With James S. Hirsch’s new biography of Willie Mays just hitting the bestseller list this week, Hirsch was kind enough to answer a few questions about Mays and the book:
Rob: A story I don’t believe I’ve ever related ... Some years ago—this would have been in the late 1980s or early ‘90s, I suppose—I went to a baseball card show at which Mays was charging for his autograph, and I got in the long line with everyone else and paid my 14 bucks (or whatever) for a signature. I used to go to a fair number of those shows, and I (briefly) met Stan Musial and Bob Feller, two all-timers nearly on Willie’s level. Both took the time to smile and exchange a few words, which at the time meant a lot to me. There was none of that with Mays. Someone handed him my baseball, he signed it without looking up, then handed it to someone else who handed it to me. More than just that, though, Mays seemed actively grumpy, a scowl on his face all the while. And apparently it wasn’t just me; later, I heard someone refer to Mays “terrorizing” children at shows all over the country. I don’t believe Mays owed me anything except his signature, which I got (granted, his signature was singularly unattractive, but that’s another story). I did believe for many years that he was a bitter old man, but his recent appearances to promote your book suggest that he’s not unhappy all the time; maybe he just didn’t enjoy meeting strangers in convention halls. Sorry, there is a question in here somewhere ... How does Willie Mays feel about his fans? And if he’s still doing the card shows, does he enjoy them more now?
Jim: Willie’s first priority as a player was to entertain the fans—to give them something to talk about when they left the ballpark. The basket catch, the hat flying off his head, the flair and bravado with which he played: all were designed for the fans, and his powerful appeal, at home, on the road, and in other countries, is well documented. A few months shy of 79, Willie has probably signed more autographs for more kids than any athlete alive. Has he pleased everyone? Of course not. A Giant batboy from the late 1950s, Roy McKercher, told me that whenever Willie left the ballpark or the hotel, he was besieged by autograph seekers. In some cases, he would sign for two hours and then finally have to leave—and someone who was left wanting would call the newspaper and accuse Willie of being a jerk. He couldn’t win.
Since the 1980s, Willie’s principal source of income has been signing his name at trade shows. It’s hard work. Small talk with strangers is not Willie’s thing, and the pressure to satisfy everyone wears on him. Some fans, no doubt, wish he could give more of himself in those settings. That’s a fair criticism. But those episodes shouldn’t obscure Willie’s long record of generosity and kindness toward children (the hospital visits, the financial contributions to families in need, his Say Hey Foundation)—almost all of these efforts have been performed outside the media glare, but they’re a powerful thread throughout his adult life and are now documented in the book.
Hoyt Wilhelm…now there was a grouch.
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i told her when i was involved in cards / memorabilia in the 80s and early 90s, but especially before the autograph and cards boom really hit, mays was universally known as the most miserable autograph guest you could get.
promoters who got him would invariably ##### and moan after the fact about how awful he was, and how much flak they (promoters) had to take afterwards from people who wanted the meet / greet, and got nothing from him (willie).
feller, musial - great athletes who were great at the people angle as well at these events. and i know that feller was (and brooks robinson) were my first ever hall of famers who autographed via mail - and both got my stuff BACK to me in less than 5 days. i don't (didn't) care that their autograph isn't worth as much as others - for a teenage collector, their kindness in signing that stuff absolutely made me day.
1) Enjoy it, understanding that many will take advantage of you but recognize that most just want to meet you
2) Obsess on the negative - focus on how horrible it is that some people take advantage of you and assume that is the case with every last person who comes in contact with you.
#1 will probably end up with less money in the end, but I suspect will be far happier in their life than #2. Sadly it sounds like Mays lands squarely in #2. He probably can be great fun when he feels safe from the people who would send a 4 year old to him to get his autograph then sell it on eBay, but he probably expects all people to be like that scum who would do that thus rarely can really relax except around other ball-players or close family members (namely his kids) or others who are extremely wealthy. IMO that would make life pretty frustrating - expecting everyone to try to take advantage and finding little joy in your life.
The funny part is Musial and Feller, two famously gregarious people when it comes to signing autographs and various other public appearances, probably had more money than Mays for a long time. I don't think Willie did all that well on the investments, maybe because it seems like he doesn't trust people.
Willie had a rough divorce that got a good amount of coverage in the New York tabloids, and I don't think he's been the same guy since.
