball pantheon. Say it ain’t so, Willie.

Mickey is next to take the podium. I always swore that following Maris in the batting order was the toughest thing I ever had to do in baseball, he says, looking at Willie. Until just now. I can’t count the endless number of times I’ve been asked who was the best when all three of us played center field in the same city and owned center stage in Series after Series.

He puts his hand on Willie’s shoulder and says, You were the best, Willie.

A tear rolls down Willie’s cheek.

Mickey turns to Duke. I don’t mind being tied for second with you.

Duke smiles.

Do you agree? Duke? someone calls from the audience. Who do you think was the best?

Joe DiMaggio, he deadpans.

To conclude the ceremony, Terry Cashman, former minor league player in the Detroit Tigers system but now known as the Baseball Balladeer, sings his song Talking Baseball with its popular refrain:

They knew ’em all from Boston to Dubuque.

Especially Willie, Mickey, and the Duke.

Those were the days.

This is the last time the three great center fielders will appear together. Before the year is out, Mickey will die after liver replacement surgery.

Introduction

And history becomes legend, and legend becomes history.

—Jean Cocteau

Their names are intrinsically linked. Willie, Mickey, and the Duke go together like baseball, peanuts, and hot dogs. Think of one, think of all three.

Three men, one game, one position, one city. Three of the greatest center fielders ever playing for three different teams within a few miles of each other.

Position by position, comparisons were a regular part of the New York baseball fandom in the 1950s when baseball was still king of American sports. One of the accepted axioms of baseball is that for a team to be good, it must have strength up the middle—catcher, second, short, center field. The three New York teams of the ’50s all did. In Brooklyn, it was Campanella, Reese, Robinson, and Snider. The Yankees had Berra, Rizzuto, Martin, and Mantle. For the Giants, Westrum, Dark, several second basemen, and Mays manned those positions. Mays, Mantle, Snider, Reese, Rizzuto, Campanella, and Berra are all in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Center field has always been a pivotal position. The quarterback of the outfield. The man who catches anything he can reach. He had to have a strong, accurate arm and fleet feet. If he could hit with power, so much the better. Willie, Mickey, and Duke could run, throw, and hit with power.

Always peers, never close friends, they were acutely aware of the constant comparisons in the press and among fans. Who was the best center fielder: Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, or Duke Snider? And not just who was the best center fielder in New York, but who was the best center fielder in the world? An argument could be made for each.

Good, great, greater, greatest. The debate was endless. Other good center fielders were at their peak in the ’50s—among them, Larry Doby, Gus Bell, Richie Ashburn, and Jimmy Piersall. But none reached the levels of Willie, Mickey, and the Duke, who reigned supreme throughout the decade and into the ’60s.

In earlier years, Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker, and Joe DiMaggio would rank among the best at that position, but they didn’t play during the same years. Cobb and Speaker were contemporaries. Cobb was recognized as the best player of his era. Some claim Speaker was the best defensive center fielder—ever.

Any assessment of who the greatest center fielders of all time are is a matter of observational and data-driven speculation. There is no right answer. However, it would be difficult to say that Mays, Mantle, and Snider aren’t all in the top ten, along with Cobb, Speaker, and DiMaggio from earlier years and Ken Griffey Jr. and Mike Trout in the years since. The order can be debated, but their inclusion can’t.

Writing in the 1980s, baseball historian Bill James, in his ranking of center fielders, distinguishes the players in terms of peak value (their best years) and their total career value. He considers peak performance as the statistics a player puts up in his best four or five seasons, but not necessarily consecutive seasons. He evaluates career performance by considering how a player performed throughout his career, looking at his accumulated statistical performance. James ranks Mantle as the greatest center fielder in terms of peak value, followed by Mays, DiMaggio, Cobb, Speaker, and Snider. In terms of total career value, he ranks Cobb first, followed by Mays, DiMaggio, Speaker, Mantle, and Snider. Other lists change the order, but Willie, Mickey, and Duke—three men whose extraordinary lives emerged from ordinary beginnings—are invariably on them.

All three were tutored by baseball-playing fathers with big ambitions. Each experienced the pressure of high expectations. Each initially failed to meet those expectations. Each went on to forge Hall of Fame careers. Each combined greatness with vulnerability.

Myth and the urge to heroize seem profoundly a part of our nature.

Unlike almost any other endeavor, it is obvious to observers that they cannot do what the athlete does. They’re heroes in the iconic, hyper-competent, superhuman sense.