I might have the one good Willie Mays autograph story. Soon after I was born, my mom saw him walking down the street and got him to stop and wait for her to run into a shop, buy a baseball and sign it for me. That my mom was 29 when it happened might have had something to do with it.
When Musial was in DC for the 1962 All-Star game I interrupted his lunch at the Hilton hotel to ask for his autograph, and instead of giving me the boot like he should have, he signed without the slightest bit of hesitation while I stood there feeling kind of embarrassed.
and i know that feller was (and brooks robinson) were my first ever hall of famers who autographed via mail
When I was doing community organizing in the early 60's on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, there was an 11 year old kid who was one of those 1 in 1000 cases of true precociousness that you'll sometimes run into. And he loved baseball.
I used to write him several times a year to see how he was doing in school, and one day I got a letter from him that outlined his latest project: He'd obtained one of those lists that had the known addresses of every baseball player, and he wrote to every living Hall of Fame member. And with one exception he got nice responses (or at least an autograph) from all of them. Considering that this was 1964, that's got to be a nice collection today.
The one exception was Pie Traynor, who never responded to any of his repeated requests. Until one day the kid sent him a registered letter with a return receipt requested. And so he finally got the autograph.
What made it even better was the text of that letter. All it said was, "HA, HA, GOT YOUR AUTOGRAPH."
Why Mays is so grumpy I don't know. Maybe he is just shy. Maybe he is bitter. Maybe he only has a limited amount of nice in himself and therefore he rations his niceness only to a small circle of people he knows and trusts.
I've never personally seen Mays around kids, but I've been told he is nice to them. I'm sure psychologists can explain why some adults differentiate like that. It seems to me harder to be as cold as Mays generally is.
I also get the sense, when the cameras are on, Mays can put on an act of being a decent fellow. But that, of course, is just an act.
When the subject of a biography goes around the country promoting it you know that he must have a financial interest in the book. And it turns out that he does. Here is an article from the New York Observer detailing the negotiations involved in getting Mays to authorize the biography.
http://www.observer.com/2007/new-willie-mays-biography-comes-strings-attached
OTOH the bottom line is that these are just baseball players, and for the most part fans value ballplayers in strict correlation to their statistical output---do you think that they don't know that? I don't need Willie Mays's autograph to make my life complete, and if he chooses to act like a grumpy old man, that's really his problem, not mine.
Isn't he largely blind? EDIT: No, that's too strong. He has glaucoma, doesn't drive and has to have things read to him. But he's not blind.
Coincidentally for the purposes of this thread was that 20 years before when we lived in Atlanta, Hoyt Wilhelm was a neighbor, and my dad referred to him as "Mr. Wilhelm". Apparently once he walked by and helped my dad do something in the front yard without being asked, I'm not sure my dad remebers what it was anymore. Considering that Wilhelm (slightly older than my dad) was traded to Atlanta in late 1969 (Mickey Rivers went the other way) and we moved to rejoin Willie in mid 1970, there was not much overlap. So I am only two down in the number of HOFers I have spoken to in my life...unless Jeffrey Leonard, Eric Chavez, Don Mincher and Bruce Chen (AA game) get in.
Then the solution is simple. Willie needs to get high. It's likely to make him more affable and it will help with the glaucoma.
I haven't read the present bio, but I can definitely recommend Willie's Time. I really enjoyed it, enough to have read it twice. Surprisingly little-known for such a good book. I learned a lot about Mays and about his and baseball's experiences with the culture of the 60s.
First, after 1954 the public attention simply got to be overwhelming. Though he still got a much better press in New York than Mantle, who for most of the 50's was considered the King of Surliness.
Then, when the Giants moved west, the fans in San Francisco saw him to a great extent as "New York's hero," and lavished more attention to Orlando Cepeda, who was looked upon as "San Francisco's discovery". (Cepeda's rookie year coincided with the move.)
And then, if you can believe what you read in the hobby press, Mays became extremely irritated when the price of Mantle's rookie card (both the 51 Bowman and the 52 Topps) went through the roof, while the price of the Mays rookie cards went up at a much slower rate. He also attributed this discrepancy in part to racism, and it's not that much of a stretch to imagine that this colored Mays's view of the entire hobby business, including card shows.