The hero-making impulse is strong in this country, and in a sense, baseball, same as other sports, exists to create heroes. Baseball is where heroes become legends.

In a nation too young to generate truly mythical figures, Americans have been forced to press actual, rounded people into service, and to grant these special folks a dual status as human and legend, writes Stephen Jay Gould, paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and unabashed baseball fan. When our sports heroes, such as Willie, Mickey, and the Duke, exemplify the essential myths of our culture, their conversion to allegory and folklore is assured.

The athlete as hero is one product of this hero-making impulse.

Baseball might be seen as a crucial source of myth in a nearly mythless country. When fans think about baseball, their first reflections are not likely to be on the perfect balance between offense and defense, the idyllic space that is a baseball field, or the timelessness of the game. Rather, they will recall the over-the-shoulder catch by Willie, a monstrous home run off the bat of Mickey, or Duke climbing the wall in Ebbets Field to snatch a would-be double from a disbelieving batter. Fans think about the players they love and admire. They think about the accomplishments of their heroes. More fascinating than the game itself are the players. Know the players, know the game.

Mark Twain wrote, Our heroes are men who do things which we recognize, with regret and sometimes with a secret shame, that we cannot do. We find not much in ourselves to admire; we are always privately wanting to be like somebody else. If everybody was satisfied with himself, there would be no heroes.

Some ballplayers become so good they are thought of as heroes. A few—very few—heroes become legends. Legends become immortal. People remember them long after they are gone. People remember them as they choose to remember them. Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, and Duke Snider are baseball heroes. But more than that, they are, to varying degrees, baseball legends. They have achieved a level of immortality.

A legend leaves behind an unforgettable impression on others. They touch lives, and they’re cherished because of it. They’re remembered. They’re larger than life—created, not born.

Millions of young men have aspired to professional baseball careers. Few achieve it. Even fewer become baseball legends. No one can accurately explain the mysterious alchemy that makes one man a .300 hitter and another with similar physical attributes a .150 hitter—but there are conditions shared by most of the greats:

1. Natural ability. Without it, no amount of training, intestinal fortitude, or intentionality can turn someone without it into a superior athlete. You’re either born with it or not.

In most athletic situations, the faster athlete is likely to be the more dominant athlete.

Part of being athletic is being strong, but the strength must be functional—strong in a way that is beneficial to the requirements of a particular sport.

The best athletes have full-body strength that allows them to move with precise control in multiple planes at various angles and different speeds. They have flexibility, range of motion, agility, and the ability to change velocity and direction. They can also recover adequately from a variety of stimuli.

But there are additional skills commensurate with baseball—hitting, throwing, and catching. Hitting takes timing, eye-hand coordination, and confidence. Fielding takes anticipation, coordination, and often, speed. Throwing takes arm strength and balance.

2. Mentors. Parents, teachers, coaches, and other players can all mentor aspiring athletes. The techniques and strategies necessary for baseball success need to be taught by those who understand the fundamentals of the game. A certain amount can come from observation, but proper instruction is invariably needed.

Willie, Mickey, and Duke were born to baseball-playing fathers who dreamed of better lives for their sons and led—perhaps pushed—them to succeed in baseball. These dads steered their sons to become the legends they did. Had any of the three been born into different circumstances or to fathers with no interest in athletics, it is unlikely they would have become famous geneticists, brain surgeons, astrophysicists, or astronauts. Most likely, they would have worked in a mill, mine, or factory.

3. Opportunity. Because baseball is a team game, an aspiring young athlete, no matter how naturally gifted, must be in a situation to play in the games, formally or informally. To succeed at the highest levels, he must be observed by those in positions to open the doors to professional ball.

4. Motivation. Without the drive, the impulse, the incentive to be great, greatness is impossible.

5. Discipline. Major league clubhouses are filled with players with exceptional athletic ability, save one—discipline. There are probably more young men with exceptional ability who don’t make it to the major leagues than those who do because they lack discipline.

6. Ego. The player’s sense of self-esteem or self-importance is essential. It defines who they are and how they connect with others. They have to have an ego that says, I’m really good at baseball—better than most.

Mays, Mantle, and Snider checked all the boxes for baseball stardom.

A star is not something that flashes through the sky, wrote sports columnist Jim Murray. That’s a comet. Or a meteor. A star is something you can steer ships by. It stays in place and gives off a steady glow; it is fixed, permanent. A star works at being a star. And that is how you tell a star in baseball. He shows up night after night and takes pride in how brightly he shines. Stars don’t take themselves for granted.

There is no such thing as instant immortality in baseball. Enshrinement in the Baseball Hall of Fame must be earned game after game, season after season…and for many years.

Among true baseball fans, no real argument is ever settled. Every dispute, disagreement, and contrary opinion goes into extra innings, none more so than who the best player was: Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, or Duke Snider.

There is no correct answer to that question. There is, however, a correct answer to the question, Who were the greatest center fielders in baseball in the 1950s? The answer is Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, and Duke Snider, the most celebrated non-teammate trio in the game’s history.

For seven seasons, these athletes patrolled center field for the three New York teams—Willie for the Giants, Mickey for the Yankees, Duke for the Dodgers.

Every baseball fan in New York had to pick sides. They couldn’t like Willie and sort of like Duke or like Mickey and sort of like Willie. Dodgers fans would never admit that Willie might have been a more graceful fielder. No Giants fan would admit Mickey might have been a more powerful hitter. There were no grey tones in the debate, no maybes, ifs, or possiblys.

Mickey was clearly better.

No, Willie was easily the best.

Neither one could match Duke.

A Dodgers fan might not even want to be friends on the playground with a lousy Giants fan. And stuck-up Yankees fans were even worse. Ugh.

Many fans engaged in the Willie–Mickey–Duke debate with more fervor than they did the capitalism–communism debate that dominated the era. It was more real to them. And more important.

About the inter-borough rivalry, celebrated author Donald Honig wrote, Rooting for—or against—a particular team was almost a revelation of character and philosophy… There were life-long loyalties, inherited as names and blood were inherited, part of one’s identity, part of one’s neighborhood. There could be shifts of political allegiance, even religious conversion, but who ever heard of a Dodgers fan switching to the Giants?

In his book, The Sports Immortals: Deifying the American Athlete, Peter Williams claims that the trip taken by the baseball hero is no different from that of any other mythic figure. He begins naively in an arcadian setting, develops his skills in his utopian world, and finally, through those skills, is received into Valhalla.

Mays, Mantle, and Snider are good illustrations of these archetypal stages along the baseball hero’s mythic journey. They begin in their simple, everyday worlds—the arcadias of Westfield, Alabama; Commerce, Oklahoma; and Compton, California, as kids who play on alkali flats, empty lots, and rocky fields. They are still as green as they come when they travel alone and apprehensive to New York City, where they get their first looks at their visions of utopia—Yankee Stadium, the Polo Grounds, and Ebbets Field. After playing their first seasons as teenagers, they learn and grow in skills and status. They leave Utopia in their late 30s or early 40s, eventually entering Valhalla, aka Cooperstown. Everyone enshrined in Cooperstown is a great player. A few are more than that: They are baseball legends. Willie, Mickey, and the Duke are such legends.

ARCADIA

When a poor American boy dreamed of escaping his grim life, his fantasy probably involved becoming a professional baseball player. It was not so much the national sport as the binding national myth.

—David Halberstam

Chapter 1

Baseball Dreams

The alkali fields in Northeast Oklahoma.

An empty lot in the shadow of a steel mill in Alabama.

A backyard in Southern California.

Three young boys are playing catch with their fathers—Cat, Mutt, and Ward. The sons are Willie, Mickey, and Edwin, known to all as Duke.

Cat has a dream: Train Willie to be a professional baseball player so he won’t have to work in the mills.

Mutt has a dream: Help Mickey become a professional baseball player so he won’t have to work in the mines.

Ward has a dream: Teach Duke everything he knows about baseball so Duke won’t have to work in the factories.

Nothing unusual here. Thousands of other boys are doing the same thing. In backyards and open fields, on school grounds, on city streets and ballfields, fathers throw balls to their sons, hoping maybe, just maybe, the son will show the ability to play the game seriously. Despite the hopes, despite the wishes and dreams, seldom does reality match the desire. But sometimes it does.

Millions of young boys have played catch with their fathers, dreaming they might someday play in the major leagues. Most give up that hope at an early age. Some are good enough to play organized youth ball. The better ones play in high school, perhaps in college. The best of those might get signed to play professional ball and start their careers in the minors. The best players in the minors will play in the majors. Of the players in the majors, a few will go on to become star players. Close to 20,000 men have played major league baseball since the founding of the National Association in 1871. Of them, about 300 are in the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Of those so honored, only a few are considered among the greatest to have ever played—the best of the best. It’s a long journey, but their names are known to many far outside the baseball world—Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, Jackie Robinson, and Cy Young, among others. They are baseball legends, men who have left behind unforgettable impressions on others.