The only point of laying this out is to raise the thought that Mays wasn't always like this, and that there may be some logical reasons for his current mindset, even if they seem pretty farfetched looking at it from the outside.
Maybe you can review it under a pseudonym? I've heard that always turns out well.
but you're GOD, you are always high.....
I'm about 3/4 of the way through Hirsch's book. I don't think it would be fair to say that Hirsch is an apologist for Mays. He talks quite a bit about the fact that Mays is not comfortable in dealing with adults and offers a number of reasons why. He's also quite critical of Mays in some instances, though the book overall is very favorable to him.
I'm about 3/4 of the way through Hirsch's book. I don't think it would be fair to say that Hirsch is an apologist for Mays. He talks quite a bit about the fact that Mays is not comfortable in dealing with adults and offers a number of reasons why. He's also quite critical of Mays in some instances, though the book overall is very favorable to him.
What about red juice?
Mays' life does not seem to have turned out as well. He's had a bad divorce (according to this thread), and maybe money troubles of some sort (possibly related to the divorce). His vision is poor. His world is not still all sunshine. My experience with people whose world was sunshine when they were young, but has not been since they got older, is that they get far, far more grumpy about it than people who didn't start out so blessed. They remember being blessed. When young, they never had to develop any coping mechanisms for bad turns of luck, so they don't have any when the luck turns sour later in life. I don't know what Mays' childhood was like - whether he was rich or poor or middle class or whatever - but by the time he was a teenager, he was surely the sports star of his area. The story this thread seems to be telling is one of a boy who never had to develop serious coping mechanisms, and who therefore doesn't have them as an old man. It's sad, as Mays, IMO, certainly deserves to have a good life. He worked hard at his job, pleased enormous crowds, never quit, and was everything you'd want in a ballplayer. Jackie Robinson was the first black star, but Mays was the first BELOVED one (well, contemporary with Campanella). I can't call myself a big Mays fan, since I grew up in St. Louis in the 1950s, when he was regularly tormenting the Cardinals, but I feel sorry for him and think he deserves better out of life.
- Brock Hanke
Not really, you're just anticipating the "Willie sucks" thread in a rather passive/aggressive manner.
then (from what i heard - i was more out of the loop then) he became very friendly.
mantle also made significantly more from his autograph than willie did.
He was a black born in Alabama in 1931, 66 years after the Civil War. Must've been a blast.
Must be in the last quarter of the book, if it's there at all.
From Hirsch's book, it seems Mays has very fond memories of his childhood. At the same time, looking at it objectively, there must have been some difficulties: growing up black in Alabama in the '30s would have been no piece of cake; his parents never married and he wasn't close to either one.
Mays has always had problems with money. Some of that is his own problem, in that he's just one of those people who never learned to manage it. Some of it, though, comes from being taken advantage of by people he trusted. That seems to be part of the reason why Mays has a hard shell in public today. Still, it's clear from the book that he has a lot of friends who say wonderful things about him personally, and that, regardless of how he deals with strange adults, he's very good with kids and always has been.
I guess when you're a celebrity your personality becomes an angle no matter what kind of personality it is ("Let's play two!" vs. "Get out of my face.")
Racist.
Even though it would've been (& would still be, thankfully) inaccurate, "Willie McCovey's Dead" would've scanned perfectly as Bauhaus' first single.
I came in here to post much the same thoughts. I'm about a third of the way through Hirsch's book, but it seems to me that Mays developed his surliness as an adult. He was always very private, but polite and outgoing while young. He probably only had so much capacity for dealing with strangers though, and he burned through it before he turned 30. If he was never famous, he still would have been private and guarded, but wouldn't radiate vibes of unpleasantness the way he does now. Also, part of it goes back to being taken advantage of. One of the reasons he's always been good with children is that he never has to worry about their motives.
It seems like Bonds had a similar process, except that growing up as the son of a big leaguer, playing in higher pressure youth baseball, it was accelerated. He was already that way when he was playing at ASU.
On the other hand, I'll echo the comments about Willie McCovey. My dad was born in the Bay Area in 1951, and McCovey was his favorite player. He ran into him at the stadium a few years ago. McCovey was waiting for an elevator, and he had his hands full (using crutches). My dad went up to him and said Willie was his favorite player, and he'd like to shake his hand, but since he couldn't, could he hug him instead. Willie said sure, go ahead.
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