Willie, Mickey, and Duke look no different from most of the other boys going through similar rituals with their fathers. But there is a difference.

Combined, they will play in 7,536 major league games, accumulate 30,644 plate appearances, hit 1,603 home runs, amass 4,745 RBIs, make 44 All-Star Game appearances, and win 13 Gold Gloves, two batting titles, and five MVP Awards. All three will be elected to the Hall of Fame.

Their fathers grew up during the Great Depression, and all three played baseball. Cat Mays played for a steel mill team in Birmingham, Alabama; Mutt Mantle for a zinc and lead mine company in Commerce, Oklahoma; and Ward Snider for teams near the shipyards and tire factories in Southern California.

Had they been able, they would have played professional ball. Because they weren’t, they did what they could to give their sons the chance. Their dreams can become their sons’ dreams.

But what if their boys don’t want what their fathers want for them? What then? When that thought arises, they quickly push it aside. Of course their boys would want to become professional ballplayers. What kid wouldn’t? Who wouldn’t rather play baseball than work in a factory or a mine? The question is absurd.

Willie, Mickey, and Duke will have many teachers, inspirational mentors, advice-givers. They will learn from friends, managers, and coaches. They will watch and play with the best players. But, without a doubt, hands down, the biggest influences on each of their lives are their fathers. It is they, more than anyone else, who will encourage their sons to learn the fundamentals of the game and believe in themselves.

The dads are fortunate that their first-born sons possess a common denominator of human excellence. They have exceptional athletic potential, and they will come to demonstrate passion to the point of obsession. That, combined with hard, unrelenting work, will take them far.

All truly skilled players show athletic coordination at a very young age. Players with average abilities might make themselves into decent players by diligence and hard work, but the best of the best are very good, very young. You can’t teach natural ability. You’re born with it or you’re not. Willie, Mickey and Duke were. They will be better than all the other boys with whom they compete.

People who study these things agree that having advanced motor skills won’t mean that a kid will become a professional athlete or even that he’ll be better than his peers in 10 or 20 years. Some young people’s motor skills develop faster than others, but other kids often catch up as they mature, and everything evens out. Some are so good that others never catch up.

Sure, young boys harbor doubts, as all boys do. It takes their fathers to inspire them to push the doubts aside and push ahead, even when their futures look dark. An act of love, never an obligation. They give their sons what they revere and know. They can’t teach them how to become doctors or lawyers. There are no lessons in trigonometry, chemistry, or biology. Even had they wanted to, they didn’t have the money to send them to expensive schools, but they can offer classes in baseball because that’s what they know.

The fathers understand the need to mentor their sons when they are young—barely big enough to hold a ball, and certainly too young to understand the implications.

The whitewashed clapboard house is weather-beaten but sturdy. Cat rolls a pink rubber ball across the kitchen.

See the ball. Go get the ball, he says to a diapered Willie.

This is both a baseball lesson and a walking lesson.

Willie is almost 1, and he’s already toddling after the ball.

Willie shows exceptional coordination. At least that’s how Cat sees it.

You should see him go after that ball, Cat says to a co-worker in the plant. His hands are so big and strong. He don’t miss nothing. I mean, my hands are normal size, but his, they’re big for such a little tyke. He don’t get those from me, that’s for sure. They’re his mother’s hands, all right.

Big hands, yeah, they’re always good, says the co-worker as he walks away.

You’ll see, Cat calls after him. You’ll see how good a ballplayer he’ll become.

Like Mutt and Ward, Cat sees the athletic potential of his firstborn early on. What they show in natural athletic ability can’t be taught. It can be brought out, enhanced, nurtured, but it’s got to be in their makeup.

By age 5, Willie plays catch regularly with Cat on a rutted cow pasture near their house. Cow pies make good bases, and the ruts will only help teach Willie to handle wildly bouncing grounders.

By 6, Willie’s playing by himself on a local diamond. He lobs the ball up, hits it with his small bat, then runs the bases and slides into home. Just like his father does in his semi-pro games.

At 7, Willie and Cat play pepper almost every day when the weather is good. Willie pitches and Cat hits pop ups and grounders toward Willie, who continues to show amazing dexterity.

Cat doesn’t have to force Willie into practicing. Willie is petulant when he can’t play.

Willie swings the bat so often his hands become raw.

Cat talks frequently about baseball. About the finer points of the game. The ball field is Cat’s classroom to lecture, prod, and pose questions as well as any professor.

Cat convinces Willie he should learn every position on the field. So, some days, Willie plays short. Other days he catches or pitches or patrols the outfield, complete with Cat’s instructions for playing each position.

What do you do as the left fielder with a ball hit down the line with one out and runners on first and third?

Who’s the cutoff man on throws from center?

Years later, Willie would say, I learned more about baseball by playing catch with my dad than any other time in my life. By the time I got to the majors, I figured I knew all about the game.

Cat thinks his dream of Willie escaping the mills and having a career as a ballplayer might actually be reasonable. Just maybe, he’ll be good enough someday to play in the Negro Leagues, although Cat understands that’s wishing for a lot. The players in the Negro Leagues are all good. Not every kid with skills will make it to that level. Still, any chance to stay out of the mills…

Early morning, and Willie is off to elementary school, as always, with a rubber ball in hand. He bounces it as he walks. When he gets to his friend Charlie’s house, he stands out front, still bouncing and catching the ball. When Charlie appears at the front door, Willie tosses him the ball. Charlie snatches it out of the air with a quick motion and throws it back to Willie. As they continue to the school, the ball passes swiftly between them. When class lets out, still exchanging the rubber ball, they go to the field behind the school for a pickup game.

Cat plays in the Birmingham Industrial League, where games sometimes attract as many as 6,000 fans. There’s daily coverage in the local press. You could always count on Cat. He played a good game, took advantage of his speed and natural athleticism, and hustled. Always hustled. And was he ever-quick getting to the balls—cat quick. So, Willie Howard Mays Sr. became Cat Mays, the fastest player around…until his son became faster.

Cat loves playing, plays whenever he gets the chance, and plays hard. Mostly, he plays in the outfield where he chases down fly balls no one else on his team could get. Cat, although not as big as Willie will become, plays ball whenever and wherever someone will part with a few dollars for his baseball skills. He’d track down fly balls all day for a buck. I made it during the Depression, he would say years later, by playing for anybody who’d give me money. Because every time somebody come to get me to play baseball, I’d say, ‘I can’t go, man—I got something to do,’ and he’d say, ‘Come on, man. I’ll give you $2.50.’ Sometimes when things was bad, you’d have to go for ten cents a game. And for that money, you learned baseball.

By the time Willie is 10, Cat allows him to go to his Industrial League games and sit on the bench with the players. Willie takes it all in—how the players position themselves in the field against certain batters, how they take leads off first base, how they hit to the opposite field when the occasion calls for it. He pays particular attention to how Cat uses his blazing speed and deft sliding ability to avoid tags. Cat is among the best players in the league. Willie is sure of it.

Willie may not understand everything that’s going on, but he is absorbing thoughts about the game the men are playing. He hears them talking about taking leads on left-handed pitchers, about when to bunt or hit-and-run, about when to slap a ball to the opposite field.

Willie becomes a regular at these games.

Hey, Willie, what would you think if I bought you a trumpet? Cat asks him one day as they walk home after a game in which Cat played well.

A trumpet?

So you could play in the band.

Nah, I don’t want to play in no band.

It could be fun. You might like it.

No, thanks.

Later, Cat would say he didn’t give Willie his first glove until Willie said he wanted one. He didn’t want to push Willie into playing ball. If Willie decided on his own that he wanted to, then he would ask for a glove, which is what he eventually does. Cat is pleased. As he sees it, he didn’t force Willie. It was Willie’s choice.

A good glove is a grand thing for a kid to have. It was from his father, and it was modeled after professional players’. Not that Willie yet had any pretense he might be one of them someday, but he was proud to play with the other boys and look good doing it. A real baseball glove assured that.

Cat and Big Walt sit in Katie’s Cafe in Birmingham nursing post-game beers.

I knew he would be special, Cat says of his son. He started walking when he was one, and I could tell.

You’re dreaming, Cat, Big Walt says. You can’t tell nothing about a kid’s ability at one.

Maybe your kid’s, but not mine. I could tell he was gonna be a good athlete.

That’s not what you could tell, it’s what you thought, and those two things ain’t the same.

I bought him a big rubber ball for his first birthday, and he’d hold it, and he’d bounce it, and he’d chase it.

So, he was interested. Don’t mean he was good.

More than interested. If the ball got away from him, he’d bawl like crazy.

That still don’t make him athletic or nothing; it makes him a crier.

Oh, I could see it, Walt. I could see the greatness in his eyes.

I don’t think that’s possible.

"Well, I did.